According to a summary of minutes taken by the secretary of the faculty at the Ecole Normale, Payot presented his candidacy to the vacant chair in Pedagogy previously held by Professor Ferdinand Buisson.

The chair eventually was granted to Émile Durkheim, who was noted as being mainly a sociologist, but the electing council argued that pedagogy was a subject within sociology.

Payot received ten votes in the first poll, thereby losing to Malapert, who in turn lost to Durkheim.

[3] Among his most famous books are Éducation de la volonté which in 1909 had been published in no less than 32 editions and subsequently translated into several languages.

From La Faillite de l’Enseignement/The Bankruptcy of Teaching Works in English translation Spanish edition in possession of Prof. Juan Lasi Florida U.S.A