ADDITIONAL COPIES OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE AT ICENTS PER COPY EDUCATION SEPT. EDUCATION IN GERMANY. By I. L. KANDEL. CONTENTS.-General tendencies-Secondary education-Training of secondary schoolteachers Separation of church and State. GENERAL TENDENCIES. The development of education in Germany during the past two years must necessarily remain obscure until the sources of direct information are again opened up. From extracts and references here and there the educational situation does not appear to have been very happy, and, if reports such as the following may be trusted, the machinery so carefully built up seems to have failed at the crisis. Writing in the Vossische Zeitung of January 23, 1918, Dr. Paul Hildebrandt contrasts the early enthusiasm manifested by the German school children and their war activities with the situation at the beginning of the year (1918): The sixth-grade pupils of 1914 are now about to be promoted to the upper third. They have become accustomed to the war. Who can wonder, then, that now in the fourth year of war our children exhibit signs of change? Too many of the restraints have been removed which should shape their developments; the loosening of family ties, the father at the front, the mother employed away from home, and in the lower ranks of society doing the work of men; the relaxation of school discipline. Of the teachers of the Berlin public schools, for instance, two thirds have gone into the army. The remainder are overworked. Dropping class periods, or combining classes together is the order of the day. In the higher schools half of the teachers are in the army. Furthermore, standards in the higher institutions of learning have gradually been lowered until the final examination has been pushed back fully two classes. All of these conditions have influenced our students and have weakened their persistence, since they see that they can attain a scholastic standing without effort that formerly demanded the severest application. Young people follow the law of their nature. They are guided by the impressions of the moment and they can not permanently resist them. In addition, as time went on, especially in the case of students of higher institutions, and particularly in the towns, the hardship of inadequate nourishment appeared. It is the unanimous judgment of medical specialists that the children of the middle classes suffered most in this respect. General attention was attracted to the fact that the children were less sensitive to reproof, that they paid no more attention to threats, because the school authorities had directed that they should be treated with every leniency, and since promotions no longer represented any definite standard of accomplishment. This special consideration for the children was most obvious in the schools of the large cities. Was 3 542808 not harvest work and the country vacation necessary to maintain the health of the coming generation, and was it not necessary for a great many to be set back in their studies so that they required repeated concessions to maintain their rank and thereby continually lower scholastic standards of their classes? That spirit of voluntary service which at the beginning of the war revealed itself in its fairest aspect has now disappeared. Everywhere we hear lamentations over the increasing distaste shown for military services. Pupils collect articles now for the reward, not from patriotism, and the older pupils have their struggles. Shall they take advantage of the opportunity to leave school with a half-completed education, or shall they avoid placing themselves in a position where they will have to enlist for their country? What an unhappy indecision even for the best of them, those who really think about the matter. Furthermore, in those ranks of society which are less influenced by tradition, discipline, and education, we find increasing violations of the law. At the first this manifested itself merely in an increase of theft. More recently it has taken a decided turn toward personal assaults. It is true, the latter are still negligible in proportion to the total number of juvenile offenses, but they are increasing every year. Already the number of violent crimes committed by youths in the city of Berlin is more than three times the number reported in 1914. Thus, dark shadows are falling over the brilliant picture of 1914. Every disciplinary influence, every effort of the still fundamentally sound German nation must be exerted to oppose this tendency, and to lead the children back to the path of rectitude. Another picture, but one also indicating the difficulties that attend the conduct of the schools, is given in the Leipziger Volkszeitung for February 8, 1918. The Saxon minister of education recently drew attention in the Saxon Diet to the injurious effects produced by the war on the elementary schools of the Kingdom. In addition to the shortage of fuel, which last year frequently necessitated the closing of schools, and this year has required the removal and amalgamation of whole schools, the unsatisfactory health of the teachers has had an undesirable effect. War conditions, according to the minister, have caused great emaciation and premature ageing, and have diminished the capacity for work (alike physical and intellectual) and the sharpness of the senses. This state of things is attributed not only to the food supply situation, but also to the increased difficulty and extent of the professional work falling upon teachers (only 8,965 elementary school teachers were at work in Saxony on 1st of October, 1917, as compared with 14,800 before the war), and to the large amount of auxiliary service imposed upon teachers in connection with war economic measures. These accounts hardly seem to be in keeping with the eulogies heaped on the German school system during the first two years of the war in the daily press, in professional magazines and by the Government. It was then felt very universally that the elementary school, the training ground of the discipline and physical strength and comprehensive culture that characterize the German soldier, had triumphed signally over the illiterate Russians and Italians, as well as the decadent French and the treacherous English. It was the elemen tary schools that produced the patriotic, loyal, thorough soldier whom the consciousness of a good cause carried to victory. This unguarded flattery of the elementary schools and their teachers helped somewhat to give a new impetus to a movement to which attention had been redirected just before the war. At an educational conference which met at Kiel in June, 1914, and was attended by representatives of all branches of education, it was urged with much enthusiasm that on the basis of a national common school higher education be made accessible to as many classes in society as possible so that intelligence might be recruited wherever it was found. Opportunity for ability could best be furnished through the establishment of the Einheitsschule or common school system. The program also included the unification of all branches of the teaching profession with the further implication of a uniform system of training for all and equal access for all to the highest positions in the educational profession. The elimination of social and sectarian distinction is another plank in the platform for educational reorganization. The idea of the Einheitsschule has a long history in Germany; it has always been advocated by the leaders of progressive politics and thoughtful educators. When last agitated in the eighties, Prof. Rein and Mr. J. Tews, now the doyen of the elementary school teachers, were associated with the movement as they now are with its revival. The principle underlying the system of the Einheitsschule is that all children between the ages of 6 and 12 shall have a common educational foundation to be followed by educational opportunities thereafter suited to their abilities. This implies the elimination of the Vorschule, or special fee-paying school, which prepares pupils from the age of 6 until their entrance into the secondary school at about the age of 9 and which is a distinctly class school. The further implication of the Einheitsschule is the postponement of the beginning of secondary education to 12, a change that has much to commend it on grounds other than the provision of democratic opportunities, and is at least a better age at which a correct choice of a course and a career can be made than 9.1 the A new stimulus was given to the movement in the early days of war, when politics was adjourned, when enthusiasm and victory had welded the Nation together as one, and when Hindenburg was claimed to be superior to Hannibal and the captain of the Emden to Leonidas. The commercial and industrial classes had, it was generally felt, proved themselves equal to the demands of the hour. The greatest inability to meet the situation had been shown by the politi The present account is based on a study of the movement in the Pädagogische Zeitung between 1914-1916, when direct information ceased to be accessible. A valuable analysis of contemporary educational literature is contained in an article on Lcs Projets de Réformes Scolaires en Allemagne, in Revue Pédagogique, Vol. 69, pp. 250-267, September, 1916; and Vol. 70, pp. 408-517, May, 1917. cal and diplomatic leaders who had enjoyed the traditional opportunities for higher education. The demand was at once renewed for the establishment of a common school from which pupils of promise in all classes of society might be recruited to place their intellectual abilities at the service of the state and to furnish an intellectual and spiritual reserve to make up for the physical and intellectual losses incurred during the war. It was no longer a question of providing an easy road (Bahn leicht) for ability but an open road (Bahn frei). The war changed the aspects of the problem; the need of the hour was a German national school with opportunity for all to cooperate in promoting the great aims of the German cultural state. National unity could only be advanced by a national common school, which, according to the progressives, including the Deutsche Lehrerverein and the social democrats, must be established as a free, undenominational and nationally uniform institution placing gifted children of the poorer classes on the same footing for promotion to higher education as the children of the richer classes. Cultural and social equality must be established for the working classes who were anxious to play their proper part in the development of common national aims. They desired not so much to reach the top, but that their abler members should have opportunities opened to them suited to their ability without reference to school privileges and certificates. For the member of the working classes the question is not so much, "How can I raise my son socially through education?" as "How can I secure for my class or rather its abler members appropriate influence in the adminstration of the state and of the community, in industry, commerce, transport, and how can I put an end to the influences of privilege that are socially detrimental?" Selection for educational advantages must in the future be based in the opinion of the advocates of the movement not on privilege but on the common right of all classes. The proposals for the Einheitsschule are well summarized in a resolution passed in June, 1918, by the Association of Prussian Women Teachers, meeting at Hannover: National unity, returning stronger than ever after the war, will demand a unified school system for all Germany. The reco:ruction of the whole system will have to be made with a single compulsory elementary school as its foundation. Reasons for this are of different kinds; reasons of social justice, that every gifted child shall be able to advance to a higher education; national and economical reasons, that the state shall be able to make use of all native talent in the most suitable place, and shall be able to economize in the heavy and useless expenses which are incurred by the presence of poorly endowed scholars in the secondary schools. Karl Muthesius, long a leader in educational affairs, is opposed to class barriers and restrictions on intellectual development merely |