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-In about 140 towns and cities of the kingdom of Prussia the poor school-children are provided with warm dinners or breakfasts. The funds for these institutions are derived from various sources. Some are proceeds of bequests, others are derived from private sources, others are the results of associated charities, and still others derived from annual appropriations of communities.

Literature, Historical Notes, etc.

It is not every day that an Emperor comes to the aid of education in his own person, and as much may be learned from the utterances of the young Kaiser on the subject of German Schools, we devote our space to his address at the late conference held for the discussion of questions concerning Secondary Education in Prussia. The hints which are to be picked up from the subsequent action of the government of that country, may also be of service to us in our discussions, and therefore we have decided to give a synopsis of what has occurred since' the Emperor joined the movement for educational reform in a country which has long held the foremost place among the nations for its colleges and schools.

Gentlemen, as the Emperor is reported to have said, I have requested your chairman to give me an opportunity to state to you what my thoughts are regarding the questions at issue. It is reasonable to suppose, that many things will be discussed here without being decided, and I believe that there are several points about which we shall remain in the dark. But, I consider it desirable not to leave you, gentlemen, in doubt as to my

mind.

First, I should like to say above all, that it is not a political school-question, which you are called upon to solve, the technical and pedagogical questions of organization, which must be approached in order to prepare our growing generation for the present demand of our country's position in the world and those of modern life. And in connection with this, I should like to say: It would have pleased me very much, if your investigations and deliberations, had not been stamped with a French word, school-" enquête," but with a good German word school-" enquiry." Inquiry (Frage) is the good old German synonym for investigation. Hence let us call the thing schoolenquiry.

I have read the fourteen themes that have been submitted to you, and find that they are apt to mislead you, to sterilize the

whole movement by paying exclusive attention to formalities. I should greatly regret this. It is important that the spirit of the cause be represented and expressed, and not the mere form. I have therefore noted down a few points (I shall pass them around) which I hope will find due consideration.

(1) School hygiene, besides gymnastics, a thing which deserves the minutest consideration; then diminution of the matter of instruction, a consideration of what may be eliminated; also the courses of study for different branches, then methods of organization (several points concerning the latter subject are found among the fourteen submitted to you); (6) How to eliminate the ballast of our school examinations? (7) How to guard in future against over-crowding? (8) How may the work be controlled, if it should succeed? (9) Regular and extraordinary supervision of different authorities.

I submit these questions to your consideration. If there is any one among you who wishes to see them, he is welcome to them.

The entire question has developed itself completely and without anybody's initiative. You are standing face to face with the question of which I am convinced that its solution on your part, in whatever form you may cast it, will be presented to the youth of our nation as a ripe fruit.

If the schools had been upon the standpoint upon which they ought to stand, the Cabinet Order which the Minister of Education, your chairman, has just quoted, would never have been necessary. Let me say, at the outset, that if I move rather abruptly and speak pointedly, I do not refer to any one personally, my words having reference to the entire system, to the whole situation.

If the school had done what could justly be expected of it (and I can speak as one initiated, having sat as a pupil on the benches of a gymnasium and knowing what is being done) it should from the very outset, through its own initiative, have taken the lead against social democracy. The teachers should have seized upon the opportunity and instructed the young generation, so that those young people who are about of the same age with me, say 30 years, could offer now the material with which I ought to work in the State in order to become master of the movement. That has not been the case.

The last occasion at which our school essentially aided our entire national life and development, was during the year '64, '66, and '70: At that time Prussian schools and their faculties were the supporters of the idea of national unity. Every teacher

then preached on that text. Every graduate who left school and entered the army as a one-year volunteer, or entered life, was convinced of one thing: the German Empire must again be established and Alsace-Lorraine regained. This patriotic movement ceased with the year 1871. The Empire was re-unitedwe had what we wanted-and that seems to have been the end. The school ought to have started from the newly gained basis, it ought to have inspired youth by explaining that the new State was worthy to be preserved and maintained. No effects in that direction are noticeable and already, only a short time after the Empire's rejuvenation, we find centrifugal tendencies. I am able to judge in this matter because I stand above, and all such questions approach me. The cause of these destructive tendencies should be sought in the education of the young generation. Where lies the fault? Fault there is in many places.

The chief cause is, that since the year 1870, the Philologists as "beati possidentes" have established themselves in the Gymnasia and have given particular importance to the matter of instruction, that is, to knowledge, and not to the formation of character and culture, nor the needs of modern life. You, Privy-Councillor Hinzpeter will pardon me, you are an enthusiastic Philologist, but nevertheless things have come to such a pass that a change must be made.

Less stress is laid upon the "I can" then upon the "I know" (das Koennen als das Kennen); this becomes clear when one looks at the demands made in examinations. Teachers start from the principle that the scholar above all things must know as much as possible, whether it is of use in life or not is immaterial. When one tried to make clear to these Philologists that young men should be practically educated to a certain extent for life and its demands, then the answer always came, that that was not the province of schools. Their province was to exercise the mind, and if this exercising the mind was properly carried on, the young man would be in a fit condition to do everything necessary in life. Gentlemen, we can proceed no longer with this presumption as a starting point.

When I speak of the school, and especially of the gymnasia, I know very well that in many circles I am held to be a fanatical opponent of the gymnasia. That, however, is not the case. Whoever has attended a gymnasium knows what is wanting there. It is above all a national basis that is wanting. We must give a thoroughly German basis to the gymnasium; we ought to educate national young Germans and not young Greeks and Romans. We must get away from the basis which has lasted

for centuries, away from the old monastic education of the Middle Ages. The German composition must be the centre round which every thing in school revolves. If a young man writes a thoroughly good German essay in his final school examination, we can judge his education by that and tell whether he is worth any thing or not.

Now, of course, many will say, the Latin essay is very important; the Latin essay is very useful in that it educates in a foreign language, and I don't know what more. I have gone through all that. How does such a Latin essay get written? I have very often known a young man get the mark "moderate for a German essay and "very good" for his Latin essay. The man deserved punishment instead of praise, for that his Latin essay was not written by fair means is clear. And of all the Latin essays we wrote, there was not one in twelve that was not cribbed out of Latin authors. Such essays were marked "good." So much for the Latin essay. But when we had to write an essay on "Minna von Barnhelm in the gymnasium, we got no better mark than "barely satisfactory." Hence, I say, away with the Latin essay; we waste over it the time we should be giving to our German.

In the same way I should like to see a national spirit fostered among us by the cultivation of history, geography, German legends and traditions. Let us begin at home. When we know all about our own rooms, then we can go and look about us in a museum. But above all things we must be at home in the history of our Fatherland. The great Elector in my school days was a misty being; the Seven Years' War was buried in the past, and history came to a stop at the end of the last century with the French Revolution. The great uprising of 1813 and 1815, which is of the utmost importance to young statesmen, was not included in the course, and only through the supplementary and most interesting lecture of Geheimrath Hinzpeter have I, thank God, been enabled to learn these things. That is just, however, the "punctum saliens"!

Why are our young people led astray? Why do so many misty, confused reformers arise? Why are our people always carping at our Government and holding up foreign countries as models? Just because our young people do not know how our constitution has become what it is, and that the roots of it lie in the time of the French Revolution. And, therefore, I am firmly convinced, that when we make this transition from the French Revolution to the nineteenth century quite clear in a simple, objective manner to our young people, then we shall

gain for them quite a different conception of the question of the present day. They are then in a position to extend and deepen their knowledge in the University by the lectures they hear

there.

If I now turn to the occupation of our young people, I should like to state how absolutely necessary it is that the number of school hours should be diminished. Geheimrath Hinzpeter will remember that at the time when I was a pupil in the Cassel gymnasium, the one cry of the parents and families was, that this state of things could not go on. Consequently the school authorities made inquiry into the matter. We had to hand in to our prinicipal home time-tables, giving the number of hours necessary for our home-tasks.

I am now giving the numbers for the senior class only. Well, gentlemen, according to conscientiously kept time-tables (as far as I was concerned, Geheimrath Hinzpeter could verify them) these home-tasks took 51, 61, to 7 hours. Add to that 6 hours in school, 2 hours for meals, and you can reckon for yourselves how much of the day remained for recreation. If I had not been able to ride to school and back, and otherwise get a little exercise, I should not have known what the world looked like. Well, we cannot go on overburdening our young people in this way. According to my thinking, the school hours in the lower classes must also be considerably shortened.

Gentlemen, it cannot go on, we must not stretch the bow and leave it stretched in this manner. Schools, at any rate gymnasia, have tried the impossible, and have in my opinion, produced educated men in supply considerably greater than the demand for them, more than the nation can endure, more than the people themselves can endure. Hence came the saying of Prince Bismarck, a true saying, that there exists an Abiturientenproletariat (learned paupers). The so-called "Starving Candidates," (i. e., candidates for offices, as yet not vacant, who meanwhile have not the wherewithal for their daily bread), especially among the journalists; these are all spoiled students, they are a real danger for us.. I shall henceforth permit no gymnasium to be founded, which cannot prove beyond dispute its need and right to existence. We have already enough of

them.

Now, however, the question is, how can we best meet the wishes respecting classical education and the right to the oneyear voluntary army service? I consider that the question is easily disposed of in the answer:-classical gymnasia with classical education, another kind of school with technical

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