XX. THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION…

XX. THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION

I. NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE

THE STATE AS SERVANT OF THE CHURCH. With the rise of the Protestant sects we noted, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and for the first time since Christianity became supreme in the western world, the beginnings of a state connection with the education of the young. The Protestant reformers, obtaining the support of the Protestant princes and kings, had successfully used this support to assist them in the organization of church schools as an aid to the reformed faith. Luther, it will be recalled (p. 312), had made a strong appeal to the mayors and magistrates of all German lands to establish schools as a part of their civic duties (R. 156), and had contended that a solemn obligation rested upon them to do so. The Dutch Provinces had worked closely with the Dutch Protestant synods (p. 334) in ordering schools established and in providing for their financing; Calvin had organized a religious City-State at Geneva (p. 330), of which religion and learning had been the corner-stones; the Scottish Parliament, by the laws of 1633 and 1646 (p. 335), had ordered schools for Scottish children in connection with the churches; and in the Scandinavian countries and in Finland the beginnings of a connection with the State had also been made (p. 315). Finally, in the new Massachusetts Colony the laws of 1642 and 1647 (p. 366) had, for the first time in the English-speaking world, ordered that children be taught "to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country" (p. 364), and that schools be established by the towns, under penalty if they refused to do so. In all Protestant lands we saw that the reformers appealed, from time to time, to what were then the servants of the churches--the rising civil governments and principalities and States--to use their civil authority to force the people to meet their new religious obligations in the matter of schooling.

The purpose of the schooling ordered established, however, was almost wholly religious. Massachusetts, in ordering instruction in the "capital laws of the country," as well as reading and religion, had formed a marked exception. In nearly all lands the rising state governments merely helped the Protestant churches to create the elementary vernacular religious school, and to make of it an auxiliary for the protection of orthodoxy and the advancement of the faith. Even in the new state school systems of the German States--Saxony, Würtemberg (p. 317), Brunswick, Weimar, Gotha--the elementary schools established were for religious rather than for state ends. This condition continued until well toward the middle of the eighteenth century.

THE NEW STATE THEORY OF EDUCATION. After about the middle of the eighteenth century a new theory as to the purpose of education, and one destined to make rapid headway, began to be advanced. This theory had already made marked progress, as we shall see, in the New England Colonies, and had also found expression, as we shall also see in a later chapter, in the organizing work of Frederick the Great in Prussia. It was from the French political philosophers of the eighteenth century, though, that its clearest definition came. They now advanced the idea that schools were essentially civil affairs, the purpose of which should be to promote the everyday interests of society and the welfare of the State, rather than the welfare of the Church, and to prepare for a life here rather than a life hereafter.

After about 1750 a critical and reformatory pedagogy rapidly began to take shape in France, and the second half of the eighteenth century became a period of criticism and discontent and reconstruction in education, as well as in politics and religion.

This criticism and discontent in France was greatly stimulated by the decline in character and influence of the Jesuit schools. Unwilling to change their instruction to meet the needs of a changing society, their schools had become formal in character (R. 146), and were now engaged chiefly in stilling thinking rather than in promoting it. In consequence the schools had fallen into disrepute throughout all France. The Society, too, in the eighteenth century, came to be a powerful political organization which strove to dominate the State. So bad had the situation become by 1762, that the different parliaments in the provinces and in Paris had formulated complaints against the Jesuits and their schools, [1] and, in 1764, the king was induced to suppress the Order. [2] This decline in influence and final suppression of the Society gave rise to some rather remarkable pedagogical literature, which looked to the creation of a system of state secondary schools in France to replace those of the Jesuits.

The outcome was the rise of a new national and individual conception of the educational purpose. This was destined in time to spread to other lands and to lead to the rise of complete state school systems, financed and managed by the State and conducted for state ends, and to the ultimate divorce of Church and State, in all progressive lands, in the matter of the education of the young. Teachers trained and certificated by the State were in time to supplant the nuns and brothers of the religious congregations in Catholic lands, as well as teachers who served as assistants to the pastors in Protestant lands and whose chief purpose was to uphold the teachings and advance the interests of the sect; citizens were to supplant the ecclesiastic in the supervision of instruction; and the courses of instruction were to be changed in direction and vastly broadened in scope to make them minister to the needs of the State rather than the Church, and to prepare pupils for useful life here rather than for life in another world.

II. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN FRANCE

THE FRENCH POLITICAL THEORISTS. The leading French political theorists of the two decades between 1760 and 1780 now began to discuss education as in theory a civil affair, intimately connected with the promotion of the welfare of the State. The more important of these, and their chief ideas were:

1. Rousseau. The first of the critical and reformatory pedagogical writers to awaken any large interest and obtain a general hearing was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The same year (1762) that his Social Contract appeared and attacked the foundations of the old political system (p. 483), his Émile also appeared and attacked with equal vigor the religious and social theory as to education then prevailing throughout western Europe. For the stiff and unnatural methods in education, under which children were dressed and made to behave as adults, [3] the harsh discipline of the time, and the excessive emphasis on religious instruction and book education, he preached the substitution of life amid nature, childish ways and sports, parental love, and an education that considered the instincts and natural development of children.

Gathering up the political and social ideas of his age as to ecclesiastical and political despotism; the nature of the social contract; that the "state of nature" was the ideal one, and the one in which men had been intended to live; that human duty called for a return to the "state of nature," whatever that might be; and that the artificiality and hypocrisy of his age in manners, dress, religion, and education were all wrong--Rousseau restated his political philosophy in terms of the education of the boy, Émile. Despite its many exaggerations, much faulty reasoning, and many imperfections, the book had a tremendous influence upon Europe in laying bare the limitations and defects and abuses of the formal and ecclesiastical education of the time. [4] He may be regarded as the first important writer to sap the foundations of the old system of religious education, and to lay a basis for a new type of child training (R. 254). Though Rousseau's enthusiasm took the form of theory run mad, and the educational plan he proposed was largely impossible, he nevertheless popularized education, not only in France, but among the reading public of the progressive European States as well. After he had written, the old limited and narrow religious education was on the defensive, and, though time was required, the transition to a more secular type of education was inevitable as fast as nations and peoples could shake off the dominance of the Church in state affairs.

2. La Chalotais. The year following the publication of Rousseau's Émile appeared La Chalotais's Essai d'éducation nationale (1763). René de la Chalotais, a Solicitor-General for the Parliament of Bretagne, was one of the notable French parliamentarians of the middle of the eighteenth century. Unlike Rousseau's highly imaginary, exaggerated, sentimental, and paradoxical volume, La Chalotais produced a practical and philosophical discussion of the problem of the education of a people. Declaring firmly that education was essentially a civil affair; that it was the function of government to make citizens contented by educating them for their sphere in society; that citizen and secular teachers should not be excluded for celibates; [5] that the real purpose of education should be to prepare citizens for France; that the poor were deserving of education; and that "the most enlightened people will always have the advantage" in the struggles of a modern world, La Chalotais produced a work which was warmly approved by such political philosophers as Voltaire, Diderot, and Turgot, and which was translated into several European languages (R. 255). Though far less widely read than Rousseau's Émile, it was far more influential in shaping subsequent political theory and action regarding the relations of education to the State. Nearly every proposal for educational legislation during the days of the Revolution went back in idea to this philosophic discussion of the question by La Chalotais and to the practical proposals of Rolland and Turgot.

3. Rolland. In 1768 Rolland, president of the Parliament of Paris, presented to his colleagues a report in which he outlined a national system of education to replace both the schools of the Jesuits and those of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. La Chalotais had proposed a more modern system of state schools chiefly to replace those of the Jesuits, but Rolland went further and proposed the extension of education to all, and the supervision of all schools by a central council of the Government. By means of a centralized control, a central university to which the other universities of France were to be subordinate, a higher normal school to train teachers for the colleges (secondary schools), and universal education, [6] Rolland hoped to develop for France a national spirit, a national character, and a national government and code of laws, and to bring the youth of the provinces into harmony with the best of all French ideas.

4. Turgot. In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance (p. 481), and in 1775 he made a series of recommendations to the King in which he set forth ideas analogous to those of Rolland, and presented an eloquent plea for the formation of a national council of public instruction and the establishment of a system of civil and national education for the whole of France. In closing he wrote:

Your kingdom, Sir, is of this world. Without opposing any obstacle to the instructions whose object is higher, and which already have their rules and their expounders, I think I can propose to you nothing of more advantage to your people than to cause to be given to all your subjects an instruction which shows them the obligations they owe to society and to your power to protect them, and the interest they have in fulfilling those duties for the public good and their own. This moral and social instruction requires books expressly prepared, by competition, and with great care, and a schoolmaster in each parish to teach them to children, along with the art of writing, reading, counting, measuring, and the principles of mechanics. The study of the duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of all the other studies.... There are methods and establishments for training geometricians, physicists, and painters, but there are none for training citizens.

5. Diderot. In 1776 Diderot, editor with D'Alembert of the Encyclopaedia (1751-72), prepared, at the request of Catherine II (p. 477), under the title of Plan of a University, a complete scheme for the organization of a state system of public instruction for Russia. Though the plan was never carried out, it was printed and much discussed in France, and is important as coming from one of the most influential Frenchmen of his time. He commends as an example to be followed the work of the German States in the organization of popular instruction. For Russia he outlines first a system of people's schools, which shall be free and obligatory for all, and in which instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, morals, civics, and religion shall be taught. "From the Prime Minister to the lowest peasant," he says, "it is good for every one to know how to read, write, and count." For the series of secondary schools to be established, he condemns the usual practice of devoting so much of the instruction to the humanities and a mediaeval type of logic and ethics, and urges instead the introduction of instruction in mathematics, in the modern sciences, literature, and the work of governments. Classical studies he would confine to the last years of the course. Science, history, drawing, and music find a place in his scheme.

All this instruction Diderot would place under the supervisory control of an administrative bureau to be known as the University of Russia, at the head of which should be a statesman, who should exercise control of all the work of public instruction beneath. Though never carried out in Russia, the University of France of 1808 is largely an embodiment of the ideas he proposed in 1776.

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS TO EMBODY THESE IDEAS. During the quarter of a century between the publication of Rousseau's Émile and the summoning of the States-General to reform France (1762-88), the educational as well as the political ideas of the French reformers had taken deep root with the thinking classes of the nation. The cahiers of 1789, of all Orders (p. 500), gave evidence of this in their somewhat general demand for the creation of some form of an educational system for France (R. 252). From the first days of the Revolution pedagogical literature became plentiful, and the successive National Assemblies found time, amid the internal reorganization of France, constitution-making, the troubles with and trial of the King, and the darkening cloud of foreign intervention, to listen to reports and addresses on education and to enact a bill for the organization of a national school system. The more important of these educational efforts were:

1. The Constituent Assembly (June 17, 1789, to September 30, 1791). In the Constituent Assembly, into which the States-General resolved itself, June 17, 1789, and which continued until after it had framed the constitution of 1791, two notable addresses and one notable report on the organization of education were made. The Count de Mirabeau, a nobleman turned against his class and elected to the States-General as a representative of the Third Estate, made addresses on the "Organization of a Teaching Body" and on the "Organization of a National Lycée." In the first he advocated the establishment of primary schools throughout France. In the second he proposed the establishment of colleges of literature in each department, with a National Lycée at Paris for higher (university) education, and to contain the essentials of a national normal school or teachers' college as well.

Mirabeau's proposals represent rather a transition in thinking from the old to the new, but the Report of Talleyrand (1791), former Bishop of Autun, now turned revolutionist, embodies the full culmination of revolutionary educational thought. Public instruction he termed "a power which embraces everything, from the games of infancy to the most imposing fêtes of the Nation." He definitely proposed the organization of a complete state system of public instruction for France, to consist of a primary school in every canton (community, district), open to the children of peasants and workmen--classes heretofore unprovided with education; a secondary school in every department (county); a series of special schools in the chief French cities, to prepare for the professions; and a National Institute, or University, to be located at Paris. Inspired by Montesquieu's principle that "the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government," Talleyrand proposed a bill designed to give effect to the provisions of the Constitution of 1791 relating to education (p. 501), and to provide an education for the people of France who were now to exercise, through elected representatives, the legislative power for France. Instruction he held to be the necessary counterpoise of liberty, and every citizen was to be taught to know, obey, love, and protect the new constitution. Political, social, and personal morality were to take the place of religion in the cantonal schools, which were to be free and equally open to all. As the Constituent Assembly was succeeded by the newly elected Legislative Assembly within three weeks after Talleyrand submitted his Report, no action was taken on his bill.

2. The Legislative Assembly (October 1, 1791, to September 21, 1792). This new legislative body was far more radical in character than its predecessor, and far more radical than was the sentiment of France at the time. Among other acts it abolished (1792) the old universities and confiscated (1793) their property to the State. To it was submitted (April 20-21, 1792) by the mathematician, philosopher, and revolutionist, Marquis de Condorcet, [7] on behalf of the Committee on Public Instruction and as a measure of reconstruction, a Report and draft of a Law for the organization of a complete democratic system of public instruction for France (R. 256). It provided for the organizing of a primary school for every four hundred inhabitants, in which each individual was "to be taught to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the plenitude of his own rights," and where principles would be taught, calculated to "insure the perpetuation of liberty and equality." The bill also provided, for the first time, for the organization of higher primary schools in the principal towns; colleges (secondary schools) in the chief cities (one for every four thousand inhabitants); a higher school for each "department"; Lycées, or institutions of still higher learning, at nine places in France; and a National Society of Sciences and Arts to crown the educational system at Paris. The national system of education he proposed was to be equally open to women, as well as men, and to be gratuitous throughout. Teachers for each grade of school were to be prepared in the school next above. Sunday lectures for workingmen and peasants were to be given by teachers everywhere. Public morality, political intelligence, human progress, and the preservation of liberty and equality were the aims of the instruction. The necessity for education in a constitutional government he saw clearly. "A free constitution," he writes, "which should not be correspondent to the universal instruction of citizens, would come to destruction after a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of those forms of government which cannot preserve the peace among an ignorant and corrupt people." Anarchy or despotism he held to be the future for peoples who become free without being enlightened. He held it to be a fundamental principle that:

The order of nature includes no distinctions in society beyond those of education and wealth. To establish among citizens an equality in fact, and to realize the equality confirmed by law, ought to be the primary object of national instruction.

The bill proposed by Condorcet, while too ambitious for the France of his day, was thoroughly sound as a democratic theory of education, and an accurate prediction of what the nineteenth century brought generally into existence. Condorcet's Report was discussed, but not acted upon.

3. The National Convention (September 21, 1792, to October 26, 1795). The Convention was also a radical body, deeply interested in the creation of a system of state schools for the people of France. To higher education there was for a time marked opposition, though later in its history the Convention erected a number of important higher technical institutions and schools, among the most important of which was the Institute of France. There was also in the Convention marked opposition to all forms of clerical control of schools. The schools of the Brothers of the Christian Schools were suppressed by it, in 1792, and all secular and endowed schools and colleges were abolished and their property confiscated, in 1793. The complete supremacy of the State in all educational matters was now asserted. Great enthusiasm was manifested for the organization of state primary schools, which were ordered established in 1793 (R. 258 a), and in these:

Children of all classes were to receive that first education, physical, moral, and intellectual, the best adapted to develop in them republican manners, patriotism, and the love of labor, and to render them worthy of liberty and equality.

The course of instruction was to include: "to speak, read, and write correctly the French language; the geography of France; the rights and duties of men and citizens; [8] the first notions of natural and familiar objects; the use of numbers, the compass, the level, the system of weights and measures, the mechanical powers, and the measurement of time. They are to be taken into the fields and the workshops where they may see agricultural and mechanical operations going on, and take part in the same so far as their age will allow."

What a change from the course of instruction in the religious schools just preceding this period!

A multiplicity of reports, bills, and decrees, often more or less contradictory but still embodying ideas advanced by Condorcet and Talleyrand, now appeared. Whereas the preceding legislative bodies had considered the subject carefully, but without taking action, the Convention now acted. The nation, though, was so engrossed by the internal chaos and foreign aggression that there was neither time nor funds to carry the decrees into effect.

The most extreme proposal of the period was the bill of Lepelletier le Saint-Fargeau to create a national system of education modeled closely after that of ancient Sparta. The best of the proposals probably was the Lakanal Law, of November 17, 1794, which ordered a school for every one thousand inhabitants, with special divisions for boys and girls, and which provided for instruction in:

1. Reading and writing the French language. 2. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Constitution. 3. Lessons on republican morals. 4. The rules of simple calculation and surveying. 5. Lessons in geography and the phenomena of nature. 6. Lessons on heroic actions, and songs of triumph.

Lakanal also carefully prescribed the method of instruction, and advocated the founding of a national normal school (Latin norma; a rule), which idea the Convention adopted in 1794, the school opening [9] in January, 1795. Supplementing this was the law of February 25, 1795, ordering central or higher schools established to replace the former colleges, [10] one for every three hundred thousand of the population, which were to offer instruction from twelve to eighteen. The course was to include:

12 to 14--Drawing, natural history, ancient and living languages. 14 to 16--Mathematics, natural philosophy, experimental chemistry. 16 to 18--Grammar, literature, history, legislation.

Organized on a soviet principle, each professor declared the equal of every other, and lacking any effective administration or discipline, these institutions soon fell into disrepute and were displaced when Napoleon reorganized secondary education in France.

The law of October 25, 1795, closed the work of the Convention. This made less important provisions for primary education (R. 258 b) than had preceding bills, but was the only permanent contribution of this period to the organization of primary schools. It placed greater emphasis than had the legislative Assembly on the creation of secondary and higher institutions (R. 258 a), of more value to the bourgeois class. This bill of 1795 represents a reaction from the extreme republican ideas of a few years earlier, and the triumph of the conservative middle-class elements in the nation over the radical republican elements previously in control.

The Convention also, in the latter part of its history, created a number of higher technical institutions of importance, which were expressive alike of the French interest in scientific subjects which arose during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and of the new French military needs. Many of these institutions have persisted to the present, so well have they answered the scientific interests and needs of the nation. A mere list of the institutions created is all that need be given. These were:

Museum or Conservatory of Arts (Jan. 16, 1794). Conservatory of Arts and Trades (Oct. 10, 1794). New medical schools (Schools of Health) ordered (Dec. 4, 1794). Museum of Natural History (Dec. 11, 1794). Central Schools to succeed the former Colleges (secondary schools) (Feb. 25, 1795). School of Living Oriental Languages (March 30, 1795). Veterinary Schools (April 21, 1795). Course in Archaeology, National Library (June 8, 1795). Bureau of Longitude (June 29, 1795). Conservatory of Music (Aug. 3, 1795). The National Library (Oct. 17, 1795). Museum of Archaeological Monuments (Oct. 20, 1795). Polytechnic Schools (R. 257); School of Civil Engineering; School of Hydrographic Engineers; and School of Mining (Oct. 22, 1795).

The Convention also adopted the metric system of weights and measures; enacted laws under which the peasants could acquire title to the lands they had tilled for so long; and began the unification of the laws of the different parts of the country into a single set, which later culminated in the Code Napoléon.

4. The Directory (1795-99) and the Consulate (1799-1804). The Revolution had by this time largely spent itself, the Directory followed, and in 1799 Napoleon became First Consul and for the next sixteen years was master of France. The Law of 1795 for primary schools (R. 258 b) was but feebly administered under the Directory, as foreign wars absorbed the energies and resources of the Government. Napoleon's chief educational interest, too, was in opening up opportunities for talent to rise, in encouraging scientific work and higher specialized institutions, and in developing schools of a type that would support the kind of government he had imposed upon France. The secondary and higher schools he established and promoted cost him money at a time when money was badly needed for national defense, and primary education was accordingly neglected during the time he directed the destinies of the nation. His educational organizations and work we shall refer to again in a later chapter.

The Revolutionary enthusiasts had stated clearly their theory of republican education, but had failed to establish a permanent state school system according to their plans. This now became the work of the nineteenth century. In the meantime, in the new United States of America the same ideas were taking shape and finding expression, and to the developments there we next turn.

III. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN AMERICA

WANING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS INTEREST. As early as 1647 Rhode Island Colony had enacted the first law providing for freedom of religious worship ever enacted by an English-speaking people, and two years later Maryland enacted a similar law. Though the Maryland law was later repealed, and a rigid Church-of-England rule established there, these laws were indicative of the new spirit arising in the New World. By the beginning of the eighteenth century a change in attitude toward the old problem of personal salvation had become evident. Frontier conditions; the gradual rise of a civil as opposed to a religious form of town government; the rising interests in trade and shipping; the beginnings of the breakdown of the old aristocratic traditions and customs transplanted from Europe; the rising individualism in both Europe and America--these all helped to weaken the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines.

By 1750 the change in religious thinking in the American Colonies had become quite marked. [11] Especially was this change evidenced in the dying-out of the old religious fervor and intolerance, and the breaking-up of the old religious solidarity. While most of the Colonies continued to maintain an "established Church," other sects had to be admitted to the Colony and given freedom of worship. The Puritan monopoly in New England was broken, as was also that of the Anglican faith in the central Colonies. The day of the monopoly of any sect in a Colony was over. New secular interests began to take the place of religion as the chief topic of thought and conversation, and secular books began to dispute the earlier predominance of the Bible. A few colonial newspapers had begun (seven by 1750), and these became expressive of the new colony interests.

CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOLS. These changes in attitude toward the old religious problems materially affected both the support and the character of the education provided in the Colonies. The Law of 1647, requiring the maintenance of the Latin grammar schools, had been found to be increasingly difficult of enforcement, not only in Massachusetts, but in all the other New England Colonies which had followed the Massachusetts example. With the changing attitude of the people, which had become clearly manifest by 1750, the demand for relief from the maintenance of this school in favor of a more practical and less aristocratic type of higher school, if higher school were needed at all, became marked. By the close of the colonial period the new American Academy (p. 463), with its more practical studies, had begun to supersede the old Latin grammar school.

The elementary school experienced something of the same difficulties. Many of the parochial schools died out, while others declined in character and importance. In Church-of-England Colonies all elementary education was left to private initiative and philanthropic and religious effort (p. 373). In the southern Colonies the classes in society and the character of the plantation life made common schools impossible, and the feeling of any need for elementary schools almost entirely died out. In New England the eighteenth century was a continual struggle on the one hand to prevent the original religious town school from disappearing, and on the other to establish in its place a series of scattered and inferior district schools, while either church or town support and tuition fees became ever harder to obtain. Among other changes of importance the reading school and the writing school now became definitely united, in all the smaller places and in the rural districts, as a measure of economy, to form the American school of the "3 Rs." New textbooks, too, containing less of the gloomily religious than the New England Primer, and secular rather than religious in character (p. 443), appeared after 1750 and began to be used in the schools. After 1750, too, it was increasingly evident that the old religious enthusiasm for schools had largely died out; that European traditions and ways and types of schools no longer completely satisfied; and that the period of the transplanting of European educational ideas and schools and types of instruction was coming to an end. Instead, the evolution of a public or state school out of the original religious school, and the beginnings of the evolution of distinctly American types of schools, better adapted to American needs, became increasingly evident in the Colonies as the eighteenth century progressed.

RISE OF THE CIVIL OF STATE SCHOOL. As has been stated earlier, the school everywhere in America arose as a child of the Church. In the Middle Colonies, where the parochial-school conception of education was the prevailing type, the school remained under church control until after the foundation of our national government. In New England, though--and the New England evolution in time became the prevailing American practice--the school passed through a very interesting development during colonial times.

As we have seen (p. 360), each little New England town was originally established as a little religious republic, with the Church in complete control. The governing authorities for church and civil affairs were much the same. When acting as church officers they were known as Elders and Deacons; when acting as civil or town officers they were known as Selectmen. The State, as represented in the colony legislature or the town meeting, was clearly the servant of the Church, and existed in large part for religious ends. It was the State acting as the servant of the Church which enacted the Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 (Rs. 190, 19l), requiring the towns to maintain schools for religious ends. Now, so close was the connection between the religious town, which controlled church affairs, and the civil town, which looked after roads, fences, taxes, and defense--the constituency of both being one and the same, and the meetings of both being held at first in the meeting-house--that when the schools were established the colony legislature placed them under the civil--as involving taxes, and being a public service--rather than under the religious town. The interests of one were the interests of both, and, being the same in constituency and territorial boundaries, there seemed no occasion for friction or fear. From this religious beginning the civil school and the civil school-town and school-township, with all their elaborate school administrative machinery, were later evolved.

The erection of a town hall, separate from the meeting-house, was a first step in the process. School affairs now were discussed at the town hall, instead of in the church. The town authorities now appointed committees to locate and build schoolhouses, select and certificate the teachers, and visit and examine the school. Next a regular town school committee was provided for. To this was given the management of the town school, and town taxes, instead of church taxes, were voted for buildings and maintenance. The minister continued to certificate the grammar-school master until the close of the colonial period, but the power to certificate the elementary-school teachers passed to the town authorities early in the eighteenth century. By the close of the century all that the minister--as the only surviving representative of church control--had left to him was the right to accompany the town authorities in the visitation of schools. Thus gradually but certainly did the earlier religious school in America pass out from under the control of the Church and come under the control of the State. When our national government and the different state governments were established, the States were ready to accept, in principle at least, the theory gradually worked out in New England that schools are state institutions, and should be under the control of the State.

THE EARLY STATE CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS. In framing the Federal Constitution, in 1787, education, then being regarded largely as a local matter, was left to the States to handle as they saw fit; so we turn to the early state constitutions and laws to see how far the new American States had, by the close of the eighteenth century, advanced toward the conception of education as an affair of the State.

During the period from the Declaration of Independence to the close of the eighteenth century (1776-1800), all the States, except Rhode Island and Connecticut, which considered their colonial charters as satisfactory, formulated and adopted new state constitutions. Three new States--Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee--were admitted to the Union before 1800, and these framed constitutions also. Of the sixteen States forming the Union by 1800, seven had incorporated into their constitutions a clause setting forth the State's duty in the matter of education (R. 259). As in the earlier period of American education, it was Calvinistic New England which incorporated into the constitutions the best provisions regarding learning. In the parochial-school central Colonies the mention was much less emphatic, while the old Anglican-Church Colonies and the new States of Kentucky and Tennessee remained silent on the subject. Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, in particular, incorporated strong sections directing the encouragement of learning and virtue, the protection and fostering of school societies, and the establishment of schools. The Massachusetts provision, afterwards copied by New Hampshire, is so explicit in the matter of state duty that it is worth quoting in full.

Chap. V, Sec. 2. Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, by rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments among the people.

Though the Federal Constitution made no provision for education or aid to schools, when the Congress of the Confederation, in 1787, adopted the Ordinance for the organization and government of the Northwest Territory, out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were later carved, it prefixed to this Ordinance the following significant provision:

Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged [in the States to be formed from this Territory].

By the time the first State formed from this western territory was ready to be admitted to the Union (Ohio, 1802), the theory that education is a function of the State had come to be so thoroughly accepted, in principle at least, by the new American people that Congress now began a policy, ever since continued, of aiding each new State to establish and maintain a state system of schools. To this end Congress gave the new State for this purpose a generous endowment of national land, and in addition three townships of land to endow a state university. We also find that the constitutions of the first States created from this new Northwest Territory (Ohio, 1802; Indiana, 1816 [12]) contain for the time good provisions relating to public education. The Ohio provisions (R. 260) are noteworthy for the strong stand for religious freedom and against any discrimination in the schools between rich and poor, while the Indiana provisions (R. 261) are marked for their broad and generous conception of the scope and purpose of a state system of public instruction.

Many of the older States enacted general state school laws early in their history (R. 262). Connecticut continued the general school laws of 1700, 1712, and 1714 unchanged, and in 1795 added $1,200,000, derived from land sales, to a permanent state school endowment fund, created as early as 1750. Vermont enacted a general school law in 1782. Massachusetts and New Hampshire enacted new general school laws, in 1789, which restated and legalized the school development of the preceding hundred and fifty years. All these required the maintenance of schools by the towns for a definite term each year, ordered taxation, and fixed the school studies required by the State. New York, in 1784, created an administrative organization, known as the University of the State of New York, to supervise secondary and higher education throughout the State--an institution clearly modeled after the centralizing ideas of Condorcet, Rolland, and Diderot (p. 477), and very similar to the ideas proposed by Talleyrand and Condorcet and later (1808) embodied in the University of France by Napoleon. In 1795 New York also provided for a state system of elementary education. Georgia created a state system of academies, as early as 1783. Delaware created a state school fund, in 1796, and Virginia enacted an optional school law the same year. North Carolina created a state university, as early as 1795.

THE NEW POLITICAL MOTIVE FOR SCHOOLS. We thus see, in the new United States, the theories of the French revolutionary thinkers and statesmen actually being realized in practice. The constitutional provisions, and even the legislation, often were in advance of what the States, impoverished as they were by the War of Independence, could at once carry out, but they mark the evolution in America of a clearly defined state theory as to education, and the recognition of a need for general education in a government whose actions were so largely influenced by the force of public opinion. The Federal Constitution had extended the right to vote for national officers to all, and the older States soon began to remove their earlier property qualifications for voting and to extend general manhood suffrage to all citizens.

This new development in government by the people, which meant the passing of the rule of a propertied and educated class and the establishment of a real democracy, caused the leading American statesmen to turn early to general education as a necessity for republican safety. In his Farewell Address to the American people, written in 1796, Washington said:

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

Jefferson spent the years 1784 to 1789 in Paris, and became a great propagandist in America for French political ideas. Writing to James Madison from France, as early as 1787, he said:

Above all things, I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on this good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due sense of liberty.

In 1779, then, as a member of the Virginia legislature, Jefferson tried unsuccessfully to secure the passage of a comprehensive bill, after the plan of the French Revolutionary proposals, for the organization of a complete system of public education for Virginia. The essential features of the proposed bill (R. 263) were that every county should be laid off into school districts, five to six miles square, to be known as "hundreds," and in each of these an elementary school was to be established to which any citizen could send his children free of charge for three years, and as much longer as he was willing to pay tuition; that the leading pupil in each school was to be selected annually and sent to one of twenty grammar (secondary) schools to be established and maintained at various points in the State; after two years the leaders in each of these schools were to be selected and further educated free for six years, the less promising being sent home; and at the completion of the grammar- school course, the upper half of the pupils were to be given three years more of free education at the State College of William and Mary, and the other half were to be employed as teachers for the schools of the State. [13]

Though the scheme failed of approval, Jefferson never lost interest in the education of the people for intelligent participation in the functions of government. Writing from Monticello to Colonel Yancey, in 1816, after his retirement from the presidency, he wrote:

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization it expects what never was and never will be.... There is no safe deposit (for the functions of government) but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information.

In 1819 the founding of the University of Virginia crowned Jefferson's efforts for education by the State. This institution, the Declaration of Independence, and the statute for religious freedom in Virginia stand to- day as the three enduring monuments to his memory. [14]

Other of the early American statesmen expressed similar views as to the importance of general education by the State. John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States, in a letter to his friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, wrote:

I consider knowledge to be the soul of a Republic, and as the weak and the wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter. Education is the way to do this, and nothing should be left undone to afford all ranks of people the means of obtaining a proper degree of it at a cheap and easy rate.

James Madison, fourth President of the United States, wrote:

A satisfactory plan for primary education is certainly a vital desideratum in our republics.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

John Adams, with true New England thoroughness, expressed the new motive for education still more forcibly when he wrote:

The instruction of the people in every kind of knowledge that can be of use to them in the practice of their moral duties as men, citizens, and Christians, and of their political and civil duties as members of society and freemen, ought to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the conduct of its affairs, in a manner that never yet has been practiced in any age or nation. The education here intended is not merely that of the children of the rich and noble, but of every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and poorest. It is not too much to say that schools for the education of all should be placed at convenient distances and maintained at the public expense. The revenues of the State would be applied infinitely better, more charitably, wisely, usefully, and therefore politically in this way than even in maintaining the poor. This would be the best way of preventing the existence of the poor....

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

Having founded, as Lincoln so well said later at Gettysburg, "on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and having built a constitutional form of government based on that equality, it in time became evident to those who thought at all on the question that that liberty and political equality could not be preserved without the general education of all. A new motive for education was thus created and gradually formulated in the United States, as well as in revolutionary France, and the nature of the school instruction of the youth of the State came in time to be colored through and through by this new political motive. The necessary schools, though, did not come at once. On the contrary, the struggle to establish these necessary schools it will be our purpose to trace in subsequent chapters, but before doing so we wish first to point out how the rise of a political theory for education led to the development of a theory as to the nature of the educational process which exercised a far-reaching influence on all subsequent evolution of schools and teaching.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do the proposals of La Chalotais, Rolland, and Turgot indicate as to the degree of unification of France attained by the time they wrote?

2. What new subjects did Diderot add to the religious elementary school of his time?

3. Show how the decline in efficiency of the Jesuits was a stimulating force for the evolution of a system of public instruction in France.

4. Show the statesman-like character of the proposals made in the legislative assemblies of France for the organization of national education.

5. Assuming that there had been enough funds to carry out the law (1793) of the Convention for primary instruction, what other difficulties would have been met that would have been hard to surmount?

6. Compare the Lakanal school with an American elementary school of a half-century ago.

7. Show that many of the important educational reforms of Napoleon were foreshadowed in the National Convention.

8. Was Napoleon right in his attitude toward education and schools?

9. Explain the lack of success of the revolutionary theorists in the establishment of a state system of education.

10. Explain why the breakdown of the old religious intolerance came earlier in the American Colonies than in the Old World.

11. Show the great value of the Laws of 1642 and 1647 in holding New England true to the maintenance of schools during the period of decline.

12. What might have been the result in America had the New England Colonies established the school as a parish institution, as did the central Colonies?

13. Analyze the Massachusetts constitutional provision for education, and show what it provided for.

14. Show the similarity of the University of the State of New York to the proposals for governmental control in France.

15. Explain why the French revolutionary ideas as to education were realized so easily in the new United States, whereas France did not realize them until well into the nineteenth century.

16. Compare Jefferson's proposed law with the proposals of Talleyrand for France.

17. Just what type of educational institutions did Washington have in mind in the quotation from his Farewell Address? John Jay? John Adams?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

254. Dabney: The Far-Reaching Influence of Rousseau's Writings. 255. La Chalotais: Essay on National Education. 256. Condorcet: Outline of a Plan for Organizing Public Instruction in France. 257. Report: Founding of the Polytechnic School at Paris. 258. Barnard: Work of the National Convention in France. (a) Various legislative proposals. (b) The Law of 1795 organizing Primary Instruction. 259. American States: Early Constitutional Provisions relating to Education. 260. Ohio: Educational Provisions of First Constitution. 261. Indiana: Educational Provisions of First Constitution. 262. American States: Early School Legislation in. 263. Jefferson: Plan for Organizing Education in Virginia.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Explain the conditions of society under which the emotional writings of a man of the type of Rousseau could have made such a deep impression (254) on the nation.

2. In how far do nations to-day accept the theories of La Chalotais (255)?

3. What type of administrative organization was proposed by Condorcet (256)?

4. What does the founding of the Polytechnic School (257) indicate as to the French interest in science?

5. What real progress was made by the National Convention (258 a), and to what degree did it fail? 6. Explain the type of school system proposed and the conception of education lying behind the early constitutional provisions (259) for education in each of the American States.

7. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Ohio constitution (260) remarkable?

8. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Indiana constitution (261) remarkable?

9. Characterize the early school legislation reproduced (262).

10. Just what type of educational system did Jefferson propose to organize in Virginia (263)?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Barnard, Henry. American Journal of Education, vol. 22, pp. 651-64. Compayré, G. History of Pedagogy, chapters 15, 16, 17. Cubberley, E. P. Public Education in the United States, chapter 3.

XXI. A NEW THEORY AND SUBJECT-MATTER FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

In chapters XVII and XVIII we traced the development of educational theory up to the point where John Locke left it after outlining his social and disciplinary theory for the educational process, and in the chapter preceding this one we traced the evolution of a new state theory as to the purpose of education to replace the old religious theory. The new theory as to state control, and the erection of a citizenship purpose for education, made it both possible and desirable that the instruction in the school, and particularly in the vernacular school, should be recast, both in method and content, to bring the school into harmony with the new secular purpose. In consequence, an important reorganization of the vernacular school now took place, and to this transformation of the elementary school we next turn.

I. THE NEW THEORY STATED

ICONOCLASTIC NATURE OF THE WORK OF ROUSSEAU. The inspirer of the new theory as to the purpose of education was none other than the French-Swiss iconoclast and political writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose work as a political theorist we have previously described. Happening to take up the educational problem as a phase of his activity against the political and social and ecclesiastical conditions of his age, drawing freely on Locke's Thoughts for ideas, and inspired by a feeling that so corrupt and debased was his age that if he rejected everything accepted by it and adopted the opposite he would reach the truth, Rousseau restated his political theories as to the control of man by society and his ideas as to a life according to "nature" in a book in which he described the education, from birth to manhood, of an imaginary boy, Émile, and his future wife, Sophie. In the first sentence of the book Rousseau sets forth his fundamental thesis:

All is good as it comes from the hand of the Creator; all degenerates under the hands of man. He forces one country to produce the fruits of another, one tree to bear that of another. He confounds climates, elements, and seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; turns everything topsy-turvy, disfigures everything. He will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself; he must be trained like a managed horse, trimmed like a tree in a garden.

His book, published in 1762, in no sense outlined a workable system of education. Instead, in charming literary style, with much sophistry, many paradoxes, numerous irrelevant digressions upon topics having no relation to education, and in no systematic order, Rousseau presented his ideas as to the nature and purpose of education. Emphasizing the importance of the natural development of the child (R. 264 a), he contended that the three great teachers of man were nature, man, and experience, and that the second and third tended to destroy the value of the first (R. 264 b); that the child should be handled in a new way, and that the most important item in his training up to twelve years of age was to do nothing (R. 264 c, d) so that nature might develop his character properly (R. 264 e); and that from twelve to fifteen his education should be largely from things and nature, and not from books (R. 264 f). As the outcome of such an education Rousseau produced a boy who, from his point of view, would at eighteen still be natural (R. 264 g) and unspoiled by the social life about him, which, after all, he felt was soon to pass away (R. 264 i). The old religious instruction he would completely supersede (R. 264 h).

So depraved was the age, and so wretched were the educational practices of his time, that, in spite of the malevolent impulse which was his driving force, what he wrote actually contained many excellent ideas, pointed the way to better practices, and became an inspiration for others who, unlike Rousseau, were deeply interested in problems of education and child welfare. One cannot study Rousseau's writings as a whole, see him in his eighteenth-century setting, know of his personal life, and not feel that the far-reaching reforms produced by his Émile are among the strangest facts in history.

THE VALUABLE ELEMENTS IN ROUSSEAU'S WORK. Amid his glittering generalities and striking paradoxes Rousseau did, however, set forth certain important ideas as to the proper education of children. Popularizing the best ideas of the Englishman, Locke (p. 433), Rousseau may be said to have given currency to certain conceptions as to the education of children which, in the hands of others, brought about great educational changes. Briefly stated, these were:

1. The replacement of authority by reason and investigation.

2. That education should be adapted to the gradually unfolding capacities of the child.

3. That each age in the life of a child has activities which are normal to that age, and that education should seek for and follow these.

4. That physical activity and health are of first importance.

5. That education, and especially elementary education, should take place through the senses, rather than through the memory.

6. That the emphasis placed on the memory in education is fundamentally wrong, dwarfing the judgment and reason of the child.

7. That catechetical and Jesuitical types of education should be abandoned.

8. That the study of theological subtleties is unsuited to child needs or child capacity.

9. That the natural interests, curiosity, and activities of children should be utilized in their education.

10. That the normal activities of children call for expression, and that the best means of utilizing these activities are conversation, writing, drawing, music, and play.

11. That education should no longer be exclusively literary and linguistic, but should be based on sense perception, expression, and reasoning.

12. That such education calls for instruction in the book of nature, with home geography and the investigation of elementary problems in science occupying a prominent place.

13. That the child be taught rather than the subject-matter; life here rather than hereafter; and the development of reason rather than the loading of the memory, were the proper objects of education.

14. That a many-sided education is necessary to reveal child possibilities; to correct the narrowing effect of specialized class education; and to prepare one for possible changes in fortune.

A new educational ideal presented. Rousseau's Émile presented a new ideal in education. According to his conception it was debasing that man should be educated to behave correctly in an artificial society, to follow blindly the doctrines of a faith, or to be an obedient subject of a king. Instead he conceived the function of education to be to evolve the natural powers, cultivate the human side, unfold the inborn capacities of every human being, and to develop a reasoning individual, capable of intelligently directing his life under diverse conditions and in any form of society. A book setting forth such ideas naturally was revolutionary [1] in matters of education. It deeply influenced thinkers along these lines during the remaining years of the eighteenth century, and became the inspiring source of nineteenth-century reforms. As Rousseau's Social Contract became the political handbook of the French Revolutionists, so his Émile became the inspiration of a new theory as to the education of children.

Coming, as it did, at a time when political and ecclesiastical despotisms were fast breaking down in France, when new forces were striving for expression throughout Europe, and when new theories as to the functions of government were being set forth in the American Colonies and in France, it gave the needed inspiration for the evolution of a new theory of non- religious, universal, and democratic education which would prepare citizens for intelligent participation in the functions of a democratic State, and for a reorganization of the subject-matter of education itself. A new theory as to the educational purpose was soon to arise, and the whole nature of the educational process, in the hands of others, was soon to be transformed as a result of the fortunate conjunction of the iconoclastic and impractical discussion of education by Rousseau and the more practical work of English, French, and American political theorists and statesmen. Out of the fusing of these, modern educational theory arose.

II. GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO WORK OUT A NEW THEORY

INFLUENCE OF THE ÉMILE IN GERMAN LANDS. The Émile was widely read, not only in France, but throughout the continent of Europe as well. In German lands its publication coincided with the rising tide of nationalism--the "Period of Enlightenment"--and the book was warmly welcomed by such (then young) men as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Richter, Fichte, and Kant. It presented a new ideal of education and a new ideal for humanity, and its ideas harmonized well with those of the newly created aristocracy of worth which the young German enthusiasts were busily engaged in proclaiming for their native land. The ideal of the perfected individual, strong in the consciousness of his powers, now found expression in the new "classics of individualism" which marked the outburst of the best that German literature has ever produced. As Paulsen [2] well says:

Rousseau exercised an immense influence on his times, and Germany was stirred perhaps even more deeply than France. In France Voltaire continued to be regarded as the great man of his time, whereas, in Germany, his place in the esteem of the younger generation had been taken by the enthusiast of Geneva. Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, all of them were roused by Rousseau to the inmost depths of their natures. He gave utterance to the passionate longing of their souls: to do away with the imitation of French courtly culture, by which Nature was suppressed and perverted in every way, to do away with the established political and social order, based on court society and class distinctions, which was felt to be lowering to man in his quality as a reasonable being, and to return to Nature, to simple and unsophisticated habits of life, or rather to find a way through Nature to a better civilisation, which would restore the natural values of life to their rightful place and would be compatible with truth and virtue, sincerity and probity of character.

The great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was so deeply stirred by the Émile that the regularity of his daily walks and the clearness of his thinking were disturbed by it. Goethe called the book "the teacher's Gospel." Schiller praised Rousseau as "a new Socrates, who of Christians wished to make men." Herder acclaimed Rousseau as a German, and his "divine work" as his guide. Jean-Paul Richter confessed himself indebted to Rousseau for the best ideas in his Levana. Lavater declared himself ready for a Reformation in education along the lines laid down by Rousseau.

BASEDOW AND HIS WORK. Perhaps the most important practical influence exerted by the Émile in German lands came in the work of Johann Bernard Basedow and his followers. Basedow was a North German who had been educated in the Gymnasium at Hamburg, had studied in the theological faculty at Leipzig, had been a tutor in a nobleman's family, and had been a teacher in a Ritterakademie in Denmark and the Gymnasium at Altona. Deeply imbued with the new scientific spirit, in thorough revolt against the dominance of the Church in human lives, and incited to new efforts by his reading of the Émile, Basedow thought out a plan for a reform school which should put many of Rousseau's ideas into practice. In 1768 he issued his Address to Philanthropists and Men of Property on Schools and Studies and their Influence on the Public Weal, in which he appealed for funds to enable him to open a school to try out his ideas, and to enable him to prepare a new type of textbooks for the use of schools. He proposed in this appeal to organize a school which should be non-sectarian, and also advocated the creation of a National Council of Education to have charge of all public instruction. These were essentially the ideas of the French political reformers of the time. The appeal was widely scattered, awakened much enthusiasm, and subscriptions to assist him poured in from many sources. [3]

In 1774 Basedow published two works of more than ordinary importance. The first, a Book of Method for Fathers and Mothers of Families and of Nations, was a book for adults, and outlined a plan of education for both boys and girls. The keynotes were "following nature," "impartial religious instruction," children to be dealt with as children, learning through the senses, language instruction by a natural method, and much study of natural objects. The ideas were a combination of those of Bacon, Comenius, and Rousseau. The second book, in four volumes, and containing one hundred copper-plate illustrations, was the famous Elementary Work (Elementarwerk mit Kupfern) (R. 266), the first illustrated school textbook since the Orbis Pictus (1654) of Comenius. This work of Basedow's became, in German lands, the Orbis Pictus of the eighteenth century. By means of its "natural methods" (R. 265) children were to be taught to read, both the vernacular and Latin, more easily and in less time than had been done before, and in addition were to be given a knowledge of morals, commerce, scientific subjects, and social usages by "an incomparable method," founded on experience in teaching children. The book enjoyed a wide circulation among the middle and upper classes in German lands.

BASEDOW'S PHILANTHROPINUM. In 1774 Prince Leopold, of Dessau, a town in the duchy of Anhalt, in northern Germany, gave Basedow the use of two buildings and a garden, and twelve thousand thalers in money, with which to establish his long-heralded Philanthropinum, which was to be an educational institution of a new type. Great expectations were aroused, and a widespread interest in the new school awakened. Education according to nature, with a reformed, time-saving, natural method for the teaching of languages, were to be its central ideas. Children were to be treated as children, and not as adults. Powdered hair, gilded coats, swords, rouge, and hoops were to be discarded for short hair, clean faces, sailor jackets, and caps, while the natural plays of children and directed physical training were to be made a feature of the instruction. The languages were to be taught by conversational methods. Each child was to be taught a handicraft--turning, planing, and carpentering were provided-- for both social and educational reasons. Instruction in real things-- science, nature--was to take the place of instruction in words, and the vernacular was to be the language of instruction. The institution was to have the atmosphere of religion, but was not to be Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or Jewish, and was to be free from "theologizing distinctions." Latin, German, French, mathematics, a knowledge of nature (geography, physics, natural history), music, dancing, drawing, and physical training were the principal subjects of instruction. The children were divided into four classes, and the instruction for each, with the textbooks to be used, was outlined (R. 265).

The school opened with Basedow and three assistants as teachers, and two of Basedow's children and twelve others as pupils. Later the school came to have many boarding pupils, drawn from as far-distant points as Riga and Spain. In 1776 a public examination was held, to which many distinguished men were invited, and the work which Basedow's methods could produce was exhibited. These methods seem to have been successful, judging from the rather full accounts which have been left us. [4] The school represented a new type of educational effort, and was frankly experimental in purpose. It was an attempt to apply, in practice, the main ideas of Rousseau's Émile. Basedow tried the plan of education outlined by Rousseau with his own daughter, whom he named Émilie.

As a promising experiment the school awakened widespread interest, and Basedow was supported by such thinkers of the time as Goethe and Kant. The year following the "Examination" Kant, then professor of philosophy at the University of Königsberg, contributed an article to the Königsberg Gazette explaining the importance of the experiment Basedow was making. Still later, in his university lectures On Pedagogy, he further stated the importance of such a new experiment, in the following words:

It was imagined that experiments in education were not necessary; and that, whether any thing in it was good or bad, could be judged of by the reason. But this was a great mistake; experience shows very often that results are produced precisely the opposite to those which had been expected. We also see from experiment that one generation cannot work out a complete plan of education. The only experimental school which has made a beginning toward breaking the path was the Dessau institution. This praise must be given to it, in spite of the many faults which may be charged against it; faults which belong to all conclusions based upon such undertakings; and which make new experiments always necessary. It was the only school in which the teachers had the liberty to work after their own methods and plans, and where they stood in connection, not only with each other, but with men of learning throughout all Germany.

BASEDOW'S INFLUENCE, AND FOLLOWERS. Basedow, though, was an impractical theorist, boastful and quarrelsome, vulgar and coarse, given to drunkenness and intemperate speech, and fond of making claims for his work which the results did not justify. In a few years he had been displaced as director, and in 1793 the Philanthropinum closed its doors. The school, nevertheless, was a very important educational experiment, and Basedow's work for a time exerted a profound influence on German pedagogical thought. He may be said to have raised instruction in the Realien in German lands to a place of distinct importance, and to have given a turn to such instruction which it has ever since retained. [5] The methods of instruction, too, worked out in arithmetic, geography, geometry, natural history, physics, and history were in many ways as revolutionary as those evolved by Pestalozzi later on in Switzerland. In his emphasis on scientific subject-matter Basedow surpassed Pestalozzi, but Pestalozzi possessed a clearer, intuitive insight into the nature and purpose of the educational process. The work of the two men furnishes an interesting basis for comparison (R. 271), and the work of each gave added importance to that of the other.

From Dessau an interest in pedagogical ideas and experiments spread over Europe, and particularly over German lands. Other institutions, modeled after the Philanthropinum, were founded in many places, and some of Basedow's followers [6] did as important work along certain lines as did Basedow himself. His followers were numerous, and of all degrees of worth. They urged acceptance of the new ideas of Rousseau as worked out and promulgated by Basedow; vigorously attacked the old schools, making converts here and there; and in a way helped to prepare northern German lands for the incoming, later, of the better-organized ideas of the German-Swiss reformer Pestalozzi, to whose work we next turn.

III. THE WORK AND INFLUENCE OF PESTALOZZI

THE INSPIRATION OF PESTALOZZI. Among those most deeply influenced by Rousseau's Émile was a young German-Swiss by the name of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who was born (1746) and brought up in the ancient city of Zurich. Inspired by Rousseau's writings he spent the early part of his life in trying to render service to the poor, and the latter part in working out for himself a theory and a method of instruction based on the natural development of the child. To Pestalozzi, more than to any one else, we owe the foundations of the modern secular vernacular elementary school, and in consequence his work is of commanding importance in the history of the development of educational practice.

Trying to educate his own child according to Rousseau's plan, he not only discovered its impracticability but also that the only way to improve on it was to study the children themselves. Accordingly he opened a school and home on his farm at Neuhof, in 1774. Here he took in fifty abandoned children, to whom he taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, gave them moral discourses, and trained them in gardening, farming, and cheese- making. It was an attempt to regenerate beggars by means of education, which Pestalozzi firmly believed could be done. At the end of two years he had spent all the money he and his wife possessed, and the school closed in failure--a blessing in disguise--though with Pestalozzi's faith in the power of education unshaken. Of this experiment he wrote: "For years I have lived in the midst of fifty little beggars, sharing in my poverty my bread with them, living like a beggar myself in order to teach beggars to live like men."

Turning next to writing, while continuing to farm, Pestalozzi now tried to express his faith in education in printed form. His Leonard and Gertrude (1781) was a wonderfully beautiful story of Swiss peasant life, and of the genius and sympathy and love of a woman amid degrading surroundings. From a wretched place the village of Bonnal, under Pestalozzi's pen, was transformed by the power of education. [7] The book was a great success from the first, and for it Pestalozzi was made a "citizen" of the French Republic, along with Washington, Madison, Kosciusko, Wilberforce, and Tom Paine. He continued to farm and to think, though nearly starving, until 1798, when the opportunity for which he was really fitted came.

PESTALOZZI'S EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS. In 1798 "The Helvetic Republic" was proclaimed, an event which divided Pestalozzi's life into two parts. Up to this time he had been interested wholly in the philanthropic aspect of education, believing that the poor could be regenerated through education and labor. From this time on he interested himself in the teaching aspect of the problem, in the working-out and formulation of a teaching method based on the natural development of the child, and in training others to teach. Much to the disgust of the authorities of the new Swiss Government, citizen Pestalozzi applied for service as a schoolteacher. The opportunity to render such service soon came.

That autumn the French troops invaded Switzerland, and, in putting down the stubborn resistance of the three German cantons, shot down a large number of the people. Orphans to the number of 169 were left in the little town of Stanz, and citizen Pestalozzi was given charge of them. For six months he was father, mother, teacher, and nurse. Then, worn out himself, the orphanage was changed into a hospital. A little later he became a schoolmaster in Burgdorf; was dismissed; became a teacher in another school; and finally, in 1800, opened a school himself in an old castle there. He now drew about him other teachers interested in improving instruction, and in consequence could specialize the work. He provided separate teachers for drawing and singing, geography and history, language and arithmetic, and gymnastics. The year following the school was enlarged into a teachers' training-school, the government extending him aid in return for giving Swiss teachers one month of training as teachers in his school. Here he wrote and published How Gertrude teaches her Children, which explained his methods and forms his most important pedagogical work (R. 267); a Guide for teaching Spelling and Reading; and a Book for Mothers, devoted to a description of "object teaching." In 1803, the castle being needed by the government, Pestalozzi moved first to Munchenbuchsee, near Hofwyl, opening his Institute temporarily in an old convent there. For a few months, in 1804, he was associated with Emanuel von Fellenberg, at Hofwyl (p. 546), but in October, 1804, he moved to Yverdon, where he reëstablished the Institute, and where the next twenty years of his life were spent and his greatest success achieved.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PESTALOZZI. The great contribution of Pestalozzi lay in that, following the lead of Rousseau, he rejected the religious aim and the teaching of mere words and facts, which had characterized all elementary education up to near the close of the eighteenth century, and tried instead to reduce the educational process to a well-organized routine, based on the natural and orderly development of the instincts, capacities, and powers of the growing child. Taking Rousseau's idea of a return to nature, he tried to apply it to the education of children. This led to his rejection of what he called the "empty chattering of mere words" and "outward show" in the instruction in reading and the catechism, and the introduction in their place of real studies, based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning. "Sense impression" became his watchword. [8] As he expressed it, he "tried to organize and psychologize the educational process" by harmonizing it with the natural development of the child (R. 267). To this end he carefully studied children, and developed his methods experimentally as a result of his observation. To this end, both at Burgdorf and Yverdon, all results of preceding teachers and writers on education were rejected, for fear that error might creep in. Read nothing, discover everything, and prove all things, came to be the working guides of himself and his teachers.

The development of man he believed to be organic, and to proceed according to law. It was the work of the teacher to discover these laws of development and to assist nature in securing "a natural, symmetrical, and harmonious development" of all the "faculties" of the child. Real education must develop the child as a whole--mentally, physically, morally--and called for the training of the head and the hand and the heart. The only proper means for developing the powers of the child was use, and hence education must guide and stimulate self-activity, be based on intuition and exercise, and the sense impressions must be organized and directed. Education, too, if it is to follow the organic development of the child, must observe the proper progress of child development and be graded, so that each step of the process shall grow out of the preceding and grow into the following stage. To accomplish these ends the training must be all-round and harmonious; much liberty must be allowed the child in learning; education must proceed largely by doing instead of by words, the method of learning must be largely analytical; real objects and ideas must precede symbols and words; and, finally, the organization and correlation of what is learned must be looked after by the teacher.

Still more, Pestalozzi possessed a deep and abiding faith, new at the time, in the power of education as a means of regenerating society. He had begun his work by trying to "teach beggars to live like men," and his belief in the potency of education in working this transformation, so touchingly expressed in his Leonard and Gertrude, never left him. He believed that each human being could be raised through the influence of education to the level of an intellectually free and morally independent life, and that every human being was entitled to the right to attain such freedom and independence. The way to this lay through the full use of his developing powers, under the guidance of a teacher, and not through a process of repeating words and learning by heart. Not only the intellectual qualities of perception, judgment, and reasoning need exercise, but the moral powers as well. To provide such exercise and direction was the work of the school.

Pestalozzi also resented the brutal discipline which for ages had characterized all school instruction, believed it by its very nature immoral, and tried to substitute for this a strict but loving discipline-- a "thinking love," he calls it--and to make the school as nearly as possible like a gentle and refined home. To a Swiss father, who on visiting his school exclaimed, "Why, this is not a school, but a family," Pestalozzi answered that such a statement was the greatest praise he could have given him.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THESE IDEAS. The educational consequences of these new ideas were very large. They in time gave aim and purpose to the elementary school of the nineteenth century, transforming it from an instrument of the Church for church ends, to an instrument of society to be used for its own regeneration and the advancement of the welfare of all. [9] The introduction of the study of natural objects in place of words, and much talking about what was seen and studied instead of parrot-like reproductions of the words of a book, revolutionized both the methods and the subject-matter of instruction in the developing elementary school. Observation and investigation tended to supersede mere memorizing; class discussion and thinking to supersede the reciting of the words of the book; thinking about what was being done to supersede routine learning; and class instruction to supersede the wasteful individual teaching which had for so long characterized all school work. It meant the reorganization of the work of the vernacular school on a modern basis, with class organization and group instruction, and a modern-world purpose (R. 269).

The work of Pestalozzi also meant the introduction of new subject-matter for instruction, the organization of new teaching subjects for the elementary school, and the redirection of the elementary education of children. Observation led to the development of elementary-science study, and the study of home geography; talking about what was observed led to the study of language usage, as distinct from the older study of grammar; and counting and measuring led to the study of number, and hence to a new type of primary arithmetic. The reading of the school also changed both in character and purpose. In other words, in place of an elementary education based on reading, a little writing and spelling, and the catechism, all of a memoriter type and with religious ends in view, a new primary school, essentially secular in character, was created by the work of Pestalozzi. This new school was based on the study of real objects, learning through sense impressions, the individual expression of ideas, child activity, and the development of the child's powers in an orderly way. In fact, "the development of the faculties" of the child became a by-word with Pestalozzi and his followers.

Pestalozzi's deep abiding faith in the power of education to regenerate society was highly influential in Switzerland, throughout western Europe, and later in America in showing how to deal with orphans, vagrants, and those suffering from physical defects or in need of reformation, by providing for such a combination of intellectual and industrial training.

THE SPREAD AND INFLUENCE OF PESTALOZZI'S WORK. So famous did the work of Pestalozzi become that his schools at Burgdorf and Yverdon came to be "show places," even in a land filled with natural wonders. Observers and students came from America (R. 268) and from all over Europe to see and to teach in his school, and draw inspiration from seeing his work (R. 270) and talking with him. [10] In particular the educators of Prussia were attracted by his work, and, earlier than other nations, saw the far- reaching significance of his discoveries. Herbart visited his school as early as 1799, when but a young man of twenty-three, and wrote a very sympathetic description of his new methods. Froebel spent the years 1808 to 1810 as a teacher at Yverdon, when he was a young man of twenty-six to eight. "It soon became evident to me," wrote Froebel, "that 'Pestalozzi' was to be the watchword of my life." The philosopher Fichte, whose Addresses (1807-08) on the condition of the German people (page 568), after their humiliating defeat by Napoleon, did much to reveal to Prussia the possibilities of national regeneration by means of education, had taught in Zurich, knew Pestalozzi, and afterward exploited his work and his ideas in Berlin. [11] As early as 1803 an envoy, sent by the Prussian King, [12] reported favorably on Pestalozzi's work, and in 1804 Pestalozzian methods were authorized for the primary schools of Prussia. In 1808 seventeen teachers were sent to Switzerland, at the expense of the Prussian Government, to spend three years in studying Pestalozzi's ideas and methods. On their return, these and others spread Pestalozzian ideas throughout Prussia. A pastor and teacher from Würtemberg, Karl August Zeller (1774-1847), came to Burgdorf in 1803 to study. In 1806 he opened a training-school for teachers in Zurich, and there worked out a plan of studies based on the work of Pestalozzi. This was printed and attracted much attention. In 1808 the King of Würtemberg listened to five lectures on Pestalozzian methods by Zeller, and invited him to a position as school inspector in his State. Before he had done but a few months' work he was called to Prussia, to organize a normal school and begin the introduction of Pestalozzian ideas there. From Prussia the ideas and methods of Pestalozzi gradually spread to the other German States.

Many Swiss teachers were trained by Pestalozzi, and these also helped to extend his work and ideas over Switzerland. Particularly in German Switzerland did his ideas take root and reorganize education. As a result modern systems of education made an early start in these cantons. One of Pestalozzi's earliest and most faithful teachers, Hermann Krüsi, became principal of the Swiss normal school at Gais, and trained teachers there in Pestalozzian methods. Zeller's pupils, too, did much to spread his influence among the Swiss. Pestalozzi's ideas were also carried to England, but in no such satisfactory manner as to the German States. Where German lands received both the method and the spirit, the English obtained largely the form. Later Pestalozzian ideas came to the United States, at first largely through English sources, and, after about 1860, resulted in a thoroughgoing reorganization of American elementary education.

After Pestalozzi's institution had become celebrated, and visitors and commissions from many countries had visited him and it, and after governments had vied with one another in introducing Pestalozzian methods and reforms, the vogue of the Pestalozzian ideas became very extended. Many excellent private schools were founded on the Pestalozzian model, while on the other hand self-styled Pestalozzian reformers sprang up on all sides. All this imitation was both natural and helpful; the foolishness and charlatanism in time disappeared, leaving a real advance in the educational conception.

THE MANUAL-LABOR SCHOOL OF FELLENBERG. Of the Swiss associates and followers of Pestalozzi one of the most influential was Phillip Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771-1844). The son of a Swiss official of high political and social position, possessed of wealth, having traveled extensively, Fellenberg, having become convinced that correct early education was the only means whereby the State might be elevated and the lot of man made better, resolved (1805) to devote his life and his fortune to the working- out of his ideas. For a short time associated with Pestalozzi, he soon withdrew and established, on his own estate, an Institution which later (1829) came to comprise the following:

1. A farm of about six hundred acres.

2. Workshops for manufacturing clothing and tools.

3. A printing and lithographing establishment.

4. A literary institution for the education of the well-to-do.

5. A lower or real school, which trained for handicrafts and middle-class occupations.

6. An agricultural school for the education of the poor as farm laborers, and as teachers for the rural schools.

By 1810 the Institution had begun to attract attention, and soon pupils and visitors came from distant lands to study in and to examine the schools. The agricultural school in particular aroused interest. More than one hundred Reports (R. 272) were published, in Europe and America, on this very successful experiment in a combined intellectual and manual- labor type of education. Fellenberg died in 1844, and his family discontinued the school in 1848.

Fellenberg's work was a continuation of the social-regeneration conception of education held by Pestalozzi, and contained the germ-idea of all our agricultural and industrial education. His plan was widely copied in Switzerland, Germany, England, and the United States. It was well suited to the United States because of the very democratic conditions then prevailing among an agricultural people possessed of but little wealth. The plan of combining farming and schooling made for a time a strong appeal to Americans, and such schools were founded in many parts of the country. The idea at first was to unite training in agriculture with schooling, but it was soon extended to the rapidly rising mechanical pursuits as well. The plan, however, was rather short-lived in the United States, due to the rise of manufacturing and the opening of rich and cheap farms to the westward, and lasted with us scarcely two decades. A generation later it reappeared in the Central West in the form of a new demand for colleges to teach agricultural and mechanical arts, but with the manual-labor idea omitted. This we shall refer to again, later on (chapter xxix).

IV. REDIRECTION OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS WORK. Though some form of parish school for the elements of religious instruction had existed in many places during the later Middle Ages, and foundations providing for some type of elementary instruction had appeared here and there in almost all lands, the elementary vernacular school, as we have previously pointed out, was nevertheless clearly the outcome of the Protestant movement in the sixteenth century, and in its origin was essentially a child of the Church. A child of the Church, too, for more than two centuries the elementary vernacular school remained. During these two centuries the elementary school made slow but rather unsatisfactory progress, due largely to there being no other motive for its maintenance or expansion than the original religious purpose. Only in the New England Colonies in North America, in some of the provinces of the Netherlands, and in a few of the German States had any real progress been made in evolving any different type of school out of this early religious creation, and even in these places the change was in form of control rather than in subject- matter or purpose. The school remained religious in purpose, even though its control was beginning to pass from the Church to the State.

Now, within half a century, beginning with the work of Rousseau (1762), and by means of the labors of the political philosophers of France, the Revolutionary leaders in the American Colonies, the legislative Assemblies and Conventions in France, and the experimental work of Basedow and his followers in German lands and of Pestalozzi and his disciples in Switzerland, the whole purpose and nature of the elementary vernacular school was changed. The American and French political revolutions and the more peaceful changes in England had ushered in new conceptions as to the nature and purpose and duties of government. As a consequence of these new ideas, education had come to be regarded in a new light, and to assume a new importance in the eyes of statesmen. In place of schools to serve religious and sectarian ends, and maintained as an adjunct of the parishes or of a State Church, the elementary vernacular school now came to be conceived of as an instrument of the State, the chief purpose of which was to serve state ends. Some time would, of course, be required to develop the state support necessary to effect the complete transformation in control, and the forces of reaction would naturally delay the process as much as possible, but the theory of state purpose had at last been so effectively proclaimed, and the forces of a modern world were pushing the idea so steadily forward, that it was only a question of time until the change would be effected.

A NEW IMPETUS FOR CHANGE IN CONTROL. Basedow and Pestalozzi, too, had given the movement for a transfer of control a new impetus by working out new methods in instruction and in organizing new subject-matter for the school, and methods and subject-matter which harmonized with the spirit and principles of the new democracy that had been proclaimed. Pestalozzi in particular had sought, guided by a clearer insight into the educational problem than Basedow possessed (R. 271), to create a school in which children might, under the wise guidance of the teacher, develop and strengthen their own "faculties" and thus evolve into reasoning, self- directing human beings, fitted for usefulness and service in a modern world. To make intelligent and reasoning individuals of all citizens, to develop moral and civic character, to train for life in organized society, and to serve as an instrument by means of which an ignorant, drunken, immoral, and shiftless working-class and peasantry might be elevated into men and women of character, intelligence, and directive power, was in Pestalozzi's conception the underlying meaning of the school. After Pestalozzi, the earlier conception as to the religious purpose of the elementary vernacular schools, by means of which children were to be trained almost exclusively "in the principles of our holy religion" and to become "loyal church members," and to "fit them for that station in life in which it hath pleased their Heavenly Father to place them," was doomed. In its stead there was certain to arise a newer conception of the school as an instrument of that form of organized society known as the State, and maintained by the State to train its future citizens for intelligent participation in the duties and obligations of citizenship, and for social, moral, and economic efficiency.

THE WAY NOW BECOMING CLEAR. After two hundred and fifty years of confusion and political failure, the way was now at last becoming clear for the creation of national instead of church systems of elementary education, and for the firm establishment of the elementary vernacular school as an important obligation to its future citizens of every progressive modern State and the common birthright of all. This became distinctively the work of the nineteenth century. It also became the work of the nineteenth century to gather up the old secondary-school and university foundations, accumulated through the ages, and remould them to meet modern needs, fuse them into the national school systems created, and connect them in some manner with the people's schools. To see how this was done we next turn to the beginnings of the organization of national school systems in the German States, France, Italy, England, and the United States. These may be taken as types. As Prussia was the first modern State to grasp the significance of national education, and to organize state schools, we shall begin our study by first tracing the steps by which this transformation was effected there.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Compare the statement of the valuable elements in the theories of Rousseau (p. 530) with the main ideas of Basedow (p. 535); Ratke (p. 607); Comenius (p. 409).

2. Do we accept all the fourteen points of Rousseau's theory to-day?

3. Might a Rousseau have done work of similar importance in Russia, early in the twentieth century? Why?

4. Explain the educational significance of "self-activity," "sense impressions," and "harmonious development."

5. What were the strong points in the experimental work of Basedow?

6. Explain the great enthusiasm which his rather visionary statements and plans awakened.

7. Show the importance of such work as that of Basedow in preparing the way for better-organized reform work.

8. How far was Pestalozzi right as to the power of education to give men intellectual and moral freedom?

9. What do you understand Pestalozzi to have meant by "the development of the faculties"?

10. State the importance of the work of Pestalozzi from the point of view of showing the world how to deal with orphans and defectives.

11. Show how the germs of agricultural and technical education lay in the work of Fellenberg.

12. Explain the greater popularity of the Émile in German lands.

13. State the change in subject-matter and aims from the vernacular church school to the school as thought out by Pestalozzi.

14. Show that it was a fortunate conjunction that brought the work of Pestalozzi alongside of that of the political reformers of France.

15. What differences might there have been had Comenius lived and done his work in the time of Pestalozzi?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections, illustrative of the contents of this chapter, are reproduced:

264. Rousseau: Illustrative Selections from the Émile. 265. Basedow: Instruction in the Philanthropinum. 266. Basedow: A Page from the Elementarwerk. 267. Pestalozzi: Explanation of his Work. 268. Griscom: A Visit to Pestalozzi at Yverdon. 269. Woodbridge: An Estimate of Pestalozzi's Work. 270. Dr. Mayo: On Pestalozzi. 271. Woodbridge: Work of Pestalozzi and Basedow compared. 272. Griscom: Hofwyl as seen by an American.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Show the fallacy of Rousseau's reasoning (264 d) as to society being a denominator which prevents man from realizing himself.

2. What are the elements of truth and falsity in Rousseau's idling-to-the- twelfth-year (264 d) idea?

3. Would such a training up to twelve (264 e) be possible, or desirable?

4. What type of education is presupposed in 264 f?

5. Show the similarity in the conceptions of the Orbis Pictus (221) and the Elementarwerk (266).

6. What types of schools and conceptions of education were combined in the Philanthropinum (265)?

7. Just what did Pestalozzi attempt (267) to accomplish?

8. Compare the accounts as to purpose and instruction given by Pestalozzi (267) and Griscom (268).

9. What do the tributes of Woodbridge (269) and Mayo (270) reveal as to the character of Pestalozzi and his influence?

10. Analyze the courses of instruction (272) at Hofwyl.

11. State the points of similarity and difference between the work of Basedow and Pestalozzi (271), and the points of superiority in the work of Pestalozzi.

SELECTED REFERENCES

* Anderson, L. F. "The Manual-Labor-School Movement"; in _Educational Review_, vol. 46, pp. 369-88. (November, 1913.) Barnard, Henry. Pestalozzi and his Educational System. * Compayré, G. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. * Compayré, G. Pestalozzi and Elementary Education. * Guimps, Roger de. Pestalozzi: his Aim and Work. * Krüsi, Hermann, Jr. Life and Work of Pestalozzi. * Parker S. C. History of Modern Education, chaps. 8, 9, 13-16. * Pestalozzi, J. H. Leonard and Gertrude. Pestalozzi, J. H. How Gertrude teaches her Children. Pinloche, A. _Pestalozzi and the Foundations of the Modern Elementary School_.

XXII. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN PRUSSIA

I. THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATION

EARLY GERMAN PROGRESS IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. The first modern nation to take over the school from the Church, and to make of it an instrument for promoting the interests of the State was Prussia, and the example of Prussia was soon followed by the other German States. The reasons for this early action by the German States will be clear if we remember the marked progress made in establishing state control of the churches (p. 318) which followed the Protestant Revolts in German lands. Figure 96, page 319, reëxamined now, will make the reason for the earlier evolution of state education in Germany plain. Würtemberg, as early as 1559, had organized the first German state-church school system, and had made attendance at the religious instruction, compulsory on the parents of all children. The example of Würtemberg was followed by Brunswick (1569), Saxony (1580), Weimar (1619), and Gotha (1642). In Weimar and Gotha the compulsory- attendance idea had even been adopted for elementary-school instruction to all children up to the age of twelve.

By the middle of the seventeenth century most of the German States, even including Catholic Bavaria, had followed the example of Würtemberg, and had created a state-church school system which involved at least elementary and secondary schools and the beginnings of compulsory school attendance. Notwithstanding the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618- 48), the state-church schools of German lands contained, more definitely than had been worked out elsewhere, the germs of a separate state school organization. Only in the American Colonies (p. 364) had an equal development in state-church organization and control been made. As state- church schools, with the religious purpose dominant, the German schools remained until near the middle of the eighteenth century. Then a new movement for state control began, and within fifty years thereafter they had been transformed into institutions of the State, with the state purpose their most essential characteristic. How this transformation was effected in Prussia, the leader among the German States, and the forces which brought about the transformation, it will be the purpose of this chapter to relate.

THE NEW UNIVERSITY OF HALLE. The turning-point in the history of German educational progress was the founding of the University of Halle, in 1694. This institution, due to its entirely new methods of work, has usually been designated as the first modern university. A few forward-looking men, men who had been expelled from Leipzig because of their critical attitude and modern ways of thinking, were made professors here. Its creation was due to the sympathy for these men felt by the Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg, later the first King of Prussia. The King clearly intended that the new institution should be representative of modern tendencies in education. To this end he installed as professors men who could and would reform the instruction in theology, law, medicine, and philosophy.

In consequence Aristotle was displaced for the new scientific philosophy of Descartes and Bacon, and Latin in the classrooms for the German speech. The sincere pietistic faith of Francke (p. 418) was substituted for the Lutheran dogmatism which had supplanted the earlier Catholic. The instruction in law was reformed to accord with the modern needs and theory of the State. Medical instruction, based on observation, experimentation, and deduction, superseded instruction based on the reading of Hippocrates and Galen. The new sciences, especially mathematics and physics, found a congenial home in the philosophical or arts faculty. Free scientific investigation and research, without interference from the theological faculty, were soon established as features of the institution, and in place of the fixed scientific knowledge taught for so long from the texts of Aristotle (Rs. 113-15) and other ancients, a new and changing science, that must prove its laws and axioms, and which might at any time be changed by the investigation of any teacher or student, here now found a home. Under the leadership of Christian Wolff, who was Professor of Philosophy from 1707 to 1723, when he was banished by a new King at the instigation of the Pietists for his too great liberalism in religion, and again from 1740 to 1754, after his recall by Frederick the Great, [1] philosophy was "made to speak German" and the Aristotelian philosophy was permanently displaced. "No thing without sufficient cause" was the ruling principle of Wolff's teaching.

CHANGES WROUGHT IN OLD ESTABLISHED PROCEDURE. The introduction of the new scientific and mathematical and philosophical studies soon changed the arts or philosophy faculty from a preparatory faculty for the faculties of law, medicine, and theology, as it had been for centuries, to the equal of these three professional faculties in importance, while the elementary instruction in Latin and Greek was now relegated to the Gymnasia below. These were now in turn changed into preparatory schools for all four faculties of the university. The university instruction in the ancient languages was now placed on a much higher plane, and a new humanistic renaissance took place (p. 462) which deeply influenced both university and gymnasial training. New standards of taste and judgment were drawn from the ancient literatures and applied to modern life, and students were trained to read and enjoy the ancient classics. This reawakening of the best spirit of the Italian Renaissance marked the first outburst of a national feeling of a people as yet possessed of no national literature of importance, but unwilling longer to depend on foreign (French) influences for the cultural elements in their intellectual life.

It was at Halle, too, that Gundling, in 1711, discussed "the office of a university" and laid down the modern university theory of Lehrfreiheit und Lernfreiheit--that is, freedom from outside interference in teaching and studying, both teachers and students to be free to follow the truth wherever the truth might lead, and without reference to what preconceived theories might be upset thereby. This was a revolution in university procedure, [2] and the importance of the establishment of this new conception of university work can scarcely be overestimated. It was a contribution to intellectual progress of large future value. It meant the end of the old-type university, ruled by a narrow theological dogmatism and maintained to give support to a particular religious faith, and the ultimate transformation of the old university foundations into institutions actuated by the methods and purposes of a modern world.

In 1734 another new university was founded at Göttingen, and in this Johann Matthias Gesner (1691-1761) raised the new humanistic learning to the place of first importance. This new university became a nursery for the new literary humanism, ably supplementing the work done at Halle. From these two universities teachers of a new type went out, filled with the spirit of "The Enlightenment," as this eighteenth-century German renaissance was called, and they in time regenerated all the German universities. Still more, they regenerated the secondary schools of German lands as well, and gave Greek literature and life that place of first importance in their instruction which was retained until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Gesner at Göttingen, and later Ernesti at Leipzig, did much to formulate the new pedagogical purpose [3] of instruction in the ancient languages and literatures for the higher schools of German lands.

THE EARLIEST SCHOOL LAWS FOR PRUSSIA. In 1713 there came to the kingship of Prussia an organizing genius in the person of Frederic William I (1713- 40). Under his direction Prussia was given, for the first time, a centralized and uniform financial administration, and the beginnings of state school organization were made. He freed the State from debt, provided it with a good income, developed a strong army, and began a vigorous colonization and commercial policy. Though he cared nothing and did nothing for the universities, the religious reform movement of Francke, as well as his educational undertakings (p. 419), found in the new King a warm supporter. Largely in consequence of this the King became deeply interested in attempts to improve and advance the education of the masses of his people.

The first year of his reign he issued a Regulatory Code for the Reformed Evangelical and Latin schools of Prussia, and in 1717 he issued the so- called "Advisory Order," relating to the people's schools. In this latter parents were urged, under penalty of "vigorous punishment," to send their children to school to learn religion, reading, writing, to calculate, and "all that could serve to promote their happiness and welfare." The tuition fees of poor children he ordered paid out of the community poor-box (R. 273). The following year he directed the authorities of Lithuania to relieve the existing ignorance there, and sent commissioners to provide the villages with schoolmasters. From time to time he renewed his directions. To insure a better class of teachers for the towns and rural schools, he, in 1722, directed that no one be admitted to the office of sacristan-schoolmaster [4] except tailors, weavers, smiths, wheelwrights, and carpenters, and in 1738 he further restricted the position of teacher in the town and rural schools to tailors.

Becoming especially interested in providing schools for the previously neglected province of East Prussia, he gave the sum of fifty thousand thalers as an endowment fund, the interest to be used in assisting communities to build schoolhouses and maintain schools, and he also set aside large tracts of land for school uses. Within a few years over a thousand elementary schools had been established, and some eighteen hundred new schools in Prussia owed their origin to the interest of this King. He also took a similar interest in the establishment of schools in Pomerania (R. 273), a part of which had but recently been wrested from Sweden.

In 1737 the King issued his celebrated Principia Regulative, which henceforth became the fundamental School Law for the province of East Prussia. This prescribed conditions for the building of schoolhouses, the support of the schoolmaster, tuition fees, and government aid. The following digest of the section of the Principia relating to these matters gives a good idea as to the nature of the school regulations the King sought to enforce:

1. The parishes forming school societies were obliged to build school- houses and to keep them in repair.

2. The State was to furnish the necessary timber and firewood.

3. The expenses for doors, windows, and stoves to be obtained from collections.

4. Every church to pay four thalers a year toward the support of the schoolmaster.

5. Tuition fees for each child, from four to twelve years of age, to be four groschen per year.

6. Government to pay the fee when a peasant sends more than one child to school.

7. The peasants to furnish the teacher with certain provisions.

8. The teacher to have the right of free pasture for his small stock and some fees from every child confirmed.

9. Government to give the teacher one acre of land, which villagers were to till for him.

In 1738 the King further regulated the private schools and teachers in and about Berlin, in particular dealing with their qualifications and fees. The King showed, for the time, an interest in and solicitude for the education of his people heretofore almost unknown. That his decrees were in advance of the possibilities of the people in the matter of school support is not to be wondered at. Still, they rendered useful service in preparing the way for further organizing work by his successors, and in particular in accustoming the people to the ideas of state oversight and local school support. Under his successor and son, Frederick the Great, the preparatory work of the father bore important fruit.

THE ORGANIZING WORK OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. In 1740 Frederick II, surnamed the Great, succeeded his father, and in turn guided the destinies of Prussia for forty-six years. His benevolently despotic rule has been described on a preceding page (p. 474). Here we will consider only his work for education. In 1740, 1741, and again in 1743 he issued "regulations concerning the support of schools in the villages of Prussia," in which he directed that new schools should be established, teachers provided for them, and that "the existing school regulations and the arrangements made in pursuance thereto should be permanent, and that no change should be made under any pretext whatever."

In 1750 he effected a centralization of all the provincial church consistories, except that of Catholic Silesia, under the Berlin Consistory. This was a centralizing measure of large future importance, as it centralized the administration of the schools, as well as that of the churches, and transformed the Berlin Consistory into an important administrative agent of the central government. To this new centralized administrative organization the King issued instructions to pay special attention to schools, in order that they might be furnished with able schoolmasters and the young be well educated. One of the results of this centralization was the gradual evolution of the modern German Gymnasien, with uniform standards and improved instruction, out of the old and weakened Latin schools of various types within the kingdom.

From 1756 to 1763 Frederick was engaged in a struggle for existence, known as the Seven Years' War, but as soon as peace was at hand the King issued new regulations "concerning the maintenance of schools," and began employing competent schoolmasters for his royal estates. In April, 1763, he issued instructions to have a series of general school regulations prepared for all Prussia. These were drawn up by Julius Hecker, a former pupil and teacher in Francke's Institution (p. 418) and now a pastor in Berlin and counselor for the Berlin Consistory. After approval by the King, these were issued, September 23, 1763, under the title of General Land-Schule Reglement (general school regulations for the rural and village schools) of all Prussia (R. 274). These new regulations constituted the first general School Code for the whole kingdom, and mark the real foundation of the Prussian elementary-school system. Two years later (1765) a similar but stronger set of regulations or Code was drawn up and promulgated for the government of the Catholic elementary schools in the province of Silesia (R. 275). This was a new province which Frederick had wrested by force a few years previously (1748) from Maria Theresa of Austria, and the addition of a large number of Catholics to Prussia caused Frederick to issue specific regulations for schools among them.

These two School Codes did not so much bring already existing schools into a state system, but rather set up standards and obligations for an elementary-school system in part to be created in the future. The schools were still left under the supervision and direction of the Church, but the State now undertook to tell the Church what it must do. To enforce the obligation the State Inspectors of Prussia were directed to make an annual inspection (R. 274, § 26) of all schools, and to forward a report on their inspection to the Berlin Consistory, and for Catholic Silesia the following significant injunction was placed in the Code:

§ 51. In order to render as permanent as possible this reform of schools, which lies near our heart, we cannot be satisfied with committing the care of the schools to the clergy alone. We find it necessary that our bureau of War and Domain, the bureau of the Episcopal Vicariate, and the dioceses in our Silesian and Glatz districts, as well as our special school inspectors, give all due attention to this subject, so important to the State.

THE PRUSSIAN SCHOOL CODES OF 1763 AND 1765. The regulations of 1763 were issued, so the introduction reads (R. 274), because "the instruction of youth" in the country had "come to be greatly neglected" and "the young people were growing up in stupidity and ignorance." The King, therefore, issued the new regulations "to the end that ignorance, so injurious and unbecoming to Christianity, may be prevented and lessened, and the coming time may train and educate in the schools more enlightened and virtuous subjects."

To this end the King ordered compulsory education for the children of all subjects from the ages of five to thirteen or fourteen, all apprentices to be taught, and leaving certificates to be issued on completion of the course (R. 274, §§ 1-4). The school hours were fixed, Sunday and summer instruction regulated, tuition fees standardized, and the fees of the children of the poor were ordered paid (R. 274, §§ 5-8). A school census, and fines on parents not sending their children to school were provided for (R. 274, §§ 10-11). The requirements for a teacher, his habits, his qualifications and examination, the license to teach, and the extent to which he might ply his trade or business, were all laid down in some detail (R. 274 §§ 12-17). The organization, instruction, textbooks, order of exercises, and discipline for all schools were prescribed at some length (R. 274, §§ 19-21). The Code closed with a series of regulations covering the relations of the schoolmaster and clergyman, and the supervision of the instruction by the clergyman and clerical superintendents (R. 274, §§ 25-26). Incapable teachers were ordered suspended or deposed. A a final injunction relative to school attendance the Code closed with the following sentence:

In general we here confirm and renew all wholesome laws, published in former times, especially, that no clergyman shall admit to confirmation and the sacrament, any children not of his parish, nor those unable to read, or who are ignorant of the fundamental principles of evangelical religion.

The Code of 1765 for the Catholic schools of Silesia followed much the same line as the Code of 1763, though in it the King placed special emphasis on the training of schoolmasters, a subject in which he had become much interested (R. 275 a); the regulation of the conditions under which teachers lived and worked (R. 275 b); and the supervision of instruction by the clergyman of the parish (R. 275 e). These directions throw much light on the conditions surrounding teaching near the middle of the eighteenth century. The nature of instruction in the Catholic schools, and the compulsion to attend, were also definitely stated (R. 275 c-d).

These new Codes met with resistance everywhere. The money for the execution of such a comprehensive project was not as yet generally available; parents and churches objected to taxation and to the loss of their children from work; the wealthy landlords objected to the financial burden; the standards for teachers later on (1779) had to be lowered, and veterans from Frederick's wars installed; and the examinations of teachers had to be made easy [5] to secure teachers at all for the schools. While there continued for some decades to be a vast difference between the actual conditions in the schools and the requirements of these Codes, and while the real establishment of a state school system awaited the first decade of the nineteenth century for its accomplishment, much valuable progress in organization nevertheless was made. In principle, at least, Frederick the Great, by the Codes of 1763 and 1765, effected for elementary education a transition from the church school of the Protestant Reformation, and for Catholic Silesia from the parish school of the Church, to the state school of the nineteenth century. It remained only for his successors to realize in practice what he had made substantial beginnings of in law. Nowhere else in Europe that early had such progress in educational organization been made.

THE PRUSSIAN EXAMPLE FOLLOWED IN OTHER GERMAN STATES. The example of Prussia was in time followed by the other larger German States. Würtemberg issued a new School Code in 1792, which remained the ruling law for the church schools throughout the eighteenth century. The Saxon King, Augustus the Just, inspired by the example of Frederick, issued a mandate, in 1766, reminding parents as to their duty to send children to school, and in 1773 issued a new Regulation, filled with "generous enthusiasm for the cause." A teachers' training-school was founded at Dresden, in 1788, and four others before the close of the century. In 1805 a comprehensive Code was issued. This required that every child must be able to read, write, count, and know the truths of religion to receive the sacrament; clergymen were ordered to supervise the schools; school attendance was required from six to fourteen; the pay of teachers and the government appropriations for schools were increased; and a series of fines were imposed for violations of the Code. Bavaria issued new school Codes in 1770 and 1778, and additional schoolhouses were built and new textbooks written. After the suppression of the Jesuits (1773) a new progressive spirit animated the Catholic States, and Austria in particular, under the leadership of Maria Theresa and Joseph II (p. 475), made marked progress in school organization and educational reform.

In 1770 Maria Theresa appointed a School Commission to have charge of education in Lower Austria; in 1771 established the first Austrian normal school in Vienna; and in 1774 promulgated a General School Code (R. 276), drawn up by the Abbot Felbiger, who had been most prominent in school organization in Silesia. This Code provided for School Commissions in all provinces [6] ordered the establishment of an elementary school in all villages and parishes, a "principal" or higher elementary school in the principal city of every canton, and a normal school in every province; laid down the course of study for each; and gave details as to teachers, instruction, compulsory attendance, support, and inspection similar to Frederick's Silesian Code (R. 275). Continuation instruction up to twenty years of age also was ordered. That such demands were much in advance of what was possible is evident, and it is not surprising that, in the reaction under Francis I, following the outburst of the French Revolution, we find a decree (1805) that the elementary school shall be curtailed to "absolutely necessary limits," and that the common people shall get in elementary school only such ideas as will not trouble them in their work, and which will not make them "discontented with their condition; their intelligence shall be directed toward the fulfillment of their moral duties, and prudent and diligent fulfillment of their domestic and communal obligations."

THE BEGINNINGS OF TEACHER-TRAINING. The beginning of teacher-training in German lands was the Seminarium Praceptorum of Francke, established at Halle (p. 419), in 1697. In 1738 Johann Julius Hecker (1707-68), one of Francke's former students and teachers, and the author of the Prussian Code of 1763, established the first regular seminary for teachers in Prussia, to train intending theological students for the temporary or parallel occupation of teaching in the Latin schools. In 1747 he established a private Lehrerseminar in Berlin, in connection with his celebrated Realschule (p. 420), and there demonstrated the possibilities of teacher-training. Frederick the Great was so pleased with the result that, in 1753, he gave the school a subsidy and changed it into a royal institution, and on every fitting occasion recommended school authorities to it for teachers. Similar institutions were opened in Hanover, in 1751; Wolfenbüttel, in 1753; in the county of Glatz in Silesia, in 1764 (R. 275); in Breslau, in 1765 and 1767; and in Carlsruhe, in 1768. In the Silesian Code of 1765 Frederick specified (R. 275 a, § 2) six institutions which he had designated as teacher-training schools.

These early Prussian institutions laid the foundations upon which the normal-school system of the nineteenth century has been built. In Prussia first, but soon thereafter in other German States (Austria, at Vienna, 1771; Saxe-Weimar, at Eisenach, in 1783; and Saxony, at Dresden, 1788) the Teachers' Seminary was erected into an important institution of the State, and the idea has since been copied by almost all modern nations. This early development in Prussia was influential in both France and the United States, as we shall point out further on.

Despite these many important educational efforts, though, the type and the work of teachers remained low throughout the whole of the eighteenth century. In the rural and village schools the teachers continued to be deficient in number and lacking in preparation. Often the pastors had first to give to invalids, cripples, shoemakers, tailors, watchmen, and herdsmen the rudimentary knowledge they in turn imparted to the children. In the towns of fair size the conditions were not much better than in the villages. The elementary school of the middle-sized towns generally had but one class, common for boys and girls, and the magistrates did little to improve the condition of the schools or the teachers. In the larger cities, and even in Berlin, the number of elementary schools was insufficient, the schools were crowded, and many children had no opportunity to attend schools. [7] In Leipzig there was no public school until 1792, in which year the city free school was established. Even Sunday schools, supported by subscription, had been resorted to by Berlin, after 1798, to provide journeymen and apprentices with some of the rudiments of an education. The creation of a state school system out of the insufficient and inefficient religious schools proved a task of large dimensions, in Prussia as in other lands. Even as late as 1819 Dinter found discouraging conditions (R. 279) among the teachers of East Prussia.

FURTHER LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PROGRESS. Frederick the Great died in 1786. In the reign of his successors his work bore fruit in a complete transfer of all schools from church to state control, and in the organization of the strongest system of state schools the world had ever known. The year following the death of Frederick the Great (1787), and largely as an outgrowth of the preceding centralizing work with reference to elementary education, the Superior School (Oberschulcollegium) Board was established to exercise a similar centralized control over the older secondary and higher schools of Prussia. Secondary and higher education were now severed from church control, in principle at least, as elementary education had been by the "Regulations" of 1763 and 1765. The year following (1788) "Leaving Examinations" (Maturitätsprüfung) were instituted to determine the completion of the gymnasial course. These, for a time, were largely ineffective, due to clerical opposition, but the centralizing work of this Superior School Board for the supervision of higher education, and the state examinations for testing the instruction of the secondary schools, were from the first important contributing influences.

In 1794 came the culmination of all the preceding work in the publication of the General Civil Code (Allgemeine Landrecht) for the State, in which, in the section relating to schools, the following important declaration was made:

Schools and universities are state institutions, charged with the instruction of youth in useful information and scientific knowledge. Such institutions may be founded only with the knowledge and consent of the State. All public schools and educational institutions are under the supervision of the State, and are at all times subject to its examination and inspection.

The secular authority and the clergy were still to share jointly in the control of the schools, but both according to rules laid down by the State. In all cases of conflict or dispute, the secular authority was to decide. This important document forms the Magna Charta for secular education in Prussia.

During the decade which followed the promulgation of this declaration of state control but little additional progress of importance was accomplished, though the Minister of Justice, to whom (1798) the administration of Lutheran church and school affairs had been given, maintained a correspondence for some years with the King regarding "provisions for a better education and instruction of the children of citizens and peasants," and stated to the King that "the object of reform is national education, and its field of operation, therefore, all provinces of the monarchy." The King, though, a weak, deeply religious, and unimaginative man (Frederick William III, 1797-1840), who lacked the energy and foresight of his predecessors, did little or nothing. Under Frederick William III the State lacked vigor and drifted; the Church regained something of its former power; and the army and the civil service became corrupt. In 1806 a blow fell which brought matters to an immediate crisis and forced important action.

II. A STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM AT LAST CREATED

THE HUMILIATION OF PRUSSIA. At the close of 1804 France, by vote, changed from the Republic to an Empire, with Napoleon Bonaparte as first Emperor of the French, and for some years he took pains that Frenchmen should forget "Liberty and Equality" amid the surfeit of "Glory" he heaped upon France. The great nations outside France, fearful of Napoleon's ambition and power, did not take his accession to the throne of France so complacently, and, in 1805, England, Sweden, Austria, and Russia formed the "Third Coalition" against Napoleon in an effort to restore the balance of power in Europe. Of the great powers of Europe only Prussia held aloof, refused to take sides, and in consequence enjoyed a temporary prosperity and freedom from invasion. For this, though, she was soon to pay a terrible price. Having humiliated the Austrians and vanquished the Russians, Napoleon now goaded the Prussians into attacking him, and then utterly humiliated them in turn. At the battle of Jena (October 14, 1806) the Prussian army was utterly routed, and forced back almost to the Russian frontier. Officered by old generals and political favorites who were no longer efficient, and backed by a state service honeycombed with inefficiency and corruption, the Prussian army that had won such victories under Frederick the Great was all but annihilated by the new and efficient fighting machine created by the Corsican who now controlled the destinies of France. By the Treaty of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) Prussia lost all her lands west of the Elbe and nearly all her stealings from Poland--in all about one half her territory and population--and was almost stricken from the list of important powers in Europe. In all its history Prussia had experienced no such humiliation as this. In a few months the constructive work of a century had been undone.

THE REGENERATION OF PRUSSIA. The new national German feeling, which had been slowly rising for half a century, now burst forth and soon worked a regeneration of the State. In the school of adversity the King and the people learned much, and the task of national reorganization was entrusted to a series of able ministers whom the King and his capable Queen, Louise, now called into service. His chief minister, Stein, created a free people by abolishing serfdom and feudal land tenure (1807); eliminated feudal distinctions in business; granted local government to the cities; and broke the hold of the clergy on the educational system. His successor, Hardenburg, extended the rights of citizenship, and laid the foundations of government by legislative assemblies. Another minister, Scharnhorst, reorganized the Prussian army (1807-13) by dismissing nearly all the old generals, and introducing the principle of compulsory military service. In all branches of the government service there were reorganizations, the one thought of the leaders being to so reorganize and revitalize the State as to enable it in time to overthrow the rule of Napoleon and regain its national independence.

Though the abolition of serfdom, the reform of the civil service, and the beginnings of local and representative government were important gains, nothing was of secondary importance to the complete reorganization of education which now took place. The education of the people was turned to in earnest for the regeneration of the national spirit, and education was, in a decade, made the great constructive agent of the State. Said the King:

Though we have lost many square miles of land, though the country has been robbed of its external power and splendor, yet we shall and will gain in intrinsic power and splendor, and therefore it is my earnest wish that the greatest attention be paid to public instruction.... The State must regain in mental force what it has lost in physical force.

His minister Stein said:

We proceed from the fundamental principle, to elevate the moral, religious, and patriotic spirit in the nation, to instil into it again courage, self-reliance, and readiness to sacrifice everything for national honor and for independence from the foreigner.... To attain this end, we must mainly rely on the education and instruction of the young. If by a method founded on the true nature of man, every faculty of the mind can be developed, every noble principle of life be animated and nourished, all one-sided education avoided, and those tendencies on which the power and dignity of men rest, hitherto neglected with the greatest indifference, carefully fostered--then we may hope to see grow up a generation, physically and morally vigorous, and the beginnings of a better time.

FICHTE APPEALS TO THE LEADERS. Still more did the philosopher Fichte (1762-1814), in a series of "Addresses to the German Nation," delivered in Berlin during the winter [8] of 1807-08, appeal to the leaders to turn to education to rescue the State from the miseries which had overwhelmed it. Unable forcibly to resist, and with every phase of the government determined by a foreign conqueror, only education had been overlooked, he said, and to this the leaders should turn for national redemption (R. 277). He held that it rested with them to determine

whether you will be the end and last of a race ... or the beginnings and germ of a new time, glorious beyond all your imaginings, and those from whom posterity will reckon the years of their welfare.... A nation that is capable, if it were only in its highest representation and leaders, of fixing its eyes firmly on the vision from the spiritual world, Independence, and being possessed with a love of it, will surely prevail over a nation that is only used as a tool of foreign aggressiveness and for the subjugation of independent nations.

With a fervor of emotion that was characteristic of a romantic age, impelled by a conviction that the distinctive character of the German people was indispensable to the world, and holding that what was necessary also was possible, Fichte made the German leaders feel, with him, that

to reshape reality by means of ideas is the business of man, his proper earthly task; and nothing can be impossible to a will confident of itself and of its aim. [9]

Fichte's Addresses stirred the thinkers among the German people as they had not been stirred since the days of the Reformation, [10] and a national reorganization of education, with national ends in view, now took place. As Duke Ernest remade Gotha, after the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, by means of education (p. 317), so the leaders of Prussia now created a new national spirit by taking over the school from the Church and forging it into one of the greatest constructive instruments of the State. The result showed itself in the "Uprising of Prussia," in the winter of 1812-13; the "War of Liberation," of 1813-15; the utter defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Leipzig by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, in 1813; and again at the battle of Waterloo by England and Prussia, [11] in 1815. Still more clearly was the result shown in the humiliating defeat of France, in 1870, when it was commonly remarked that the schoolmaster of Prussia had at last triumphed. The regeneration of Prussia in the early part of the nineteenth century, as well as its more recent humiliation, stand as eloquent testimonials to the tremendous influence of education on national destiny, when rightly and when wrongly directed.

THE REORGINATION OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. The first step in the process of educational reorganization was the abolition (1807) of the Oberschulcollegium Board, established (p. 564) in 1787 to supervise secondary and higher education, in order to get rid of clerical influence and control. The next step was the creation instead (1808) of a Department of Public Instruction, organized as a branch of the Interior Department of the State.

One of the first steps of the acting head of the new department was to send seventeen Prussian teachers (1808) to Switzerland to spend three years, at the expense of the Government, in studying Pestalozzi's ideas and methods, and they were particularly enjoined that they were not sent primarily to get the mechanical side of the method, but to

"warm yourselves at the sacred fire which burns in the heart of this man, so full of strength and love, whose work has remained so far below what he originally desired, below the essential ideas of his life, of which the method is only a feeble product.

"You will have reached perfection when you have clearly seen that education is an art, and the most sublime and holy of all, and in what connection it is with the great art of the education of nations."

In 1809 Carl August Zeller (1774-1847), a pupil of Pestalozzi, who had established two Pestalozzian training-colleges in Switzerland and had just begun to hold Pestalozzian institutes in Würtemberg (p. 545), was called to Prussia to organize a Teachers' Seminary (normal school) to train teachers in the Pestalozzian methods. The seventeen Prussian teachers, on their return from study with Pestalozzi, were also made directors of training institutions, or provincial superintendents of instruction. In this way Pestalozzian ideas were soon in use in the elementary school rooms of Prussia, and so effective was this work, and so readily did the Prussian teachers catch the spirit of Pestalozzi's endeavors, that at the Berlin celebration of the centennial of his birth, in 1846, the German educator Diesterweg [12] said:

By these men and these means, men trained in the Institution at Yverdon under Pestalozzi, the study of his publications, and the applications of his methods in the model and normal schools of Prussia, after 1808, was the present Prussian, or rather Prussian- Pestalozzian school system established, for he is entitled to at least one half the fame of the German popular schools.

Similarly Gustavus Friedrich Dinter, who early distinguished himself as principal of a Teachers' Seminary in Saxony, was called to Prussia and made School Counselor (Superintendent) for the province of East Prussia. Wherever Prussia could find men, in other States, who knew Pestalozzian methods and possessed the new conception of education, they were called to Prussia and put to work, and the statement of Dinter was characteristic of the spirit which animated their work. He said: [13]

I promised God, that I would look upon every Prussian peasant child as a being who could complain of me before God, if I did not provide him with the best education, as a man and a Christian, which it was possible for me to provide.

WORK OF THE TEACHERS SEMINARIES. Napoleon had imposed heavy financial indemnities on Prussia, as well as loss of territory, and the material means with which to establish schools were scanty indeed. With a keen conception of the practical difficulties, the leaders saw that the key to the problem lay in the creation of a new type of teaching force, and to this end they began from the first to establish Teachers' Seminaries. Those who desired to enter these institutions were carefully selected, and out of them a steady stream of what Horace Mann described (R. 278) as a "beneficent order of men" were sent to the schools, "moulding the character of the people, and carrying them forward in a career of civilization more rapidly than any other people in the world are now advancing." Mann described, with marked approval, both the teacher and the training he received.

So successful were these institutions that within a decade, under the glow of the new national spirit animating the people, the elementary schools were largely transformed in spirit and purpose, and the position of the elementary-school teacher was elevated from the rank of a trade (R. 279) to that of a profession (R. 278). By 1840, when the earlier fervor had died out and a reaction had clearly set in, there were in Prussia alone thirty-eight Teachers' Seminaries for elementary teachers, approximately thirty thousand elementary schools, and every sixth person in Prussia was in school. In the other German States, and in Holland, Sweden, and France, analogous but less extensive progress in providing normal schools and elementary schools had been made; but in Austria, which did not for long follow the Prussian example, the schools remained largely stationary for more than half a century to come.

NATIONALIZING THE ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION. That the system of elementary vernacular or people's schools (the term Volksschule now began to be applied) now created should be permeated by a strong nationalistic tone was, the times and circumstances considered, only natural. Though the Pestalozzian theories as to the development of the mental faculties, training through the senses, and the power of education to regenerate society were accepted, along with the new Pestalozzian subject-matter and methods in instruction (p. 543,) all that could be rendered useful to the Prussian State in its extremity naturally was given special emphasis. Thus all that related to the home country--geography, history, and the German speech--was taught as much from the patriotic as from the pedagogical point of view. Music was given special emphasis as preparatory for participation in the patriotic singing-societies and festivals, which were organized at the time of the "Uprising of Prussia" (1813). Drawing and arithmetic were emphasized for their practical values. Physical exercises were given an emphasis before unknown, because of their hygienic and military values. Finally religion was given an importance beyond that of Pestalozzi's school, but with the emphasis now placed on moral earnestness, humility, self-sacrifice, and obedience to authority, rather than the earlier stress on the Catechism and church doctrine.

Clearly perceiving, decades ahead of other nations, the power of such training to nationalize a people and thus strengthen the State, the Prussian leaders, in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, laid the foundations of that training of the masses, and of teachers for the masses (R. 280), which, more than any other single item, paved the way for the development of a national German spirit, the unification of German lands into an Imperial German Empire, and that blind trust in and obedience to authority which has recently led to a second national humiliation.

THE REORGANIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION. Alongside this elementary- school system for the masses of the people, the older secondary and higher school system for a directing class (p. 553) also was largely reorganized and redirected. The first step in this direction was the appointment, in 1809, of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), "a philosopher, scholar, philologist, and statesman" of the first rank, to the headship of the new Prussian Department of Public Instruction. During the two and a half years he remained in charge important work in the reorganization of secondary and higher education was accomplished. In 1817 the Department of Public Instruction was changed from a bureau to an independent Ministry for Spiritual and Instructional Affairs. By 1825, when governing school boards were ordered established in each province, and made responsible to the Ministry for Education at Berlin, the organization of the state school system was virtually complete. For the next half-century the changes made were in the nature of the perfection of bureaucratic organization, rather than any fundamental organizing change. During the early years improvements of great future importance for secondary education were effected in the creation of a well-educated, professional teaching body, and in the standardization of courses and of work.

In 1810 the examination of all secondary-school teachers, according to a uniform state plan, was ordered. The examinations were to be conducted for the State by the university authorities; to be based on university training in the gymnasial subjects, with an opportunity to reveal special preparation in any subject or subjects; and no one in the future could even be nominated for a position as a gymnasial teacher who had not passed this examination. This meant the erection of the work of teaching in the secondary schools into a distinct profession; the elimination from the schools of the theological student who taught for a time as a stepping- stone to a church living; and the end of easy local examination and approval by town authorities or the patrons of a school. To insure still better preparation of candidates, Pedagogical Seminars were begun in the universities [14] for imparting to future gymnasial teachers some pedagogical knowledge and insight, while Philological Seminars also appeared, about the same time, [15] to give additional training in understanding the spirit of instruction in the chief subjects of the gymnasial course--the classics. In 1826 a year of trial teaching before appointment (Probejahr) was added for all candidates, and in 1831 new and more stringent regulations for the examination of teachers were ordered. [16] At least two generations ahead of other nations, Prussia thus developed a body of professional teachers for its secondary schools.

UNIFICATION OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. In 1812 the Leaving Examinations (Maturitätsprüfung), instituted in 1788, but ineffective through clerical opposition, were revived and strictly enforced. In 1834 the passing of such an examination was made necessary to entering nearly all branches of the state civil service, thus securing an educated body of minor public officials. This same year the universities gave up their entrance examinations, and have since depended entirely on the Leaving Examinations of the State.

The immediate effect of the reinstitution of the Leaving Examinations was to unify the work of all the different surviving types of classical secondary schools--Gymnasium, Lyceum, Pädagogium, Collegium, Lateinische Schule, Akademie--all standard nine-year schools henceforth taking the name of Gymnasien. Those institutions which could not meet the standards of a nine-year classical school were either permitted to do the first six years of the work, being known as Pro-Gymnasien, or the modern languages were substituted for the ancient, and they became middle-class institutions under the name of Bürgerschulen. A few Realschulen also were in existence, and these were permitted to continue, as middle-class institutions, but without any state recognition. Thus, without the destruction of institutions, the accumulated foundations of the centuries were transformed into a series of organized state schools to serve the needs of the State.

The next step was the promulgation of a uniform course of instruction for all Gymnasien and Pro-Gymnasien. This was done in 1816. The studies were Latin, Greek, German, mathematics, history, geography, religion, and science, the amount of time to be devoted to each ranging, in the order listed, from a maximum for Latin to a minimum for science. Up to 1824 Greek was not absolutely required; from 1824 to 1837 it was required, unless the substitution of a modern language was permitted; but after 1837, when the type of German secondary school had become fairly well fixed, and the devotion to humanistic studies had reached a climax, Greek became a fixed and unvarying requirement. [17]

FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN. One result of the Treaty of Tilsit (p. 566) was that Prussia had lost all her universities, except three along the Baltic coast. Both Halle and Göttingen were lost, and the loss of Halle was a severe blow. In 1807 Fichte, who had been a professor at Jena, drew up a plan and submitted it to the King for the organization of a new university at Berlin. When Humboldt came to the head of the Department of Public Instruction the idea at once won his enthusiastic approval. In May, 1809, he reported favorably on the project to the King, and three months later a Cabinet Order was issued creating the new university, giving it an annual money grant, and assigning a royal palace to it for a home. The spirit with which the new institution was founded may be inferred from the following extract from a memorial, published by Humboldt, in 1810. In this he said:

The State should not treat the universities as if they were higher classical schools or schools of special sciences. On the whole the State should not look to them at all for anything that directly concerns its own interests, but should rather cherish a conviction that, in fulfilling their real destination, they will not only serve its own purposes, but serve them on an infinitely higher plane, commanding a much wider field of operation, and affording room to set in motion much more efficient springs and forces than are at the disposal of the State itself.

This university was indeed a new creation, and of far more significance for the future of university work than even the founding of Halle had been. To the selection of its first faculty Humboldt devoted almost all his energies during the period he remained in office. From the first, high attainment in some branch of knowledge, and the ability to advance that knowledge, was placed ahead of mere teaching skill. The most eminent scholars in all lines were invited to the new "chairs," and when it opened (1810) its first faculty represented the highest attainment of scholarship in German lands. From the first the instruction divested itself of almost all that characterized the school. The lecture replaced the classroom recitation, and the seminar, in which small groups of advanced students investigate a problem under the direction of a professor, was given a place of large importance in the institution. Original research and contributions to knowledge marked the work of both students and professors, the object being, not to train teachers for the schools, but to produce scholars capable of advancing knowledge by personal research. Even more than at Halle, the institution was a place where professors and students worked to discover truth, uninfluenced by any preconceived notions and unmindful of what older ideas might be upset in the process. The value of such pioneer work for university scholars everywhere is not likely to be overestimated.

SPECIALIZATION IN UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTION EMPHASIZED. Specialization in some field of knowledge soon came to be the ruling idea, and this proved exceedingly fruitful in the years which followed. There Bopp developed the study of comparative grammar on the basis of the Sanskrit. There Dietz founded Romance philology. Ritschl turned his students to the study of Latin inscriptions to reconstruct the past. Lepsius began the study of Egyptology with a spade. Niebuhr's Roman History (1811) was the institution's first fruit, and his successor, Ranke, showed his students how to study history from the sources. Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Lotze made over philosophy. Fechner and Wundt began there the study of experimental psychology. Stahl and von Savigny created new standards in the study of law. Müller introduced the microscope into the study of pathological anatomy. Schultze systematized zoölogy. Liebig, who had opened at Giessen (1824) what was probably the first chemical laboratory in the world open to students, was drawn to Berlin and created there a new chemistry. Still later, Helmholtz created there a new physics.

The effect of all this on the expansion of the work of the philosophical faculty was marked. The new philological and historical sciences, the biological sciences, and the mathematical sciences, were all greatly expanded in scope, and the new philosophical faculty, evolved out of the old arts faculty (p. 554), now attained to the place of first importance in the university--a position it has ever since retained. Law and medicine were also given a new direction and emphasis, and even the teaching of theology was greatly improved under the specialization in instruction and the freedom in teaching which now became the rule.

The effect on the other German universities was marked. Some of the older institutions (Erfurt, Wittenberg, Cologne, Mainz) died out, while new foundations (Breslau, 1811; Bonn, 1818; Munich, 1826) after the new model, took their place. Those that continued were changed in character, [18] and a new unity was established throughout the German university world. By 1850 exact scientific research, in both libraries and laboratories, and a sober search for truth, had become the watchword of all the German universities. In consequence they naturally assumed a world leadership, and were frequented by students from many lands. Especially has the United States been influenced in its university development by the large number of university teachers who received their specialized training in the German universities [19] during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The lecture, the seminar, laboratory investigation, research, the doctorate, and academic freedom in study and teaching are distinctive contributions to our university development drawn from German lands, and superimposed on our earlier English-type college. The founding of Johns Hopkins University, at Baltimore, in 1876, on the German model, marked the erection of the first distinctively research university in America.

A TWO-CLASS STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM CREATED. We thus see that Prussia by 1815, clearly by 1825, had taken over education from the Church and made of it an instrument of the State to serve State ends. For the masses there was the Volksschule, superseding the old religious vernacular school and clearly designed to create an intelligent but obedient and patriotic citizenship for the Fatherland, and in this school the great majority of the children of the State received their education for citizenship and for life. This was for both sexes, and was entirely a German school. Attendance upon this school was made compulsory, and beyond this some continuation education early began to be provided (Rs. 274, Section 6; 275 d; 276, Section 15). Within the past half-century continuation education, especially along vocational lines, as we shall point out in a subsequent chapter, has received in German lands a very remarkable development. To insure that this school should serve the State in the way desired, Teachers' Seminaries, for the training of Volksschule, teachers, were from the first made a feature of the new state system.

For those who were to form the official and directing class of Society--a closely limited, almost entirely male, intellectual aristocracy--education in separate classical schools, with university or professional training superimposed, was provided, and this type of training offered a very thorough preparation for a small and a carefully selected class. Out of this class the leaders of Germany for a century have been drawn. [20] For this classical school also the universities were early directed to prepare a well-educated body of teachers. The Prussian plan was followed in all its essentials in the other German States, so that the drawing given (Fig. 173) was true for Germany as a whole, as well as for Prussia, up at least to 1914.

NEW NINETEENTH-CENTURY TENDENCIES MANIFESTED. In this early evolution of the Prussian state school systems we find two prominent nineteenth-century ideas expressing themselves. The first is the new conception of the State as not merely a government organized to secure national safety and protection from invasion, but rather an organization of the people to promote public welfare and realize a moral and political ideal. To this end state control of the whole range of education, to enable the State to promote intellectual and moral and social progress along lines useful to the State, became a necessity, and some form of this education, in the interests of the public welfare, must now be extended to all. Though France and the new American nation gave earlier political expression to this new conception of the State, it was in Prussia that the idea attained its earliest concrete and for long its most complete realization. Seeing further and more clearly than other nations the possibilities of education, the practical workers of Prussia, and after them the other German States, took over education as a function of the State for the propagation of the national ideas and the promotion of the national culture. Of this development Paulsen says:

In the nineteenth century Germany took the lead in the educational movement among the nations of Europe. The German universities have become acknowledged centers of scientific research for the whole world.... In the domain of primary and technical education Germany has also become the universal teacher of Europe.

But it must not be forgotten, in this connection, that the German people had been the pupils of their neighbors during a greater length of time and with greater assiduity than any other European nation. Thus, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Germany imported the culture of Humanism from Italy. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries she introduced the modern courtly culture and language of the French people, besides giving admission, since the middle of the eighteenth century, to the philosophy, science, and literature of English middle-class society. Lastly, since the end of the eighteenth century, the Germans have yielded themselves to the influence of the Hellenic spirit with greater fervor than any other nation.

The second nineteenth-century idea which early found expression in the Prussian State, and one which became a dominant factor during the latter half of the century, was the idea of utilizing the schools, as state institutions, to promote national ends--to unify and nationalize peoples. National self-consciousness here first found concrete expression, and with wonderful practical results. From a geographical expression, consisting of nearly four hundred petty self-governing cities, principalities, and states, and some fourteen hundred independent noblemen and prelates, before the Napoleonic wars, their close found the German people free from serfdom, united in spirit, and organized politically into thirty-eight modern-type States. In 1870, largely as a result of the nationalizing efforts of government and education, working hand in hand, an Imperial Empire of twenty-two States and three Free Cities was formed. The struggle for national realization, begun by Prussia after 1807, and with education as the important constructive tool of the State, has since been copied by nation after nation and has become the dominant force of modern history. To awaken a national self-consciousness, to acquire national unity, and to infuse into all a common culture has supplanted the humanistic cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth century and become the dominant characteristic of nineteenth-century political history. In this Prussia led the way.

THE PERIOD OF REACTION. Through the period preceding the Wars of Liberation (1813-15), and afterward for a few years, an educational zeal animated the Government. The schools during this period were free on the one hand from politics and on the other from minute official regulation. As one writer well stated: [21]

It was difficult to decide whether the schools derived their importance from the life which surged around them, or whether their importance was due to their intrinsic power, very carefully fostered by the state authorities.... There was spirit and life in Prussia; there was much activity and liberty in contriving, with little outward parade. Any foreigner, visiting Prussia, might observe that the vitalizing breath of government, like the spirit of God, was acting upon the whole people.

Napoleon was finally vanquished at Waterloo (1815) and sent to Saint Helena, and the Congress of Vienna (1815) remade the map of Europe. In doing so it forgot that the people wanted constitutional government, instead of a return to absolute rulers. It restored old thrones, rights, and territories, and inaugurated a policy of political reaction which increased in intensity with time and dominated the governments of continental Europe until after the middle of the century. Under the lead of the Austrian minister, Metternich, and by "third-degree" methods, the so-called Holy Alliance [22] of continental Europe suppressed free speech, democratic movements, political liberties, university freedom, and liberalism in government and religion. The governments in this Alliance redirected and restricted the people's schools, as much as could be done, to make them conform in purpose to their reactionary ideas. In consequence, the development of popular education in Germany, as well as in France and other continental lands, was for a time checked. The great start obtained by Prussia and the German States before 1820, though, was such that what had been done there could not be wholly undone. In France, Spain, the Italian Kingdoms, the Austrian States, and Russia, on the other hand, what had not been developed to any extent could be prevented from developing, and in these lands popular education was given back to the Church to control and direct. In England, also, though for other reasons there, the Church retained its control over elementary education for half a century longer.

CHANGE IN THE SPIRIT OF THE SCHOOLS. The King of Prussia, Frederick William III (1797-1840), though he had given full adherence to the movement for general education during the dark period of Prussian history, was after all never fully in sympathy with the liberal aspect of the movement. After Austria, by the settlement at Vienna, became the leader of the German States, and Metternich the dominating political personality of Europe, the King came more and more to favor a restriction of liberties and the holding of education to certain rather limited lines, fearful that too much education of the people might prove harmful to the Government. Accordingly, under the influence of the King and against the desires of the liberal leaders, Prussia now changed direction and embarked on a policy of reaction which checked normal educational progress; led to the unsuccessful revolution of 1848 and the subsequent almost fanatical governmental opposition to reforms; and was in large part responsible for the disaster of 1918. It is an interesting speculation as to how different the future German and world history might have been had Prussia and the German States held to the liberal ideas of the earlier period, and drawn their political conceptions from England and the new American nation, rather than from Austria and Russia.

Accordingly, in November, 1817, the Department of Public Instruction was replaced by a Ministry for Spiritual, Educational, and Medical Affairs, and Karl, Baron von Altenstein, was made Minister. He continued in office until his death, [23] in 1840, and his administration was marked by an increasing state centralization and limitation of the earlier plans. In 1819 he codified all previous practices into a general school law for the kingdom. While the King never really approved and issued it, it nevertheless became a basis for future work and is the law so enthusiastically described by Cousin, in 1830 (R. 280). Under his administration the earlier creative enthusiasm and the energy for the execution of great ideas disappeared, and the earlier "stimulating and encouraging attitude on the part of the authorities was now replaced by the timid policy of the drag and the brake." The earlier preparatory work in the development of Teachers' Seminaries and the establishment of elementary schools was allowed to continue; Pestalozzian ideas were for a time not seriously restricted; compulsory attendance was more definitely ordered enforced, in 1825; the abolition of tuition fees for Volksschule education was begun in 1833, but not completed until 1888; and a more careful supervision of schools was instituted, in 1834. The great change was rather in the spirit and direction of the instruction. The early tendency to emphasize nationalism and religious instruction (p. 571) was now stressed, and the liberal aspects of Pestalozzianism were increasingly subordinated to the more formal instruction and to nationalistic ends. The soldier and the priest joined hands in diverting the schools to the creation of intelligent, devout, patriotic, and, above all else, obedient Germans, while the universal military idea, brought in by the successful work of Scharnhorst (p. 567), and retained after the War of Liberation as a survival of the old dynastic and predatory conception of the State, was more and more emphasized in the work of the schools and the life of the citizen. When Horace Mann reported on his visit to the schools of the German States, in 1843, he called attention to this element of weakness (R. 281), as well as to their many elements of strength.

FURTHER INTOLERANCE AND REACTION. The reactionary tendencies which set in after the settlement of Vienna had, by 1840, produced stagnation in the life of the Governments of Europe, and the revolutions of 1848, which broke out in France, Italy, Switzerland, and the different German and Austrian States, were revolts against the reactionary governmental rule and an expression of disappointment at the failure to secure constitutional government. The revolutions were both successful and unsuccessful--successful in that the greater liberty they sought came later on, but unsuccessful at the time. In consequence, immediately following 1848, an even more reactionary educational policy was instituted. University freedom was markedly restricted; the institutions lost their earlier vigor; and the number of students suffered a marked decline in consequence. The secondary schools also felt the new influences. Latin and Greek were made compulsory; uniform programs for work were insisted upon; and Latin in particular was reduced to a grammatical drill that destroyed the spirit of the earlier instruction and put gymnasial teaching back almost to the type made so popular by Sturm. The few Realschulen, which had continued to exist and were tolerated before, were now treated with positive dislike. In 1859 they were able to force their first official recognition, but only when changed from practical schools for the middle classes to secondary schools, on the same basis as the Gymnasien, and for parallel ends.

It was upon the elementary schools (Volksschulen) and the Teachers' Seminaries that the most severe official displeasure now fell. A number of Volksschule teachers had been connected with the revolutions of 1848, and "over-education" was regarded as responsible. The Teachers' Seminary at Preslau, which had for long given a high grade of training, was closed, and the head of the Seminary at Berlin, Diesterweg, was dismissed because of his strong advocacy of Pestalozzian ideas. Anything savoring of individualism was especially under the ban. Bitter reproaches were heaped upon the elementary-school teachers, and the new King, Frederick William IV (1840-61) considered their work as the very root of the political evils of the State. To a conference of Seminary teachers, held in 1849 in Berlin, he said: [24]

You and you alone are to blame for all the misery which the last year has brought upon Prussia! The irreligious pseudo-education of the masses is to be blamed for it, which you have been spreading under the name of true wisdom, and by which you have eradicated religious belief and loyalty from the hearts of my subjects and alienated their affections from my person. This sham education, strutting about like a peacock, has always been odious to me. I hated it already from the bottom of my soul before I came to the throne, and, since my accession, I have done everything I could to suppress it. I mean to proceed on this path, without taking heed of any one, and, indeed, no power on earth shall divert me from it.

Thus easily did an autocratic Hohenzollern cast upon the shoulders of others the burden of his own failure to grasp the evolution in political thinking [25] which had taken place in Europe, since 1789. Unfortunately for the future of the German people he was able to force his will upon them.

PROGRESS OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION AS SHOWN BY THE DECREASE IN ILLITERACY IN PRUSSIA, BY PROVINCES (From Rep. U.S. Com. Educ., 1890-1900, I, p. 781)

Provinces 1841 1864-65 1881 1894-95

Per cent. Per cent. Per cent. Per cent. East Prussia \ / 7.05 .99 15.33 16.54 West Prussia / \ 8.79 1.23 Brandenburg 2.47 .96 .32 .06 Pomerania 1.23 1.47 .43 .12 Posen 41.00 16.90 9.97 .98 Silesia 9.22 3.78 2.33 .43 Saxony 1.19 .49 .28 .09 Westphalia 2.14 1.03 .60 .02 Rhenish Prussia 7.06 1.13 .23 .05 Hohenzollern .00 .00 .00 .00 ===== ===== ===== ===== The State 9.30 5.52 2.38 .33

In 1854 new "Regulations" were issued which put the course of instruction for elementary schools back to the days of Frederick the Great. The one- class rural elementary school was made the standard. Everything beyond reading, writing, a little arithmetic, and religious instruction in strict accordance with the creeds of the Church, was considered as superfluous, and was to be allowed only by special permit. The elimination of illiteracy, the creation of obedient citizens, and the nationalizing of new elements became the aim of the schools.

The instruction in the Teachers' Seminaries was reduced to the merest necessities, and they were given clearly to understand that they were to train teachers, and not to prepare educated men. All theory of education, all didactics, all psychology were eliminated. A return was made to the subject-matter theory of education, and a limited subject-matter at that, and it once more became the business of the teacher to see that this was carefully learned. Religious instruction naturally once more came to hold a place of first importance. Similar reactionary movements took place in other German States, all being sensitive to the reactionary spirit of the time and the leadership of Austria and Prussia.

THE MODERN GERMAN EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE. After about 1860, largely in response to modern scientific and industrial forces among a people turning from agriculture toward industrialism, a slight relaxation of the reactionary legislation began to be evident. This expressed itself chiefly in a diminution of the time given to memoriter work in religion, and the introduction in its place of work in German history and geography, with some work in natural science. In the Teachers' Seminaries instruction in German literature, formerly rigidly excluded, was now added. It was not, however, until after the unification of Germany, following the Franco- Prussian War, and the creation of Imperial Germany under the directive guidance of Bismarck, that any real change took place. Then the changes were due to new political, religious, social, industrial, and economic forces which belong to the later period of German history.

In 1872 a new law gave to the Prussian elementary schools a new course of study; reasserted the authority of the State in education; extended the control of the public authorities; and made the State instead of the Church the authority even for their religious instruction. [26] The schools were now to be used as of old to build up and strengthen the nation, but particularly to support the new Prussian idea as to the work and function of the State. Realien were given a new prominence, because of new industrial needs, and the instruction in religion was revamped. The old memoriter work was greatly reduced, and in its place an emotional and political emphasis was given to the religious instruction. To make the school of the people an instrument for fighting the growth of social democracy, and a support for the throne and government, instruction in religion was "placed in the center of the teacher's work," and teachers were given to understand that they were "members of an educational army and expected loyally to follow the flag." The secondary schools also were redirected. A new emphasis on scientific subjects and modern languages replaced the earlier emphasis on Greek. The Emperor interfered (R. 368) to force a revision of the gymnasial programs better to adapt them to modern needs. In particular were the universities of all the States unified and nationalized, and great technical universities created. Science, commerce, technical work, modern languages, and government were stressed in the instruction of the leaders.

Deciding clearly where the nation was to go and the route it was to follow, and that education for national ends was one of the important means to be employed, the different parts of the educational systems in the States--elementary schools, secondary schools, universities, normal schools, professional schools, technical schools, continuation schools-- were carefully integrated into a unified state system, thoroughly national in spirit, and given a definite function to perform in the work which the Nation set itself to carry through. Nowhere have teachers been so well trained to play their part in a national plan, and nowhere have teachers acquitted themselves more worthily, from the point of view of the Government. As Alexander [27] has well said:

During the nineteenth century the leaders of Germany decided that Germany should assume leadership in the world in every line of endeavor, particularly in commerce and world power. They set this as the very definite goal of their national ambition. The next question was how that aim could be accomplished. It was to be done through education. Accordingly school systems were organized with this aim in view. In a State such as the Germans proposed building there were be leaders and followers. The followers were to be trained for a docile, efficient German citizenship; that is, the lower classes were to be made into God-fearing, patriotic, economically-independent Germans. This was the task of the Volksschule, and it has been wonderfully well accomplished. This type of German is created to do the manual labor of the State.

The leaders were to be trained in middle and higher schools and in the universities. There were to be different grades of leaders; leaders in the lower walks of life, leaders in the middle walks of life, and leaders of the nation. The higher schools and the universities were employed to produce these types of leaders.... The leaders think and do; the followers merely do. The schools were organized for the express purpose of producing just these types.

So well was this system and plan working that, had the Imperial Government not been so impatient of that slower but surer progress by peaceful means, and staked all on a gambler's throw, in another half-century the German nation might have held the world largely in fee. As it is, the results which the Germans attained by reason of definite aims and definite methods are both an encouragement and a warning to other nations.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Point out the extent of the educational reorganization which resulted from the reform work begun at Halle.

2. How do you explain the very early German interest in compulsory school attendance, when such was unknown elsewhere in Europe?

3. Compare the Prussian Regulations of 1737 with what was common at that time in practice in the parishes of the American Colonies.

4. Show the wisdom of the early Prussian kings in working at school reform through the Church. Could they well have worked otherwise? Why?

5. How do you explain such a slow development of a professional teaching body in Prussia, when all the state influences had for so long been favorable to educational development?

6. Show that the Oberschulcollegium Board marked the beginnings of a State Ministry for Education for Prussia.

7. Show that the spirit of the Prussian leaders, after 1806, was a further expansion of the German national feeling which arose in the Period of Enlightenment.

8. Show that the reorganization of elementary education, and the creation of the University of Berlin, were almost equally important events for the future of German lands.

9. Show that the work of Prussia, in using the schools for national ends, was: (a) in keeping with the work of the French Revolutionary leaders, and (b) only a further extension of the organizing work done by Frederick the Great.

10. Show how the universities of Germany early took the lead of the universities of the world, and the influence of this fact on national progress.

11. Enumerate the new nineteenth-century tendencies observable in the early educational organization in Prussia.

12. Explain the marked mid-nineteenth-century reaction to educational development which set in.

13. Explain the early and marked welcome accorded science-study in German lands.

14. Explain in what ways Prussia attained an educational leadership, ahead of other nations.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections, illustrative of the contents of this chapter, are reproduced:

273. Barnard: The Organizing Work of Frederick William I. 274. Prussia: The School Code of 1763. 275. Prussia: The Silesian School Code of 1765. 276. Austria: The School Code of 1774. 277. Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation. 278. Mann: The Prussian Elementary Teacher and his Training. 279. Dinter: Prussian Schools and Teachers as he found them. 280. Cousin: Report on Education in Prussia. 281. Mann: The Military Aspect of Prussian Education.,

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Explain the interest of Frederick William I (273) in elementary education.

2. Characterize, from the Codes of 1763 (274) and 1765 (275), and cite paragraph to show: (a) The type of instruction ordered provided; (b) the type of teacher expected; (c) the character of the attendance required; and (d) the character of the continuation training ordered.

3. Show the similarity in their main lines of the Prussian (274) and Austrian (276) Codes.

4. Would the reasoning of Fichte (277) apply to any crushed nation? Illustrate.

5. Do we select teachers for training as carefully in the United States today as they did in Prussia eighty years ago (278)? Could we?

6. Did such conditions as Dinter describes (279) exist, even later, with us?

7. Was the Prussian school system, as described by Cousin (280), a centralized or a decentralized system?

8. Show that Mann's reasoning as to the strength of the Prussian school system (281) was thoroughly sound.

SELECTED REFERENCES

* Alexander, Thomas. The Prussian Elementary Schools. * Barnard, Henry. "Public Instruction in Prussia"; in _American Journal of Education_, vol. XX, pp. 333-434. Barnard, Henry. German Teachers and Educators. * Cassell, Henry. "Adolph Diesterweg"; in Educational Review, vol. I, pp. 345-56. (April, 1891.) Friedel, V. H. The German School as a War Nursery. Lexis, W. _A General View of the History and Organization of Public Education in the German Empire_. * Nohle, E. "History of the German School System"; in _Report U.S. Commissioner of Education_, 1897-98, vol. I, pp. 3-82. Translated from Rein's Encyclopädisches Handbuch der Pädagogik. * Paulsen, Fr. German Education, Past and Present. * Paulsen, Fr. The German Universities. * Russell, James. German Higher Schools. Seeley, J. R. Life and Times of Stein, vol. I.