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.
[Illustration: FIG. 162. THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)]
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.
CHAPTER 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).
[Illustration: FIG. 163. THE ROUSSEAU MONUMENT AT GENEVA]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 64. BASEDOW (1723-90)]
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.
[ILLUSTRATION: FIG. 165 IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 166. THE SCENE OF PESTALOZZI'S LABORS]
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.
[Illustration: PLATE II. JOHANN HEINRICH PESTALOZZI.]
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.
[Illustration: PLATE 12: FELLENBERG'S INSTITUTE AT HOFWYL.
The first Agricultural and Mechanical College. This school contained the
germ-idea of all our agricultural education.]
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).
[Illustration: FIG. 167. FELLENBERG (1771-1844)]
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_.
CHAPTER 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 168. THE SCHOOL OF A HANDWORKER
Conducted in his home. A gentleman visiting the school.
After a drawing in the German School Museum in Berlin.]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 169. THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, 1740-86]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 170. A GERMAN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCHOOL
(After a picture in the German School Museum in Berlin)]
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]
[Illustration: PLATE 13. TWO LEADERS IN THE REGENERATION OF PRUSSIA
JOHANN GOTTLEIB FICHTE (1762-1814)
Philosopher, university teacher
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT (1767-1835)
Philosopher, scholar, statesman]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 171. DINTER (1760-1831)
Director of Teachers' Seminaries in Saxony; Superintendent of Education in
East Prussia.]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 172. DIESTERWEG (1790-1866)
Director of Teachers' Seminaries at Maurs (1820-33) and Berlin (1833-49).
"Der deutsche Pestalozzi".]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 173. THE PRUSSIAN STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM CREATED
Compare with Fig. 269 and note the difference between a European two-class
system and the American democratic educational ladder.]
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.