A law respecting schools has existed, more or less, in the states of the
south of Germany, for above a century, but which has been greatly
improved within the last thirty years. By this law, parents are
compelled to send their children to school, from the age of six to
fourteen years, where they must be taught reading, writing, and
arithmetic, but where they may acquire as much additional instruction in
other branches as their parents choose to pay for. To many of the
schools of Bavaria large gardens are attached, in which, the boys are
taught the principal operations of agriculture and gardening in their
hours of play; and, in all the schools of the three states, the girls,
in addition to the same instruction as the boys, are taught knitting,
sewing, embroidery, &c. It is the duty of the police and priest (which
may be considered equivalent to our parish vestries) of each commune or
parish, to see that the law is duly executed, the children sent
regularly, and instructed duly. If the parents are partially or wholly
unable to pay for their children, the commune makes up the deficiency.
Religion is taught by the priest of the village or hamlet; and where, as
is frequently the case in Wurtemberg, there are two or three religions
in one parish, each child is taught by the priest of its parents; all of
which priests are, from their office, members of the committee or vestry
of the commune. The priest or priests of the parish have the regular
inspection of the school-master, and are required by the government to
see that he does his duty, while each priest, at the same time, sees
that the children of his flock attend regularly. After the child has
been the appointed number of years at school, it receives from the
schoolmaster, and the priest of the religion to which it belongs, a
certificate, without which it cannot procure employment. To employ any,
person under twenty-one, without such a certificate, is illegal, and
punished by a fixed fine, as is almost every other offence in this part
of Germany; and the fines are never remitted, which makes punishment
always certain. The schoolmaster is paid much in the same way as in
Scotland; by a house, a garden, and sometimes a field, and by a small
salary from the parish, and by fixed rates for the children.
A second law, which is coeval with the school law, renders it illegal
for any young man to marry before he is twenty-five, or any young woman
before she is eighteen; and a young man, at whatever age he wishes to
marry, must show, to the police and the priest of the commune where he
resides, that he is able, and has the prospect, to provide for a wife
and family.--_London's Mag. Nat. Hist._
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