PUBLIC EDUCATION
There are few countries in which education is as free as in Sweden.
From the grammar school to the university in all its stages, the cost
is defrayed entirely by the state or the parish. Education is thus not
a privilege of the wealthy, but a benefit common to all.
In Norway you are scarcely ever out of sight of a schoolhouse, and
Professor Nielsen, of the university, on being asked concerning the
ratio of the illiterates, looked surprised and replied that he was not
aware of any illiterates; that he did not recollect having seen any
statistics on the subject, and ventured to assert that anybody in
Norway could both read and write.
Education is free throughout the entire primary system, a course of
seven years, between the ages of seven and fourteen, when the law
prohibits the employment of children in any occupation, and requires
them to attend school at least thirty hours a week for twelve weeks
each year in the country and fifteen weeks in the cities. The maximum
term is forty weeks in both city and country districts. There are in
the kingdom 5,923 school districts, governed by _Skolestyret_--boards
consisting of the parish priest, the president of the municipal
council, and one of the teachers chosen by themselves. There is also a
board of supervisors, composed of three men or women, elected by the
parents of the parish. Childless people are not allowed to vote. This
board of supervisors does not appear to have any definite function
except to advise and find fault. The school board elects the teachers,
determines the courses of study and methods of discipline, and submits
recommendations and estimates for appropriations annually to the
municipal council. In both city and country what is called "voluntary
instruction" is provided outside of the legal school hours, which may
be taken advantage of by people who are willing to pay for additional
attention from the school teachers, but it is neither free nor
compulsory.
The compulsory studies in the primary schools are the Bible, the
catechism of the Lutheran creed, the Norwegian language, the usual
elementary branches, with history (including a treatise on the
constitution and the government of Norway), botany, physiology
(including the fundamental principles of hygiene and the effects of
the use of intoxicating liquors), singing, drawing, wood-carving, the
use of the lathe and other tools, manual training, gymnastics, and
rifle shooting.
The national law requires that schoolhouses shall be so located as to
be within a distance of two miles of the residences of ninety per cent
of the children of school age. The poor are provided with text-books
upon application, and in some places the municipal council provides
every child a warm dinner at noon. It can be paid for if the parents
prefer, but the better classes look upon this provision with
prejudice, as they do upon all charities. Nevertheless, it is an
excellent idea to be sure that the children of the poor get at least
one warm meal every day. In the city of Christiania, 711,302 meals
are served annually in the primary schools. The average attendance is
22,750, so that only about 24 per cent of the children take advantage
of the free dinner. Only 18,341 of these meals are paid for, and those
are taken on stormy days by children of well-to-do parents.
The Norway school teachers must be graduates of normal schools, of
which there are twelve in the kingdom; they must pass examinations and
serve a probation of three months before they are definitely engaged,
but when they have once received an appointment, they are settled for
life and sure of a pension at the end of the long term of faithful
service. The same rule applies to all civil service employees, for the
school system is a part of the government. There is no such thing as
rotation in office. Promotion is expected by all who deserve it. A
worthy and efficient teacher, having begun in youth at the lowest
grade, expects advancement to the highest, according to the judgment
of the school boards and supervisors. School teaching is a career,
just as a government clerkship is a career. People enter both
professions with the expectation of making them their life-work,
although from our point of view they offer very little inducement.
The average salary of the school teachers in Norway is only about $220
a year, the men receiving a little above the average and the women
a little less. The highest salaries are paid in the city of
Christiania--$756 for men and $434 for women. Head masters to the
number of 1,992, like parsons, are furnished with houses to live in
and little tracts of land, three or four acres, where they can raise
vegetables for their families and keep cows; and nine hundred and ten
of them add a little to their incomes by serving as parish clerks.
When they become too old to teach, they receive pensions of from $56
to $224 a year, and when they die, their widows are remembered by the
government to the extent of from $28 to $74 per year.
The primary school system of Norway costs an average of $5.60 per
child per year in the country, and $13.16 per child in the city, or
$1.26 per capita of population in a year.
There is a secondary school system under the control of the national
government, administered by the department of education and religion.
It embraces forty-six high schools, located in different parts of the
country, known as _Latin-Gymnasier_, or classical schools, at which
students are prepared for the university, and _Real-Gymnasier_, or
technical schools, in which they are taught English, mathematics, the
natural and applied sciences, bookkeeping, stenography, and other
branches that will fit them for commercial or industrial pursuits.
There are also twelve cathedral schools, one for each ecclesiastical
diocese, which were founded in the middle ages, and are supported by
large estates acquired from the early kings and by confiscation of
church property after the Reformation. There are also five private
academies, attended chiefly by the sons of rich men.
The University of Christiania, which is one of the first in Europe,
was founded in 1811, and has five faculties, with sixty-three
professors, eighteen fellows, and about 1,450 students, of whom 70 are
studying theology, 20 law, 330 medicine, and 600 are in the scientific
department. The professors are appointed by the king, and receive
salaries of about $950 a year, with a longevity allowance in addition
amounting to about $125 every five years. The fellows are paid about
$350 a year, and are provided with lodging rooms. Tuition at the
university is free upon payment of a matriculation fee of $10. Women
have been admitted on even terms with men since 1882, and 260 have
matriculated, of whom 53 have taken degrees. The university has an
endowment of $1,310,000, with legacies amounting to about $250,000
to encourage original investigations in special lines of study. The
Nansen fund, which amounts to about $150,000, is intended to encourage
exploration on the seas. The hospitals of Christiania are in charge of
the medical department.
There are also the usual schools for the deaf, dumb, blind,
weak-minded, and crippled children, supported by the state, and reform
schools for the correction and restraint of the depraved. Technical
schools, with day and night classes, for teaching the trades to young
men and women, four schools of engineering in different parts of the
country, nine industrial schools for women only, where they can
be trained to earn their living by sewing, dressmaking, weaving,
millinery, embroidery, and other needlework, bookkeeping, typesetting,
stenography, typewriting, photography, and other lines of industry,
and an art school especially patronized by the king in connection
with the art gallery at Christiania, where painting, drawing, and
designing, modeling, decoration, and the art of architecture are
taught.
In most of the counties are found what are called
_Amtsskoler_--schools to educate people for a practical life, with
separate courses for each sex, the boys being taught farming,
gardening, and mechanics, and the girls the arts of the household.
There are also schools of deportment, where girls are fitted to act
as governesses and are taught the social graces, music, dancing, the
languages, and conversation. In several of the cities are workingmen's
colleges, known as _Arbeiderakademier_, where mechanics who have an
ambition to acquire a better knowledge of their trades and general
culture, may attend lectures in the evenings, delivered by scientific
men, successful mechanics, and other specialists. The range of
subjects includes every branch of human activity.
In Sweden, in the _Folkskola_, Elementary or People's School,
maintained by the parish under the direction of the school board and
the close supervision of the state, instruction is compulsory as well
as gratuitous. As in Norway, between the ages of seven and fourteen
every boy and girl must attend a public school, unless the parents can
show that their child is receiving equivalent instruction elsewhere,
in a private school or at home. No exception or compromise is allowed,
and no "half-time" system or "rush" through the school to suit the
convenience of the factory or the farmer. For seven years, during
eight and a half months of the year,--allowing for summer, Christmas
and Easter holidays,--and thirty-six hours per week, every boy and
girl in the kingdom receives instruction and goes through the same
curriculum. The school board, which has the direct management of the
schools is elected to the parish, and women are eligible to it. The
state, which controls the whole system of education, from the A.B.C.
class to the college and university, maintains alike its unity and its
efficiency, and sees to the strict enforcement of the law. Parents who
try to evade it, through malevolence or neglect, may even, after due
warning, be deprived of their children, who are taken over by the
community during their school years.
In thinly populated districts the school may be "ambulatory," held now
in one part of the district and now in another, so that all may attend
in turn. In such cases the schooling is reduced to four months in the
year. But there is no district, however poor or thinly populated,
without its _Folkskola_. There are nearly twelve hundred of these in
the land, attended by seven hundred and forty-two thousand pupils, and
employing sixteen thousand two hundred and seventy teachers of both
sexes.
No more conscientious, hardworking, and respectable class of men and
women can be found than the teachers. Eight years' study, first in a
special seminary and then in a training college, has taught them their
profession both in theory and practice. They are convinced of the
importance and dignity of their office, and are respected accordingly.
Socially, the general type of the school teacher is a superior one.
There are at present in the Riksdag, occupying seats as members of the
second chamber, no fewer than eleven teachers in elementary schools,
twelve teachers in secondary schools, one inspector of schools, and
one university professor. In the rural community, the school teacher
is something of an authority. Most of the members of the parish have
"sat under him" at school in their early life, and owe to him most of
what they know. For years he has been diffusing knowledge around him,
and has been looked up to as the fountain of book learning. He is the
local parson's great coadjutor in parish matters, and being a ready
speaker, is of no mean influence in the parish assemblies. The one
dark blot in the existence of the school teacher is the small salary
received. Few of them receive so much as $300 a year, the average
running from $225 to $275; even in Stockholm the figure going little
beyond $300. Living is, however, cheap in the rural districts, and
these teachers, who are drawn generally from the rural and indigent
classes, are accustomed to frugality and economy. They are lodged
free of rent in the schoolhouse or a cottage attached to it, and are
allowed firewood and other small prerequisites. They have generally a
small garden or potato patch to cultivate, and can keep a cow and a
few hens. They often add to their modest stipend by extra work, such
as teaching in the evening classes, playing the organ in church, and
writing, or some such work after school hours.
At fifteen, after seven years' assiduous attendance at the
_Folkskola_, the boy and girl have finished their education, so far as
compulsory instruction goes, and they are free to begin work on their
father's farm, in his shop or his trade, or take service anywhere and
shift for themselves. They may, however, if they like, pursue their
studies further in the continuation schools, or in the evening classes
provided in most parishes, or repair to a college or gymnasium town,
if they elect to enter the church, the liberal professions, or the
service of the state. But they have first to be confirmed, and it is
here that the definite religious instruction is given. The preparation
for confirmation, which entails a much longer and more advanced course
of religious instruction than is usual for confirmation in England,
is independent of the school and takes place in church, parents being
allowed every liberty in the choice of the clergyman who performs this
office for their children. English readers who are acquainted with
Longfellow's admirable translation of Tegnér's beautiful poem, "The
Children of the Lord's Supper," are aware of the importance of this
ceremony in Swedish social life. It is the great turning point in the
existence of Scandinavian youth. The boy and girl emerging from it
leave boyhood and girlhood behind them. Knee-breeches and short frocks
have given way to pants and long skirts. The boy sports his first
watch and glories in his first shirt-front. The girl discards her
long plaits, and wears her hair in a top-knot. They have made their
profession of faith in public, have been examined in regard to it, and
have had to answer for it in the presence of the whole congregation.
They have assumed henceforth the full responsibility of their acts. In
the eyes of the church, if not in the eyes of the law, they are free
and responsible members of society.
The secondary schools are maintained by the state, and are confined
to the towns. They comprise nine forms in seven classes, of which
the last two have double forms. The first three correspond to the
curriculum of the primary schools, where are taught reading, writing,
arithmetic, history, natural sciences, singing, drawing, and
gymnastics, to which are added _Sloyd_ and gardening for the boys, and
needlework and cooking for the girls. Scholars who have passed these
in the primary schools enter into the fourth form. They are generally
divided into two branches, the classical and the modern, according
as the classics or languages predominate in the curriculum, which
comprises religion, Swedish composition, history, geography,
philosophy, Latin, Greek, German, French, mathematics, zoology,
botany, physics, chemistry, and drawing. After the fourth form,
pupils must declare, with the written approbation of their parents or
guardians, whether they will follow the classical or non-classical
course, according as they intend to qualify for the universities
or the technical high schools. Not all the pupils who attend these
secondary schools complete the full course and pass the final
examination. More than half--those who mean to devote themselves to
trade, agriculture, or industry, and those who have not developed
the capabilities necessary to confront the severe final test of the
"maturity" examination--leave the school on attaining the upper forms.
To those who intend to enter the professions, the civil and military
service, and the church, the full course of the secondary school is
necessary, the "maturity" examination certificate being the only open
sesame to the universities, the special colleges, and the technical
high schools. To obtain it and to don the white cap, which is the
outward and visible sign of university membership, is the first great
step in the life of the ambitious youth.
For young men destined for the technical trades and professions, there
are open, after they have passed the maturity examination at the
secondary school, two special institutions, where they complete their
technical training--the Technical High School of Stockholm, and
the Chalmers Technical Institute at Gothenburg, besides elementary
technical schools at other places. The Stockholm Technical School,
which is the most complete, comprises five branches: (1) mechanical
technology and machinery, shipbuilding and electrotechnics; (2)
chemical technology; (3) mineralogy, metallurgy, and mining mechanics;
(4) architecture; (5) engineering. The course in each of these
sections takes between three and four years. Generally several are
combined, constituting a course of six or seven years.
There are two universities in Sweden--Upsala in the north, founded in
1477; and Lund in the south, founded in 1668, to which may be added
the Medical College in Stockholm, founded in 1810, and limited to the
medical faculty. The studies at these universities are thorough
and comprehensive, but unusually long. They have each four
faculties,--theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy,--and
grant three different degrees in each, besides special degrees in
theology and jurisprudence for entering the church and the government
services. Even these last, which are easiest to obtain, require a
course of from four to five years. To take a medical degree a young
man must stay nine years at the university, and two additional years
in the hospitals, making eleven years in all. Unlike English and
American universities, the Swedish universities are non-residential.
Like those of the Continent, they are only teaching institutions, and
the students who matriculate at Upsala and Lund must lodge in town or
board with families living there. Beyond attending the lectures and
going up to be tested, they have no direct intercourse with their
professors.
In this brief sketch of the institutions provided by the state it
will be seen that what especially characterizes public instruction in
Norway and Sweden is its undoubted thoroughness and depth, though a
serious penalty is paid for this in the extreme length of the course.
By the time it is completed, and the young man issues from the
protracted ordeal, armed for the battle of life, several of the best
years of his youth are passed; he is already between twenty-five and
thirty years of age when he first treads on the threshold of his
career. On the other hand, he enters it not only with the necessary
qualifications whereby to rise to eminence in it, of which the severe
tests he has undergone offer evident proof, but with the assurance of
finding the way more or less open to success.[i]