education tending to develop the mental faculties, as opposed to
'material' education,[5] which is intended to deal only with the
acquisition of facts, _e.g._ history, mathematics, etc.], and one of
the utmost value: but what do we find in the public school--that is to
say, in the head-quarters of formal education? He who understands how
to apply what he has heard here will also know what to think of the
modern public school as a so-called educational institution. He will
discover, for instance, that the public school, according to its
fundamental principles, does not educate for the purposes of culture,
but for the purposes of scholarship; and, further, that of late it
seems to have adopted a course which indicates rather that it has even
discarded scholarship in favour of journalism as the object of its
exertions. This can be clearly seen from the way in which German is
taught.
"Instead of that purely practical method of instruction by which the
teacher accustoms his pupils to severe self-discipline in their own
language, we find everywhere the rudiments of a historico-scholastic
method of teaching the mother-tongue: that is to say, people deal with
it as if it were a dead language and as if the present and future were
under no obligations to it whatsoever. The historical method has
become so universal in our time, that even the living body of the
language is sacrificed for the sake of anatomical study. But this is
precisely where culture begins--namely, in understanding how to treat
the quick as something vital, and it is here too that the mission of
the cultured teacher begins: in suppressing the urgent claims of
'historical interests' wherever it is above all necessary to _do_
properly and not merely to _know_ properly. Our mother-tongue,
however, is a domain in which the pupil must learn how to _do_
properly, and to this practical end, alone, the teaching of German is
essential in our scholastic establishments. The historical method may
certainly be a considerably easier and more comfortable one for the
teacher; it also seems to be compatible with a much lower grade of
ability and, in general, with a smaller display of energy and will on
his part. But we shall find that this observation holds good in every
department of pedagogic life: the simpler and more comfortable method
always masquerades in the disguise of grand pretensions and stately
titles; the really practical side, the _doing_, which should belong to
culture and which, at bottom, is the more difficult side, meets only
with disfavour and contempt. That is why the honest man must make
himself and others quite clear concerning this _quid pro quo_.
"Now, apart from these learned incentives to a study of the language,
what is there besides which the German teacher is wont to offer? How
does he reconcile the spirit of his school with the spirit of the
_few_ that Germany can claim who are really cultured,--_i.e._ with the
spirit of its classical poets and artists? This is a dark and thorny
sphere, into which one cannot even bear a light without dread; but
even here we shall conceal nothing from ourselves; for sooner or later
the whole of it will have to be reformed. In the public school, the
repulsive impress of our æsthetic journalism is stamped upon the still
unformed minds of youths. Here, too, the teacher sows the seeds of
that crude and wilful misinterpretation of the classics, which later
on disports itself as art-criticism, and which is nothing but
bumptious barbarity. Here the pupils learn to speak of our unique
_Schiller_ with the superciliousness of prigs; here they are taught to
smile at the noblest and most German of his works--at the Marquis of
Posa, at Max and Thekla--at these smiles German genius becomes
incensed and a worthier posterity will blush.
"The last department in which the German teacher in a public school is
at all active, which is often regarded as his sphere of highest
activity, and is here and there even considered the pinnacle of public
school education, is the so-called _German composition_. Owing to the
very fact that in this department it is almost always the most gifted
pupils who display the greatest eagerness, it ought to have been made
clear how dangerously stimulating, precisely here, the task of the
teacher must be. _German composition_ makes an appeal to the
individual, and the more strongly a pupil is conscious of his various
qualities, the more personally will he do his _German composition_.
This 'personal doing' is urged on with yet an additional fillip in
some public schools by the choice of the subject, the strongest proof
of which is, in my opinion, that even in the lower classes the
non-pedagogic subject is set, by means of which the pupil is led to
give a description of his life and of his development. Now, one has
only to read the titles of the compositions set in a large number of
public schools to be convinced that probably the large majority of
pupils have to suffer their whole lives, through no fault of their
own, owing to this premature demand for personal work--for the unripe
procreation of thoughts. And how often are not all a man's subsequent
literary performances but a sad result of this pedagogic original sin
against the intellect!
"Let us only think of what takes place at such an age in the
production of such work. It is the first individual creation; the
still undeveloped powers tend for the first time to crystallise; the
staggering sensation produced by the demand for self-reliance imparts
a seductive charm to these early performances, which is not only quite
new, but which never returns. All the daring of nature is hauled out
of its depths; all vanities--no longer constrained by mighty
barriers--are allowed for the first time to assume a literary form:
the young man, from that time forward, feels as if he had reached his
consummation as a being not only able, but actually invited, to speak
and to converse. The subject he selects obliges him either to express
his judgment upon certain poetical works, to class historical persons
together in a description of character, to discuss serious ethical
problems quite independently, or even to turn the searchlight inwards,
to throw its rays upon his own development and to make a critical
report of himself: in short, a whole world of reflection is spread out
before the astonished young man who, until then, had been almost
unconscious, and is delivered up to him to be judged.
"Now let us try to picture the teacher's usual attitude towards these
first highly influential examples of original composition. What does
he hold to be most reprehensible in this class of work? What does he
call his pupil's attention to?--To all excess in form or thought--that
is to say, to all that which, at their age, is essentially
characteristic and individual. Their really independent traits which,
in response to this very premature excitation, can manifest themselves
only in awkwardness, crudeness, and grotesque features,--in short,
their individuality is reproved and rejected by the teacher in favour
of an unoriginal decent average. On the other hand, uniform mediocrity
gets peevish praise; for, as a rule, it is just the class of work
likely to bore the teacher thoroughly.
"There may still be men who recognise a most absurd and most dangerous
element of the public school curriculum in the whole farce of this
German composition. Originality is demanded here: but the only shape
in which it can manifest itself is rejected, and the 'formal'
education that the system takes for granted is attained to only by a
very limited number of men who complete it at a ripe age. Here
everybody without exception is regarded as gifted for literature and
considered as capable of holding opinions concerning the most
important questions and people, whereas the one aim which proper
education should most zealously strive to achieve would be the
suppression of all ridiculous claims to independent judgment, and the
inculcation upon young men of obedience to the sceptre of genius. Here
a pompous form of diction is taught in an age when every spoken or
written word is a piece of barbarism. Now let us consider, besides,
the danger of arousing the self-complacency which is so easily
awakened in youths; let us think how their vanity must be flattered
when they see their literary reflection for the first time in the
mirror. Who, having seen all these effects at _one_ glance, could any
longer doubt whether all the faults of our public, literary, and
artistic life were not stamped upon every fresh generation by the
system we are examining: hasty and vain production, the disgraceful
manufacture of books; complete want of style; the crude,
characterless, or sadly swaggering method of expression; the loss of
every æsthetic canon; the voluptuousness of anarchy and chaos--in
short, the literary peculiarities of both our journalism and our
scholarship.
"None but the very fewest are aware that, among many thousands,
perhaps only _one_ is justified in describing himself as literary, and
that all others who at their own risk try to be so deserve to be met
with Homeric laughter by all competent men as a reward for every
sentence they have ever had printed;--for it is truly a spectacle meet
for the gods to see a literary Hephaistos limping forward who would
pretend to help us to something. To educate men to earnest and
inexorable habits and views, in this respect, should be the highest
aim of all mental training, whereas the general _laisser aller_ of the
'fine personality' can be nothing else than the hall-mark of
barbarism. From what I have said, however, it must be clear that, at
least in the teaching of German, no thought is given to culture;
something quite different is in view,--namely, the production of the
afore-mentioned 'free personality.' And so long as German public
schools prepare the road for outrageous and irresponsible scribbling,
so long as they do not regard the immediate and practical discipline
of speaking and writing as their most holy duty, so long as they treat
the mother-tongue as if it were only a necessary evil or a dead body,
I shall not regard these institutions as belonging to real culture.
"In regard to the language, what is surely least noticeable is any
trace of the influence of _classical examples_: that is why, on the
strength of this consideration alone, the so-called 'classical
education' which is supposed to be provided by our public school,
strikes me as something exceedingly doubtful and confused. For how
could anybody, after having cast one glance at those examples, fail to
see the great earnestness with which the Greek and the Roman regarded
and treated his language, from his youth onwards--how is it possible
to mistake one's example on a point like this one?--provided, of
course, that the classical Hellenic and Roman world really did hover
before the educational plan of our public schools as the highest and
most instructive of all morals--a fact I feel very much inclined to
doubt. The claim put forward by public schools concerning the
'classical education' they provide seems to be more an awkward evasion
than anything else; it is used whenever there is any question raised
as to the competency of the public schools to impart culture and to
educate. Classical education, indeed! It sounds so dignified! It
confounds the aggressor and staves off the assault--for who could see
to the bottom of this bewildering formula all at once? And this has
long been the customary strategy of the public school: from whichever
side the war-cry may come, it writes upon its shield--not overloaded
with honours--one of those confusing catchwords, such as: 'classical
education,' 'formal education,' 'scientific education':--three
glorious things which are, however, unhappily at loggerheads, not only
with themselves but among themselves, and are such that, if they were
compulsorily brought together, would perforce bring forth a
culture-monster. For a 'classical education' is something so unheard
of, difficult and rare, and exacts such complicated talent, that only
ingenuousness or impudence could put it forward as an attainable goal
in our public schools. The words: 'formal education' belong to that
crude kind of unphilosophical phraseology which one should do one's
utmost to get rid of; for there is no such thing as 'the opposite of
formal education.' And he who regards 'scientific education' as the
object of a public school thereby sacrifices 'classical education' and
the so-called 'formal education,' at one stroke, as the scientific man
and the cultured man belong to two different spheres which, though
coming together at times in the same individual, are never reconciled.
"If we compare all three of these would-be aims of the public school
with the actual facts to be observed in the present method of teaching
German, we see immediately what they really amount to in
practice,--that is to say, only to subterfuges for use in the fight
and struggle for existence and, often enough, mere means wherewith to
bewilder an opponent. For we are unable to detect any single feature
in this teaching of German which in any way recalls the example of
classical antiquity and its glorious methods of training in languages.
'Formal education,' however, which is supposed to be achieved by this
method of teaching German, has been shown to be wholly at the pleasure
of the 'free personality,' which is as good as saying that it is
barbarism and anarchy. And as for the preparation in science, which is
one of the consequences of this teaching, our Germanists will have to
determine, in all justice, how little these learned beginnings in
public schools have contributed to the splendour of their sciences,
and how much the personality of individual university professors has
done so.--Put briefly: the public school has hitherto neglected its
most important and most urgent duty towards the very beginning of all
real culture, which is the mother-tongue; but in so doing it has
lacked the natural, fertile soil for all further efforts at culture.
For only by means of stern, artistic, and careful discipline and
habit, in a language, can the correct feeling for the greatness of our
classical writers be strengthened. Up to the present their recognition
by the public schools has been owing almost solely to the doubtful
æsthetic hobbies of a few teachers or to the massive effects of
certain of their tragedies and novels. But everybody should, himself,
be aware of the difficulties of the language: he should have learnt
them from experience: after long seeking and struggling he must reach
the path our great poets trod in order to be able to realise how
lightly and beautifully they trod it, and how stiffly and swaggeringly
the others follow at their heels.
"Only by means of such discipline can the young man acquire that
physical loathing for the beloved and much-admired 'elegance' of style
of our newspaper manufacturers and novelists, and for the 'ornate
style' of our literary men; by it alone is he irrevocably elevated at
a stroke above a whole host of absurd questions and scruples, such,
for instance, as whether Auerbach and Gutzkow are really poets, for
his disgust at both will be so great that he will be unable to read
them any longer, and thus the problem will be solved for him. Let no
one imagine that it is an easy matter to develop this feeling to the
extent necessary in order to have this physical loathing; but let no
one hope to reach sound æsthetic judgments along any other road than
the thorny one of language, and by this I do not mean philological
research, but self-discipline in one's mother-tongue.
"Everybody who is in earnest in this matter will have the same sort of
experience as the recruit in the army who is compelled to learn
walking after having walked almost all his life as a dilettante or
empiricist. It is a hard time: one almost fears that the tendons are
going to snap and one ceases to hope that the artificial and
consciously acquired movements and positions of the feet will ever be
carried out with ease and comfort. It is painful to see how awkwardly
and heavily one foot is set before the other, and one dreads that one
may not only be unable to learn the new way of walking, but that one
will forget how to walk at all. Then it suddenly become noticeable
that a new habit and a second nature have been born of the practised
movements, and that the assurance and strength of the old manner of
walking returns with a little more grace: at this point one begins to
realise how difficult walking is, and one feels in a position to laugh
at the untrained empiricist or the elegant dilettante. Our 'elegant'
writers, as their style shows, have never learnt 'walking' in this
sense, and in our public schools, as our other writers show, no one
learns walking either. Culture begins, however, with the correct
movement of the language: and once it has properly begun, it begets
that physical sensation in the presence of 'elegant' writers which is
known by the name of 'loathing.'
"We recognise the fatal consequences of our present public schools, in
that they are unable to inculcate severe and genuine culture, which
should consist above all in obedience and habituation; and that, at
their best, they much more often achieve a result by stimulating and
kindling scientific tendencies, is shown by the hand which is so
frequently seen uniting scholarship and barbarous taste, science and
journalism. In a very large majority of cases to-day we can observe
how sadly our scholars fall short of the standard of culture which the
efforts of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Winckelmann established; and
this falling short shows itself precisely in the egregious errors
which the men we speak of are exposed to, equally among literary
historians--whether Gervinus or Julian Schmidt--as in any other
company; everywhere, indeed, where men and women converse. It shows
itself most frequently and painfully, however, in pedagogic spheres,
in the literature of public schools. It can be proved that the only
value that these men have in a real educational establishment has not
been mentioned, much less generally recognised for half a century:
their value as preparatory leaders and mystogogues of classical
culture, guided by whose hands alone can the correct road leading to
antiquity be found.
"Every so-called classical education can have but one natural
starting-point--an artistic, earnest, and exact familiarity with the
use of the mother-tongue: this, together with the secret of form,
however, one can seldom attain to of one's own accord, almost
everybody requires those great leaders and tutors and must place
himself in their hands. There is, however, no such thing as a
classical education that could grow without this inferred love of
form. Here, where the power of discerning form and barbarity gradually
awakens, there appear the pinions which bear one to the only real home
of culture--ancient Greece. If with the solitary help of those pinions
we sought to reach those far-distant and diamond-studded walls
encircling the stronghold of Hellenism, we should certainly not get
very far; once more, therefore, we need the same leaders and tutors,
our German classical writers, that we may be borne up, too, by the
wing-strokes of their past endeavours--to the land of yearning, to
Greece.
"Not a suspicion of this possible relationship between our classics
and classical education seems to have pierced the antique walls of
public schools. Philologists seem much more eagerly engaged in
introducing Homer and Sophocles to the young souls of their pupils, in
their own style, calling the result simply by the unchallenged
euphemism: 'classical education.' Let every one's own experience tell
him what he had of Homer and Sophocles at the hands of such eager
teachers. It is in this department that the greatest number of deepest
deceptions occur, and whence misunderstandings are inadvertently
spread. In German public schools I have never yet found a trace of
what might really be called 'classical education,' and there is
nothing surprising in this when one thinks of the way in which these
institutions have emancipated themselves from German classical writers
and the discipline of the German language. Nobody reaches antiquity by
means of a leap into the dark, and yet the whole method of treating
ancient writers in schools, the plain commentating and paraphrasing of
our philological teachers, amounts to nothing more than a leap into
the dark.
"The feeling for classical Hellenism is, as a matter of fact, such an
exceptional outcome of the most energetic fight for culture and
artistic talent that the public school could only have professed to
awaken this feeling owing to a very crude misunderstanding. In what
age? In an age which is led about blindly by the most sensational
desires of the day, and which is not aware of the fact that, once that
feeling for Hellenism is roused, it immediately becomes aggressive and
must express itself by indulging in an incessant war with the
so-called culture of the present. For the public school boy of to-day,
the Hellenes as Hellenes are dead: yes, he gets some enjoyment out of
Homer, but a novel by Spielhagen interests him much more: yes, he
swallows Greek tragedy and comedy with a certain relish, but a
thoroughly modern drama, like Freitag's 'Journalists,' moves him in
quite another fashion. In regard to all ancient authors he is rather
inclined to speak after the manner of the æsthete, Hermann Grimm, who,
on one occasion, at the end of a tortuous essay on the Venus of Milo,
asks himself: 'What does this goddess's form mean to me? Of what use
are the thoughts she suggests to me? Orestes and OEdipus, Iphigenia
and Antigone, what have they in common with my heart?'--No, my dear
public school boy, the Venus of Milo does not concern you in any way,
and concerns your teacher just as little--and that is the misfortune,
that is the secret of the modern public school. Who will conduct you
to the land of culture, if your leaders are blind and assume the
position of seers notwithstanding? Which of you will ever attain to a
true feeling for the sacred seriousness of art, if you are
systematically spoiled, and taught to stutter independently instead of
being taught to speak; to æstheticise on your own account, when you
ought to be taught to approach works of art almost piously; to
philosophise without assistance, while you ought to be compelled to
_listen_ to great thinkers. All this with the result that you remain
eternally at a distance from antiquity and become the servants of the
day.
"At all events, the most wholesome feature of our modern institutions
is to be found in the earnestness with which the Latin and Greek
languages are studied over a long course of years. In this way boys
learn to respect a grammar, lexicons, and a language that conforms to
fixed rules; in this department of public school work there is an
exact knowledge of what constitutes a fault, and no one is troubled
with any thought of justifying himself every minute by appealing (as
in the case of modern German) to various grammatical and
orthographical vagaries and vicious forms. If only this respect for
language did not hang in the air so, like a theoretical burden which
one is pleased to throw off the moment one turns to one's
mother-tongue! More often than not, the classical master makes pretty
short work of the mother-tongue; from the outset he treats it as a
department of knowledge in which one is allowed that indolent ease
with which the German treats everything that belongs to his native
soil. The splendid practice afforded by translating from one language
into another, which so improves and fertilises one's artistic feeling
for one's own tongue, is, in the case of German, never conducted with
that fitting categorical strictness and dignity which would be above
all necessary in dealing with an undisciplined language. Of late,
exercises of this kind have tended to decrease ever more and more:
people are satisfied to _know_ the foreign classical tongues, they
would scorn being able to _apply_ them.
"Here one gets another glimpse of the scholarly tendency of public
schools: a phenomenon which throws much light upon the object which
once animated them,--that is to say, the serious desire to cultivate
the pupil. This belonged to the time of our great poets, those few
really cultured Germans,--the time when the magnificent Friedrich
August Wolf directed the new stream of classical thought, introduced
from Greece and Rome by those men, into the heart of the public
schools. Thanks to his bold start, a new order of public schools was
established, which thenceforward was not to be merely a nursery for
science, but, above all, the actual consecrated home of all higher and
nobler culture.