this point I should prefer not to express the results of my own observations, but they tend in the same direction as the observations of President Pritchet in the fifth report of the Carnegie Foundation (p. 64): "The high-school student acquires a superficial knowledge of many subjects and learns none with thoroughness. He lacks the hard fiber of intellectual discipline." I do not wish to disguise the fact that our German university teachers utter numerous complaints of the same tenor with regard to the graduates of the German gymnasium, but it can not be denied that the average demands of the German universities upon their students are much more exacting than those of a large number of American universities. This lack of severe intellectual discipline in the United States is increased not a little by the fact that in so many of the high schools a large number of the courses are elective. If the student does not like the strict methods of a particular teacher or the difficulties of a certain course, he may in many of the schools choose a different subject the following year and so endeavor to evade severe training. To an entirely too great extent the student in the American high school does only what he likes to do, or what can be accomplished with a minimum of effort, and not what really helps him intellectually. This is utterly impossible in the German schools. Every student without exception must either adjust himself to the regular program throughout the full nine years of study, and satisfy certain minimum requirements therein, or else leave school. Furthermore, many tasks are assigned to him that are in no sense pleasurable; he occasionally execrates these, but in the end he does them under the hard stress of necessity in order to reach his goal, the university. Thus the student of the German secondary schools is held strictly to painstaking intellectual effort and accustomed to it, more so than in the majority of American high schools. This is a dark side of the picture, doubtless much lamented in America also, and in many cities energetic measures are taken against it. But there is a bright side, too, the lack of which in Germany is very deeply felt. There are features of the American high school that develop certain active qualities of the will which fail to thrive in the German schools with their often much too stringent compulsion. The great freedom of the American high school fosters individual initiative, courage, cheerfulness, good fellowship, human qualities which are just as important as the passive qualities of will engendered in the German schools: Patience, persistence, endurance, thoroughness. The greater freedom which the American high school allows the student likewise forces the teachers in these schools into a service of comradeship with their pupils. The whole intercourse in the good American schools is based more on mutual confidence than with us. This shows itself outwardly in the touching loyalty which the American student has for his high school, a loyalty which we unfortunately miss in the German student. It is very much to be desired that the German secondary schools learn far more than hitherto from this good feature of the American high school, and on the other hand the American schools would be benefited if they would adopt something of the strictness of our German secondary schools. The German secondary schools have still another dark side. Their declared purpose is not to educate the people in general, which is the oft-declared aim of the American high school, but to prepare for the university or technical school, and thereby for the Government service. But since in Germany the Government service, because of the lifelong tenure of office, means an absolutely secure livelihood once a position is obtained, more students throng into the higher institutions than are needed for the Government work, and these persons are lost to commercial and industrial vocations. Thus Germany suffers more and more from an intellectual proletariat, a misfortune entirely unknown in the United States. Especially since the widespread development of the manual training high schools, with their careful fostering of technical education (a type of schools which we do not know at all in Germany), it seems to me that this danger has been put off indefinitely so far as the United States is concerned. For I have found a great number of graduates of these institutions working as apprentices in large factories, a phenomenon that would be sought in vain in Germany. Generally speaking, the schools are in the midst of a rapidly increasing development in both nations. The great advantage that Germany possesses, in addition to the relentless thoroughness of the whole educational work, is in the well-regulated organization of a State-provided school system, which requires in each community a school as good as that of every other community, aside from the possibility of an ill-adapted teaching force, of course. But this advantage has been purchased at the expense of many qualities for which we must envy the American schools. It is to be regretted that the two nations are separated by so broad an expanse of ocean, for this distance tends to prevent large numbers of school men in both lands from making a mutual study of the educational institutions of the two countries. During my visit to the United States I gained the firm conviction that we could learn no less from the American schools than the citizens of the United States could learn from us. This is especially true of the common school, of which I have seen ideal examples in different cities. Indeed, it would be greatly desired that the German Government might arrange to have the American schools studied by German teachers, just as the American school authorities have been doing with us so generously for many years. |