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schools find condemnation on the part of these French students. They say Germans pay less attention to show-that is, to legitimate show. For instance, they care naught for rhetorical polish, and their recitations are considered good when the essential facts are brought out correctly. The garment of thought is neglected. Their teaching of drawing is also less refined than that in France.

With whatever reserve these juvenile opinions may be accepted, they are very interesting and point out the vital differences between the schools of the two countries mentioned.

XXII-AN ENGLISHMAN'S VIEW OF THE GERMAN SCHOOLS.

Mr. Samuel Smith, M. P., wrote in March, 1888, to the London Times as follows:

"The salient fact which strikes all observers is the universality of good education in that country. There is no such thing as an uneducated class; there are no such things, speaking broadly, as neglected and uncared-for children. All classes of the community are better edu cated than the corresponding ones in our country; and this applies quite as much to primary as to secondary education. Nothing struck me more than the general intelligence of the humbler working classes. Waiters, porters, guides, and others have a knowledge of history, geog. raphy, and other subjects far beyond that possessed by corresponding classes in England, and the reason is not far to seek. The whole population has long been passed through a thorough and comprehensive system of instruction obligatory by law, and far more extended than is given in our elementary schools. I went through several of these schools and observed the method of teaching, which was simply admi rable. The children are not crammed, but are taught to reason from the earliest stages. The first object of the teacher is to make his pupils comprehend the meaning of everything they learn, and to carry them from stage to stage, so as to keep up an eager interest.

"I saw no signs of weariness or apathy among either teachers or scholars. The teaching was all viva voce, the teacher always standing beside the black board and illustrating his subject by object lessons. The instruction was through the eye and hand as well as the ear, and question and answer succeeded so sharply as to keep the whole class on the qui vive. The teachers are, as a body, much better trained than in England, and seem to be enthusiasts in their calling, and the school holds a far higher position in the social economy of the country than it does with us. What I am saying here applies equally to Switzerland as to Germany, and, for educational purposes, Zurich will compare with any part of the German Empire. The main advantage, however, that primary education has in Germany over England lies in the regularity of attendance and the longer period of school life. There is none of the difficulty of getting children to school that exists in England; the laws are very rigid and permit no frivolous excuses, and, what is even more important, the people entirely acquiesce in the laws, and are inclined

rather to increase than relax their rigor. It is well known that in London and all our great cities a large part of the population seek to avoid school attendance by every means in their power, and consequently the attendance is most irregular. There is very little of this in Germany; at least I have not found it so. Then, in our country, a great portion of our children are withdrawn altogether from school after passing the fourth or fifth standard, at the age of eleven or twelve, whereas in Germany almost everywhere attendance is compulsory until fourteen for boys, though in some places girls are allowed to leave at thirteen. "This last point is the one I wish to emphasize. The great defectI might almost call it the fatal defect-of our system is that it stops just at a time when real education should begin. It allows a child to leave school at an age when its learning is soon forgotten and its discipline effaced. It is hardly too much to say that the two years' additional training the German child receives in the elementary school doubles its chance in life as compared with the English child.

"But this is not all. The Germans are rapidly developing a system of evening continuation classes, which carry on education for two or three years longer. In Saxony the boys who leave the primary school, if they do not go to the higher schools, must attend for three years longer-say until they are seventeen-continuation classes for at least five hours per week. But teaching is provided for them, and they are encouraged to attend twelve hours per week. So complete is this system that even the waiters at the hotels up to the age of seventeen attend afternoon classes, and are taught one or two foreign languages. I take Saxony as one of the most advanced States; but the law is much the same in Württemberg and Baden, and the system is found to work so well that it is in comtemplation to extend it to all the States in the German Empire, and Austria will probably follow suit. This is confi dently expected to happen in the course of 1888. I must state as an undoubted fact that in Germany and Switzerland, and I believe in some other continental countries, the opinion is ripening into a conviction. that the education even of the poorest classes should be continued in some form or other to the age of sixteen or seventeen. They find by experience that wherever this is adopted it gives an enormous advan tage to the people in the competition of life, and above all, trains them to habits of industry and mental application. I believe that it is owing to this system of thorough education that Germany has almost extin guished the pauper and semipauper class, which is the bane and disgrace of our country.

"Wherever I have gone I have inquired how they deal with the ragged and squalid class of children, and I have been told in every city I visited-Zürich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Chemnitz, Dresden, and Berlin-that such a class practically does not exist. I do not mean that there is not poverty, and plenty of it, in Germany. Wages are much lower than in England, and many have a hard struggle to live; but

there does not seem to exist to any extent that mass of sunken, degraded beings who with us cast their children upon the streets, or throw them on the rates, or leave them to charity. Some half a million children in the United Kingdom are dependent more or less on the almis or the rates of the community, and probably another half-million are miserably underfed and underclad. Nothing to correspond with this exists in Germany. The poorest people there would be ashamed to treat their children as multitudes do with us. Indeed, I have not seen since I left home a single case of a ragged or begging child. I repeat that the great cause of this both in Germany and Switzerland is the far greater care they have taken of the education of the children for at least two or three generations, whereas we have only taken the matter up seriously since 1870, when Mr. Foster's great act was passed.

"Let us contrast the general condition of our London children, for instance, at the age of fifteen or sixteen with that of the same class in Berlin, or Dresden, or Chemnitz. With us uine-tenths of the chil dren have long since left school, and a too large proportion of them are receiving no training but the coarse and brutalizing education of the streets. Most of them retain little of what they have learned at school, except the power to read the 'penny dreadful,' which stuffs their minds with everything a child should not know. They are to a very large extent adepts in profane and obscene language and are frequenters of the public house and similar places; a great many of them are learning no useful trade or calling, but are drifting helplessly into the class of wretched, ill-paid, casual laborers. Very many of them marry before they are twenty and are soon the parents of a numerous progeny, half starved and stunted, both in body and mind. Compare, or rather contrast, this with Germany. At fifteen or sixteen a great part of the children are still under excellent instruction. Exceedingly few are to be found roaming about the streets. They are prohibited, at least in some parts of Germany, from entering the public houses (except with their parents) until the age of seventeen, and I am told are everywhere prohibited from smoking until sixteen. In fact there are, both by law and public sentiment, barriers placed against the corruption of the young which do not exist in England.

"No country has ever suffered more from the abuse of the idea of individual liberty than England has done. Owing to this overstrained idea we did not get compulsory education until long after the advanced nations of the Continent, and still we are far behind them in the care we take of our children. It is intolerable that this state of things should continue longer. Democratic government every where insists upon good education, and expects each citizen to fulfill his duties to the state.

"Public opinion in our country will certainly insist, and that before long, that we shall not be forever disgraced with the residuum of drunken, demoralized, and utterly incapable population to be found in any modern state. It will insist that some time be spared for the solu

tion of this vital question from the wrangles of party politics and the personal recriminations of party leaders. When one sees what a poor country like Germany has done to raise its people in spite of the con scription and three years' compulsory military service, in spite of frequent and exhausting wars, from which our island home has been free, one has grave doubts whether our system of party government is not a failure.

"Certainly we waste on barren conflicts and wordy strife far more time than other nations do in the conduct of their affairs. They direct their energies with business-like precision to supply the exact needs of the people, we fritter away our enormous political energy in fruitless party contests which every year degrade Parliament lower and lower, and make it less and less fit for the practical work of governing the nation.

"One thing seems certain-unless we can give more attention to the vital questions which concern the welfare of the masses, our country must go down in the scale of nations. No honest observer can doubt that in many respects the Germans are already ahead of us, and they are making far more rapid progress than we are. They are applying technical science to every department of industry in a way that Englishmen have little idea of. Their polytechnics and their practical technical schools are far ahead of anything we possess in England, the leaders are far better trained, the workmen are far better educated and far more temperate and thrifty than ours are. Wherever the Germans and English are coming into competition upon equal terms the Germans are beating us. This is not because the Germans have greater natural power. I believe the British race is far the more vigorous naturally. But they are organized, disciplined, and trained far better than we are. They bring science to bear upon every department of the national life, whereas we, up till lately, resented all state interference, and so exaggerated the doctrines of freedom as almost to glory in our abuses.

"There is much more I might say if space permitted, but it will not do to trespass further on your indulgence. I will only add in conclusion that England must wake up, and that immediately, to the neces sity of a far more thorough and practical system of education, else will she lose the great place she has hitherto held in the world's history."

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