CHAPTER XXIX

NEW TENDENCIES AND EXPANSIONS

THE Readings of this chapter have been selected with a view to illustrating a few of the more important new tendencies in educational organization — political, scientific, vocational, and sociological — which have characterized educational progress in recent decades.

The first (367), dealing with the environmental influence of the State, sets forth the new state needs and the different attitudes toward education which the State may legitimately assume. The second (368) is introduced to show how governments, interested in the promotion of national welfare, may turn the school into new directions the better to serve national ends. The third (369) states well the position of the university as the head and crown of the state's educational system, and the relation of university thinking and teaching to national welfare and progress.

The next three selections relate to applied science and vocational training in the schools. The first of the group (370) describes the work of the Folk High Schools in Denmark, a little nation that had been made over by agricultural education since its spoliation at the hands of Prussia, in 1864. The second (371) describes the extended work done by the Germans in developing vocational training, before the World War. The third (372) states well the intimate relation existing, under modern industrial conditions, between the vocational education of a people and national prosperity.

The three selections which close the chapter have been chosen to illustrate some of the new attitudes toward child care and child welfare which have characterized the late nineteenth century. From the first (373), one may obtain a good idea of the change in attitude toward child labor and child welfare. The second (374) states simply and clearly the new problem of child labor. The third (375) describes briefly the reasons for the school undertaking a better supervision of child health than parents are usuall able to provide.

367. The Environmental Influence of the State

(McKechnie, W. S., The State and the Individual, pp. 363-64. Glasgow, 1896) The duty of the State in the matter of training the young for citizenship in the State, and the positions toward such training which it may legitimately assume, are well stated in the following selection.

The child comes into the world a bundle of undeveloped potentialities, void of experience and thought. The environment and external circumstances necessary for the growth of his mind and body are all supplied by the State. This is true, although not all nor even the chief part of them are imparted to the child directly by the officials of the government or by the laws or other organs of the State. The immediate environment depends on the influence of the family and of other institutions and agencies included in and controlled by the State. The child may have "innate ideas" in the sense of that a priori element which is one of the prerequisites of all conscious existence; but the equally necessary a posteriori element can be got only from experience; and the sphere of the State, or of various parts of the State, is the only school where experience is possible for him. He is born into the commonwealth, and from the day of his birth the rights of citizenship, which he cannot actually enjoy till he has acquired full age, are held in trust for him by the State. It is true that it is the family whose influences at first surround him, molding his earliest tendencies and aspirations after its traditions, but the family itself would be empty of content except for what flows into it from society and the State. The community as a whole, then, is the environment of the individual. It is the State which fills him with its own ideas and molds him after its own pattern. The English youth grows up with habits and ideas quite absent in the Zulu or even in the Frenchman. Allowing all claims for heredity- though this too has been indirectly supplied by the State through ancestors who were themselves its members his environment has made him what he is.

The State then using the word in its widest sense - puts its stamp on the young individuality before he has reached manhood and acquired the ability to choose his own surroundings. Willingly or unwillingly, it educates the individual and so has a terrible responsibility thrust upon its shoulders. The young mind as well as the young body is thrown upon its care during the important and impressionable years fated to mold the development of an immortal soul for time and for eternity. This trust, burdensome and disquieting as it is, is yet one which the State dare not decline.

Its duty to the young cannot be brushed aside or lightly treated. But it has also a duty to itself. In each helpless child lies a future

citizen who will form an organic portion of the commonwealth, and may exercise a deep and lasting influence on its destinies. All children. cannot become great statesmen, but all great statesmen once were children.

On these two grounds the State has both a right and a duty to include the education of the young within its proper province. Indeed it must educate whether it will or no. The only question is whether it will do so consciously or unconsciously, systematically or at random, well or ill. Government need not undertake the work of education, but the supreme legislative sovereign is forced to assume some attitude towards that all-important question.

There are three positions, any one of which Parliament may adopt. (I) It may repudiate all direct responsibility, leaving each child to scramble for itself. (II) It may compel parents to educate their offspring at their own expense. (III) It may enforce education upon all, and pay for it out of the national purse. Each of these three courses has its adherents.

368. German Secondary Schools and National Needs (Address of Emperor William II, at Berlin Conference of 1890. Translated in Report United States Commissioner of Education, 1889-90, vol. 1, pp. 359-63)

In 1890, after some previous discussion, a call was issued for a conference on problems relating to the German secondary schools. At this conference the then young German Emperor, William II, gave the main opening address, demanding that the instruction be changed to serve better the national ends. His speech created widespread discussion among German secondary schoolmasters, and is important as revealing new national conceptions as to the place and purpose of the secondary school. He said, in part:

GENTLEMEN: I desire to address a few words to you at the outset because it seemed to me important that you should know from the first what I think about this matter. Naturally there will be many things discussed that cannot be decided, and I believe that many points will remain cloudy and obscure. I have considered it proper not to leave the gentlemen in doubt as to my own views.

In the first place I wish to observe that we have to do here above all not with a political school question, but entirely with technical and pedagogical measures which we must adopt in order to fit the growing generation for the demands of the present, for the position of our Fatherland and of our life in the world at large. . . .

This cabinet order, which the honorable minister has had the goodness to mention before, would perhaps not have been necessary if the schools had stood in the position where they ought to have stood. I

should like to observe in the outset that if I should be somewhat sharp I have reference to no one personally, but to the system, to the entire situation. If the schools had done that which we demand of them, and I can speak to you as one who is initiated, for I have also attended the gymnasium and know what goes on there, then they would of necessity have taken upon themselves from the very outset the fight against social democracy. The teaching faculties would have taken firm hold of the matter unitedly, and would have so instructed the growing generation that those young people who are of about the same age as myself, that is to say, about thirty years of age, would voluntarily offer the material with which I could work in the State in order the more rapidly to become master of the movement. This has, however, not been the case. The last period in which our school was still a standard for our whole national life and of our development was in the years 1864, 1866 to 1870. Then the Prussian schools and the Prussian teaching faculties were the bearers of the idea of unity that was preached everywhere. Every graduate who came out of the school and began his voluntary military service or entered upon active life, all were united upon this one point: The German Empire shall be again established, and Alsace and Lorraine won back again. That ceased with the year 1870. The Empire is united; we have that which we wished to gain, and there the matter rested.

Starting from the new basis, the school ought now to animate the youth and make clear to them that the new political condition exists, that it may be preserved. Nothing of this kind has been observed, and in the short time that the Empire has existed centrifugal tendencies have already developed themselves. I can surely judge that accurately, because I stand at the top and all such questions come to me. The reason is to be sought in the education of the young. Where is the lack there? The lack is surely in many places. The chief reason is that since the year 1870 the philologists as beati possidentes have sat in the gymnasia and have laid their chief emphasis on the subject that was taught, upon learning and knowing, but not upon the formation of character and the needs of the life of to-day. You, Mr. Privy Councilor Hinzpeter, will pardon me - you are an enthusiastic philologist; but none the less in my opinion the matter has reached a height where finally it can go no farther. Less emphasis has been placed upon the can than upon the ken; that is shown in the requirements that are made in examinations. One proceeds from the axiom that above all things the scholar must know as much as possible; whether that is suitable for life or not is a secondary consideration. If one should converse with one of the gentlemen concerned and seek to explain to him that the young man must, after all, to a certain extent, receive a practical preparation for life and its problems, the answer is ever, that is not the task of the schools; the chief object is the gymnastics of the intel

lect, and if these gymnastics were properly pursued the young man would be in a condition to accomplish with these gymnastics all that was necessary for life. I believe that we can be no longer deluded from this standpoint.

If I now return to the schools themselves, and especially to the gymnasium, I know very well that in many circles I am considered a fanatical opponent of the gymnasium, and that I have been represented in favor of other kinds of schools. Gentlemen, that is not the case. Whoever has been in the gymnasium himself and has caught a glimpse behind the scenes knows what is lacking there. Above all, the national basis is lacking. We must take the German as the foundation for the gymnasium; we ought to educate national young Germans and not young Greeks and Romans. We must depart entirely from the basis that has existed for centuries, - from the old monastic education of the Middle Ages, where the standard was Latin with a little Greek added. That is no longer the standard; we must make German the basis. The German exercise must be the central point about which all turns....

In like manner I should like to see the national sentiment further advanced with us in questions of history, geography, and traditions. Pray let us begin at home. After, when we are perfectly acquainted with our own rooms and chambers, then can we go to the museum and look about there also. But first of all we must be perfectly at home in the history of the Fatherland. The great elector was only a misty specter in my school days; the Seven Years' War already lay outside of all consideration, and history closed with the end of the preceding century, with the French Revolution. The wars for freedom, which are the most important for the young citizen, were not gone through, and only through supplementary and very interesting lectures of Mr. Privy Councilor Hinzpeter was I in a position, thank Heaven, to learn these things. But that is precisely the punctum saliens. Why are our young people misled? Why do so many confused muddled reformers of the world appear? Why is our government continually growled about and foreign lands referred to? Because the young people do not know how our conditions have developed themselves, and that the roots lie in the time of the French Revolution; and therefore I am firmly convinced that if we explain to the young people in its chief traits this transition from the French Revolution to the nineteenth century, they will get quite a different understanding for the questions of to-day from that which they have hitherto had. They are then in a position to improve and increase their knowledge through the supplementary lectures which they will hear in the university. ...

These, gentlemen, are in general the matters I wished to bring before you, things that have touched my heart, and I can only give you this assurance. The innumerable petitions, requests, and wishes that I