there is a section of usually three or four Schulräte, which controls the elementary schools. This council is usually recruited from the ranks of directors of training colleges and from the inspectorate. The Regierung is divided into Kreise or districts, and in each district an administrative officer, called the Landrat, represents the government. The Landrat is concerned with the provision and repair of elementary school buildings; as regards internal organization, the elementary schools are under the Kreisschulinspektor.
In the Protestant districts the inspectors (Kreisschulinspektoren) are usually Evangelical clergymen holding the position of superintendent in the Lutheran Church. In the Catholic and certain other exceptional districts inspectors with pedagogical qualifications and the status of full government inspectors are appointed. Every Inspection.candidate for Lutheran ordination is required to spend six months at a training college, but pedagogical opinion is hostile to the system, which must be regarded as a survival of the traditional union of church and state in educational affairs, retained at the present day from motives of economy and a desire to conciliate the church.
For every school there is an Ortsschulinspektor, usually the clergyman of the parish, who discharges the duties of local manager and correspondent. This local inspector is also chairman of the Schulvorstand or committee, elected by the Schulgemeinde, and charged with questions of attendance and maintenance rather than with internal affairs. The Schulgemeinde need not coincide with the civil parish. Parishes may unite to provide one school, or within one parish different religious communities may form separate school “parishes.”
Thus the administrative system of Prussia in education as in other matters may be described in general as a decentralized bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is somewhat checked by the rights of patronage attaching to the local boards in certain cases, but the exercise of such rights is in all cases subject to government approval. As regards higher-grade elementary and secondary schools, the local boards in the towns (Schuldeputationen) are able to exert a considerable influence in the way of selection of the type of school, and even of suggestion for the modification of recognized types, as is shown by the cases of the famous “reformed” secondary curricula of Altona and Frankfort. Still, the legal powers of the local board are restricted to the establishment of an approved type of school, the control of externa, and the right of nominating teachers.
Elementary Schools.—The single-class school (Einklassige Schule) and the half-day school (Halbtagsschule) are features of the Prussian elementary system which require notice. The Einklassige Schule is a school taught by a single teacher, who may teach a maximum number of eighty children. The Halbtagsschule is a single-class Peculiarities of elementary education.school of which half the children are taught in the morning and half in the afternoon. During the summer months, owing to the exigencies of agricultural labour, many single-class schools are taught as half-day schools. The system of course is regarded as a makeshift, but in this, as in the matter of buildings for rural elementary schools, the Prussian administration attaches great weight to the consideration of financial economy. As regards staff, a large measure of economy is rendered possible by the high average standard of merit reached by German elementary teachers, whose powers of oral exposition have struck English observers as specially remarkable, and again by the national readiness to be content with a moderate salary in return for official status. A survival of the old close connexion between church and school is to be found in the Kirchendienste, the duties of training the choir, playing the organ, &c., which are attached in many cases to the post of schoolmaster, and afford an additional source of emolument, rendered feasible by the practical absence of religious dissent.
For the preliminary training of elementary teachers there are special schools called Präparanden-Anstalten, of which most are state institutions, some are municipal, and a few are private. The training colleges themselves are provided by the state and have a three years’ course.
Continuation Schools (Fortbildungsschulen).—Germans have been foremost to realize the truth which is gradually being brought home to English educationists, that adequate value for the heavy expenditure of public funds upon education can only be obtained by providing for the continued education for two or three years Continuative education.of the children of the working classes who leave school at fourteen years of age. One of the educational results of the war of 1870, with its great lesson of the importance of national education, was the Saxon law of 1873 making attendance at continuation schools compulsory for three years (i.e. up to seventeen) in that kingdom: The Saxon law appears to have been justified by the experience of nearly a generation. It must suffice here to note the following features of its working. (1) The schools are taught by the primary teachers, supplemented in the towns by some technical instructors. (2) The school session may be either for the whole year or for only half the year, and may also be held on Sunday, like the old English secular Sunday schools. (3) The schools are brought into close relation with trades, not only for purposes of curriculum, but also with a view to considering the exigencies and meeting the convenience of employers with respect to hours of attendance. (4) The discipline of the continuation school is extended to supervision out of school hours. “Visits to dancing-halls and all such exhibitions as are dangerous to uprightness and purity are forbidden to scholars of continuation schools.” Further, useful institutions such as savings banks, and also associations for social intercourse and the promotion of esprit de corps, are organized in connexion with continuation schools. There is no doubt that in this matter of continuation schools, as in so many other fields of social organization, the adoption of compulsion has been facilitated by the habituation of the working classes to compulsory military service, which has made the German workman more disciplined, more “organizable” as a social unit, more accustomed to subordinate the principle of individual freedom and self-will to the collective claims of the state, than the workman reared in the traditions of Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Attendance at continuation schools is now compulsory by state law in 12 states, including (besides Saxony) Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The city of Munich is notable for its highly organized system of technical continuation schools for apprentices. In Prussia compulsory attendance is still the exception (save in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, where it is enforced by state law), but the permissive act is being rapidly adopted by the great cities, including Berlin.
Secondary Education.—The official classification or grading according to the type of curriculum of secondary schools in Prussia (and indeed throughout Germany) is very precise. The following are the officially recognized types. I. Classical schools: (a) Gymnasium, with nine years’ course; (b) Progymnasium, with Grading of secondary schools.six years’ course. II. Modern schools: (a) with Latin (semi-classical)—(i.) Realgymnasium (nine years’ course), (ii.) Realprogymnasium (six years’ course); (b) without Latin (non-classical)—(i.) Oberrealschule (nine years’ course), (ii.) Realschule (six years’ course). The six-year classical and semi-classical schools are comparatively unimportant subdivisions in smaller towns.
Lower-grade Secondary Education.—Inasmuch as French is taught in the lowest class of the Realschule under the official curriculum (English, on the other hand, beginning in Tertia, the fourth class from the lowest), it follows that this, the lowest type of secondary school, is not directly co-ordinated with the elementary Co-ordination of elementary and secondary education.school. The Realschulen of Berlin, however, form an important exception to the general rule; their curriculum, sanctioned by the ministry at the instance of the Berlin municipality, provides for the beginning of French in Quarta (the third class from the bottom) and English in Secunda. The consequence is that in Berlin a very large number of pupils pass from the elementary schools to the Realschulen, which take the place of the Mittelschulen or higher-grade elementary schools that
