the philosophical department of the universities. After ten years trial of this plan the philosophical faculty of the University of Berlin addressed to the Ministry of Instruction a memorandum, which is declared to be the most powerful plea ever made in behalf of classical studies. They declared unhesitatingly that the students of the practical schools were not fitted to pursue a university course on a par with the graduates of the classical schools, and that, if the plan was reversed, German scholarship would soon be a thing of the past. Even the representatives of science and modern languages in the faculty joined heartily in this judgment. In specifying the reasons why the admission of the non-classical graduate was injurious to the interests of higher education, the thirty-six professors mentioned slower development, superficial knowledge, lack of independent judgment, inferiority in private research, less dexterity, want of keenness, and defective power of expression.
Since 1890 new and significant results were obtained in Germany, which prove that the classical course, besides the better liberal training which it imparts, is no less fitted as a preparation for technical studies than the courses pursued in the Real-Gymnasium and the Oberrealschule. This was attested in the last Berlin Conference (1900), by professors of the Technical Institutes. The Professors of the Technical Institutes, v. g. of Aix-la-Chapelle, adduced statistics to this effect from their respective schools.[1] Professor
- ↑ Verhandlungen über Fragen des höheren Unterrichts, 1902, pp. 10, 18. Be it said, however, that Professor Slaby of Charlottenburg maintained that the graduates of the Gymnasium in his school were not as successful in the sciences as those of the scientific schools. Ibid., p. 378.
