Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/618

be aimed at. Continuation schools for candy makers and continuation schools for shoe makers had to be different. There are five chief types: the general continuation school, the commercial, the industrial, the rural and, exclusively for girls, the household economy school. Each of these types is realized sometimes in schools of obligatory character, and sometimes in schools where the attendance is voluntary, as well as in schools with prescribed courses, and in others with great freedom of election. The most famous system of continuation schools, the discussion of which has had most valuable influence on the whole German situation, is that of the city of Munich, where the indefatigable superintendent of schools, Dr. Kerschensteiner, has succeeded in a perfect adjustment of educational needs to the practical requirements of the community. Particularly his industrial continuation schools have been organized in such a way that almost every important business is represented by special classes for apprentices and special classes for journeymen and older working men. There are classes for chimney sweepers and for cabinetmakers, for coachmen and for ivory carvers, for watchmakers and for photographers, for tailors and for locksmiths, for barbers and for gardeners, for office boys and for waiters. There are altogether two hundred and ninety-six classes for the first years and one hundred and thirteen classes for those who are beyond the years of apprenticeship. About ten thousand boys are regularly attending. Every class has a careful program in which elements of general human education, elements of technical theoretical information and technical practical training, and finally elements of civic and sociological instruction, are harmoniously combined. This blending of different factors shows itself in the appointment of teachers. In the two hundred and ninety-six classes for the younger boys, for instance, we find seventy-seven general and thirty-seven technical teachers who devote to the work all their time and two hundred and twenty-one elementary-school teachers and one hundred and eleven technical and professional teachers who give instruction in their specialties as a side function, and one hundred and sixty teachers of religion. The essential point for an American spectator is, however, that the instruction for those thousands of young people in the midst of their practical life is given in the best hours of the day, either in the morning or in the afternoon, and that the employers are obliged to give them the opportunity to attend from six to ten hours a week for four years. Obligatory instruction in the evening when the young people come fatigued from their daily labor is excluded by the scheme. There is perhaps at present in the system of German school work no feature which so much deserves the attention of the American reformer as this whole plan of continuation schools as developed in the city of Munich and as more or less similarly organized in a large number of German cities.