IV. REALISM AND THE SCHOOLS
THE VERNACULAR SCHOOLS. The ideas for which the realists just described had stood were adopted in the people's schools but slowly, and came only after long waiting. The final incorporation of science instruction into elementary education did not come until the nineteenth century, and then was an outgrowth of the reform work of Pestalozzi on the one hand, and the new social, political, economic, and industrial forces of a modern world on the other.
The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed a century of bitter and vindictive religious warfare, was followed by another century of hatred, suspicion, and narrow religious intolerance and reaction. All parties now adopted an extremely conservative attitude in matters of religion and education, and the protection of orthodoxy became the chief purpose of the school. Reading, religion, a little counting and writing, and, in Teutonic lands, music, came to constitute the curriculum of such elementary vernacular schools as had come to exist, and the religious Primer and the Bible became the great school textbooks. The people were poor, much of Europe was impoverished and depopulated as a result of long-continued religious strife, the common people still occupied a very low social position, there were as yet no qualified teachers, and no need for general education aside from religion. Still more, during more than a thousand years the Church had established the tradition of providing free education, and when the governing authorities of the States which turned to Protestantism had taken from the Church both the opportunity to continue the schools and the wealth with which to maintain them, they were seldom willing to tax themselves to set up institutions to continue the work formerly done gratis by the Church. In consequence, regardless of Protestant educational theory as to the need for general education, but little progress in providing vernacular schools was made during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Here and there in Teutonic lands, however, the new studies found an occasional patron. In 1619 schools were organized for the little Duchy of Weimar (p. 317) by a pupil of Ratke, and sense realism was given a place in them. The schoolmaster, Andreas Reyher, who in 1642 drew up the Schule Methodus "the actual title of that book was 'Schulmethodus" for Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg, was familiar with the work of both Ratke and Comenius, and made provision for instruction in "the natural and useful sciences" (R. 163) for Duke Ernest's children. Here and there a few other attempts to provide schools and add instruction in the new Realien were made. The number of such attempts was not large, but their work was influential, and as a result vernacular schools and science instruction finally became established among German-speaking peoples before they did in any other land.
THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. The influence of Milton's Tractate on the non- conformist Academies of England has been traced, and the transfer of the idea of instruction in the new mathematical, scientific, literary, historical, and political subjects to the new American Academies has been mentioned. That these new studies also entered into the education of a gentleman in England and France, under the private-tutor and the courtly- academy system, and were copied from the French and constituted a large part of the instruction organized for the Ritterakademieen of the numerous court cities in German lands, has also been mentioned. In both England and France such private instruction exerted but little influence on the existing Latin grammar schools, and in consequence the schools of both countries remained largely unchanged in direction and purpose until the second half of the nineteenth century. In German lands the Ritterakademieen idea experienced a further development, which proved to be of large importance for the future of German education.
FRANCKE'S "INSTITUTIONS." With the introduction of French ideas and training into the German courts, French skepticism in matters of religion developed in the court circles. Under the influence of a pious Lutheran clergyman, Philip Spener (1635-1705), who tried to emphasize religion as an affair of the heart rather than the head; and especially as a result of the work of his spiritual successor, Augustus Hermann Francke, a movement arose in German lands, during the closing years of the seventeenth century, which became known as Pietism. [10] Disgusted with the lifeless and insincere religion of the time, these two strove to substitute a religion of both head and heart. In 1695, moved by pity for the poor, Francke established at Halle the first of his famous "Institutions,"—a school for poor children. A pay school for the well-to-do was soon added, and soon another school for the children of nobility. An orphan school also was in time provided. The school for the poor developed into a vernacular or Burgher (volks; peoples) school; the school for the pay pupils into a Latin School, or Gymnasium; and the school for nobles into a higher scientific school, or Pädagogium as it was called. At first Francke encountered some theological opposition, but the "Institutions" prospered, and at the time of his death contained over 2200 pupils, and over 300 teachers, workers, and attendants.
[Illustration: FIG. 128. AUGUSTUS HERMANN FRANCKE (1663-1727)]
The interesting thing about Francke's work was the courses of instruction he provided for his schools. [11] In the Burgher School he gave the children instruction in history, geography, and animal life, in addition to the reading, writing, counting, music, and religion of the usual German vernacular school. Into the Gymnasium he introduced instruction in history, geography, music, science, and mathematics, in addition to the usual Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He also changed the purpose of the language instruction. Greek was studied to be able to read the New Testament in the original, and Hebrew better to understand the Old. The Pädagogium was provided with a botanical garden, a cabinet of natural history, physical apparatus, a laboratory for the study of chemistry and anatomy, and a workshop for turning and glass-cutting. Independent of the work of Comenius, but as an outgrowth of the new movement for the study of science now beginning to influence educational thought, we have here the most important attempt at the introduction into the school of sense realism, or Realien, as the Germans say, that the modern world had so far witnessed. In 1697 Francke added a Seminarium Praeceptorium, to train teachers in his new ideas. This was the first teachers' training- school in German lands, and the teachers he trained served to scatter his educational ideas over the German States. [12]
THE FIRST REALSCHULE. Associated with Francke as a teacher was one Christopher Semler (1669-1740), who became deeply interested in the new studies of the secondary school. In 1706 Semler had submitted a plan to the government of Magdeburg for the teaching of the practical studies. This was referred to the Berlin Society of Sciences, which approved the plan, and later elected Semler to membership in the Society. For years Semler continued as a teacher at Halle, but without carrying the idea far enough to create a new type of school. In 1739 Semler published a paper "Upon the Mathematical, Mechanical, and Agricultural Real School in the City of Halle," in which he described the instruction given there. This was probably the first use of the term "real school" (Realschule). The important subjects described as taught, aside from religion, were "the useful and in daily life wholly indispensable sciences," such as mathematics, drawing, geography, history, natural history, agriculture, and economics, with much emphasis on observation by the pupils.
The work at Halle soon stimulated complaints as to the existing Latin schools, where children, destined for business or the service of the State, were kept trying to learn Latin, "to the neglect of more practical and more useful studies." The usefulness of the new real studies now began to be more correctly estimated, and the conviction gradually grew that those boys who were destined for trade—now a rapidly increasing number— should not be obliged to follow the same course as those destined to be scholars. In 1720 Rector Gesner, of the gymnasium at Rotenburg, wrote, rather sarcastically:
The one class, who will not study, but will become tradesmen, merchants, or soldiers, must be instructed in writing, arithmetic, writing letters, geography, description of the world, and history. The other class may be trained for studying.
In 1742 the Rector at Dresden, Schöttgen, issued a "Humble proposal for the special class in public city schools" to provide for those children "who are to remain without (that is, cannot learn) Latin." Instead of forcing them to attempt to learn Donatus, which he said was useless for them, he urged that a special class (school) be organized to train them to become useful merchants, artists, and mechanics. In 1751 Rector Henzky, of Prenzlau, issued a treatise to show "That Real schools can and must become common." In 1756 Gesner, professor at the new University of Göttingen, in a pamphlet "On the organization of a gymnasium" (R. 223), urged that there were three classes of youths for whom schools should be provided, one of which needed the Realschule.
In 1747 a clergyman by the name of Julius Hecker (1707-1768), who had been a pupil in, and later had taught in Francke's "'Institutions," went to Berlin and opened there the first distinct German Realschule. In this school Hecker provided instruction in religion, ethics, German, French, Latin, mathematics, drawing, history, geography, mechanics, architecture, and a knowledge of nature and of the human body. Classes were organized in architecture, agriculture, bookkeeping, manufacturing, and mining. The school prospered from the first, and in time became the "Royal Realschule" of Berlin. In answer to a growing demand for advanced education for that constantly increasing number of youths destined for the trades or a mercantile career, the realschule idea was copied in a number of the important cities of Germany. Thus early—a century in advance of other nations, and a century and a quarter ahead of the United States—did Prussia lay the foundations of that scientific and technical education which, later on, did so much toward creating modern industrial Germany.
THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NEW SCIENTIFIC LEARNING. Though the theological persecution of scientific workers largely died out after about the middle of the seventeenth century, and was never much of a factor in lands which had embraced some form of Protestantism, the new sciences nevertheless made but little headway in the universities until after the beginning of the eighteenth century. Up to the close of the seventeenth century the universities in all lands continued to be dominated by their theological faculties, and instruction still remained largely encompassed by mediaevalism. England represents perhaps the most notable exception to this statement, scientific studies having been received with greater tolerance by the universities there than in other lands. In both Catholic and Protestant lands the need was felt for orthodox training, through fear of further heresy, and many petty restrictions were thrown about study and teaching which were stifling to free thinking and investigation. Each little Kingdom or State now took over the supervision of some old university within its borders, or established a new one, that it might more completely control orthodoxy and prepare its own civil servants. Of the seventeenth century, Paulsen [13] well says:
It was essentially the period of the territorial-confessional university, and is characterized by a preponderance of theological- confessional interest…. Many new foundations, both Catholic and Protestant, now appeared. The chief impetus leading to these numerous foundations was the accentuation of the principle of territorial sovereignty, from the ecclesiastical as well as the political point of view. The consequence was that the universities began to be instrumentia denominationis of the government as professional schools for its ecclesiastical and secular officials. Each individual government endeavored to secure its own university in order—(1) to make sure of wholesome instruction, which meant, of course, instruction in harmony with the confessional standards of its established church; (2) to retain training of its secular officials in its own hands; and finally (3) render attendance at foreign universities unnecessary on the part of its subjects, and thus keep the money in the country.
Large amounts of money were not needed to establish a new university. A few thousand guilders or thalers sufficed for the salaries of ten or fifteen professors, a couple of preachers and physicians would undertake the theological and medical lectures, and some old monastery would supply the needed buildings.
After the Reformation the law faculty increased to the place of first importance in Protestant lands, because the Reformation had created a new demand for judges and higher court officials to replace the rule of the clergy. The medical faculty continued to be, as in the mediaeval universities, the smallest of all the faculties and amounted to little before the nineteenth century. [14] The arts faculty, or philosophical as it came to be termed in German lands, offered lectures in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and a general course in philosophy, but the Aristotelian texts and to some extent mediaeval methods in instruction continued to be used until the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Here and there some professor "read" on mathematics, and in Protestant lands on the new astronomy, and the study of botany began as the study of herbs in the medical faculty, [15] but during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries few professors or students were interested in the scientific subjects. By 1675 Bacon's Novum Organum had begun to be taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, and by 1700 the Newtonian physics had begun to displace Aristotle at Oxford. By 1740 it was well established there. At first instruction in the new subjects was offered as an extra and for a fee by men not having professional rank (R. 224), and later the instruction was given full recognition by the university. By 1700 Cambridge had become a center for mathematical study (R. 225), and with the growth in popularity of the Newtonian philosophy, mathematical studies there took the place held by logic in the mediaeval university. Cambridge has ever since remained a center for mathematical and, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, for scientific studies as well. Between 1680 and 1700 the University of Paris was reformed, and the mathematical and philosophical studies of Descartes (p. 394) began to be taught there. The universities of the Netherlands began to teach the new mathematical and scientific studies even earlier.
Aside from the above described Realschule development, the new scientific movement for a time largely passed over German lands, and in consequence the German universities remained unreformed until the eighteenth century. During the seventeenth century they sank to their lowest intellectual level. In 1694, largely in protest against the narrowness of the old universities, the new University of Halle was founded. It received into its faculty certain forward-looking men who had been driven from the old universities, [16] and is generally considered as the first modern university. The new scientific and mathematical subjects and a reformed philosophy were introduced; the instruction in Greek and Latin was reformed; German was made the medium of classroom instruction; and a scientific magazine in German was begun. In 1737 the University of Göttingen became a second center of modern influence, and from these two institutions the new scientific spirit gradually spread to all the Protestant universities of German lands. A century later they were the leading universities of the world.
THE TRANSITION NOW PRACTICALLY COMPLETE. From the time Petrarch made his first "find" at Liège (1333), in the form of two previously unknown orations of Cicero (p. 244), to the publication of the Principia (p. 388) of Newton (1687), is a period of approximately three and a half centuries. During these three and a half centuries a complete transformation of world-life had been effected, and the mediaeval man, with his eyes on the past, had given place to the modern man with his eyes on the future. During these three and a half centuries revolutionary forces had been at work in the world of ideas, and the transition from mediaeval to modern attitudes had been accomplished. From 1333 to 1433 was the century of "literary finds," and during this period the monastic treasures were brought to light and edited and the classical literature of Rome restored. Greek also was restored to the western world, and a reformed Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were given the place of first importance in the new humanistic school. The invention of printing took place in 1423; 1456 witnessed the appearance of the first printed book, and the perfection of the new means for the multiplication of books and the dissemination of ideas. Before 1500 the great era of geographical discovery had been inaugurated; a sea-route to India was found in 1487; and a new continent in 1492. In 1519-22 Magellan's ships rounded the world.
In 1517 Luther issued the challenge, the shock of which was felt in every corner of Christian Europe, and within a half-century much of northern and western Europe had been lost to the original Roman Church. Soon independence in thinking had been extended to the problem of the organization of the universe, and in 1543 Copernicus issued the book that clearly marks the beginning of modern scientific thinking and inquiry. Bacon had done his organizing work by 1620, and Newton's Principia (1687) finally established modern scientific thought and work. Comenius died in 1671, his great organizing work done, and his textbooks, with their many new educational ideas, in use all over Europe. The mediaeval attitude still continued in religion and government, but the world as a whole had left mediaeval attitudes behind it, and was facing the future of modern world organization and life. To the educational organization of this modern world we now turn, though before doing so we shall try to present a cross-section, as it were, of the development in educational theory and practice which had been attained by about the middle of the eighteenth century.