The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

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.