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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

CHAPTER XXII

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN PRUSSIA

I. THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATION

EARLY GERMAN PROGRESS IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. The first modern nation to take over the school from the Church, and to make of it an instrument for promoting the interests of the State was Prussia, and the example of Prussia was soon followed by the other German States. The reasons for this early action by the German States will be clear if we remember the marked progress made in establishing state control of the churches (p. 318) which followed the Protestant Revolts in German lands. Figure 96, page 319, reëxamined now, will make the reason for the earlier evolution of state education in Germany plain. Würtemberg, as early as 1559, had organized the first German state-church school system, and had made attendance at the religious instruction, compulsory on the parents of all children. The example of Würtemberg was followed by Brunswick (1569), Saxony (1580), Weimar (1619), and Gotha (1642). In Weimar and Gotha the compulsory- attendance idea had even been adopted for elementary-school instruction to all children up to the age of twelve.

By the middle of the seventeenth century most of the German States, even including Catholic Bavaria, had followed the example of Würtemberg, and had created a state-church school system which involved at least elementary and secondary schools and the beginnings of compulsory school attendance. Notwithstanding the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618- 48), the state-church schools of German lands contained, more definitely than had been worked out elsewhere, the germs of a separate state school organization. Only in the American Colonies (p. 364) had an equal development in state-church organization and control been made. As state- church schools, with the religious purpose dominant, the German schools remained until near the middle of the eighteenth century. Then a new movement for state control began, and within fifty years thereafter they had been transformed into institutions of the State, with the state purpose their most essential characteristic. How this transformation was effected in Prussia, the leader among the German States, and the forces which brought about the transformation, it will be the purpose of this chapter to relate.

THE NEW UNIVERSITY OF HALLE. The turning-point in the history of German educational progress was the founding of the University of Halle, in 1694. This institution, due to its entirely new methods of work, has usually been designated as the first modern university. A few forward-looking men, men who had been expelled from Leipzig because of their critical attitude and modern ways of thinking, were made professors here. Its creation was due to the sympathy for these men felt by the Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg, later the first King of Prussia. The King clearly intended that the new institution should be representative of modern tendencies in education. To this end he installed as professors men who could and would reform the instruction in theology, law, medicine, and philosophy.

In consequence Aristotle was displaced for the new scientific philosophy of Descartes and Bacon, and Latin in the classrooms for the German speech. The sincere pietistic faith of Francke (p. 418) was substituted for the Lutheran dogmatism which had supplanted the earlier Catholic. The instruction in law was reformed to accord with the modern needs and theory of the State. Medical instruction, based on observation, experimentation, and deduction, superseded instruction based on the reading of Hippocrates and Galen. The new sciences, especially mathematics and physics, found a congenial home in the philosophical or arts faculty. Free scientific investigation and research, without interference from the theological faculty, were soon established as features of the institution, and in place of the fixed scientific knowledge taught for so long from the texts of Aristotle (Rs. 113-15) and other ancients, a new and changing science, that must prove its laws and axioms, and which might at any time be changed by the investigation of any teacher or student, here now found a home. Under the leadership of Christian Wolff, who was Professor of Philosophy from 1707 to 1723, when he was banished by a new King at the instigation of the Pietists for his too great liberalism in religion, and again from 1740 to 1754, after his recall by Frederick the Great, [1] philosophy was "made to speak German" and the Aristotelian philosophy was permanently displaced. "No thing without sufficient cause" was the ruling principle of Wolff's teaching.

CHANGES WROUGHT IN OLD ESTABLISHED PROCEDURE. The introduction of the new scientific and mathematical and philosophical studies soon changed the arts or philosophy faculty from a preparatory faculty for the faculties of law, medicine, and theology, as it had been for centuries, to the equal of these three professional faculties in importance, while the elementary instruction in Latin and Greek was now relegated to the Gymnasia below. These were now in turn changed into preparatory schools for all four faculties of the university. The university instruction in the ancient languages was now placed on a much higher plane, and a new humanistic renaissance took place (p. 462) which deeply influenced both university and gymnasial training. New standards of taste and judgment were drawn from the ancient literatures and applied to modern life, and students were trained to read and enjoy the ancient classics. This reawakening of the best spirit of the Italian Renaissance marked the first outburst of a national feeling of a people as yet possessed of no national literature of importance, but unwilling longer to depend on foreign (French) influences for the cultural elements in their intellectual life.

It was at Halle, too, that Gundling, in 1711, discussed "the office of a university" and laid down the modern university theory of Lehrfreiheit und Lernfreiheit—that is, freedom from outside interference in teaching and studying, both teachers and students to be free to follow the truth wherever the truth might lead, and without reference to what preconceived theories might be upset thereby. This was a revolution in university procedure, [2] and the importance of the establishment of this new conception of university work can scarcely be overestimated. It was a contribution to intellectual progress of large future value. It meant the end of the old-type university, ruled by a narrow theological dogmatism and maintained to give support to a particular religious faith, and the ultimate transformation of the old university foundations into institutions actuated by the methods and purposes of a modern world.

In 1734 another new university was founded at Göttingen, and in this Johann Matthias Gesner (1691-1761) raised the new humanistic learning to the place of first importance. This new university became a nursery for the new literary humanism, ably supplementing the work done at Halle. From these two universities teachers of a new type went out, filled with the spirit of "The Enlightenment," as this eighteenth-century German renaissance was called, and they in time regenerated all the German universities. Still more, they regenerated the secondary schools of German lands as well, and gave Greek literature and life that place of first importance in their instruction which was retained until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Gesner at Göttingen, and later Ernesti at Leipzig, did much to formulate the new pedagogical purpose [3] of instruction in the ancient languages and literatures for the higher schools of German lands.