THE EARLIEST SCHOOL LAWS FOR PRUSSIA. In 1713 there came to the kingship of Prussia an organizing genius in the person of Frederic William I (1713- 40). Under his direction Prussia was given, for the first time, a centralized and uniform financial administration, and the beginnings of state school organization were made. He freed the State from debt, provided it with a good income, developed a strong army, and began a vigorous colonization and commercial policy. Though he cared nothing and did nothing for the universities, the religious reform movement of Francke, as well as his educational undertakings (p. 419), found in the new King a warm supporter. Largely in consequence of this the King became deeply interested in attempts to improve and advance the education of the masses of his people.
The first year of his reign he issued a Regulatory Code for the Reformed Evangelical and Latin schools of Prussia, and in 1717 he issued the so- called "Advisory Order," relating to the people's schools. In this latter parents were urged, under penalty of "vigorous punishment," to send their children to school to learn religion, reading, writing, to calculate, and "all that could serve to promote their happiness and welfare." The tuition fees of poor children he ordered paid out of the community poor-box (R. 273). The following year he directed the authorities of Lithuania to relieve the existing ignorance there, and sent commissioners to provide the villages with schoolmasters. From time to time he renewed his directions. To insure a better class of teachers for the towns and rural schools, he, in 1722, directed that no one be admitted to the office of sacristan-schoolmaster [4] except tailors, weavers, smiths, wheelwrights, and carpenters, and in 1738 he further restricted the position of teacher in the town and rural schools to tailors.
[Illustration: FIG. 168. THE SCHOOL OF A HANDWORKER
Conducted in his home. A gentleman visiting the school.
After a drawing in the German School Museum in Berlin.]
Becoming especially interested in providing schools for the previously neglected province of East Prussia, he gave the sum of fifty thousand thalers as an endowment fund, the interest to be used in assisting communities to build schoolhouses and maintain schools, and he also set aside large tracts of land for school uses. Within a few years over a thousand elementary schools had been established, and some eighteen hundred new schools in Prussia owed their origin to the interest of this King. He also took a similar interest in the establishment of schools in Pomerania (R. 273), a part of which had but recently been wrested from Sweden.
In 1737 the King issued his celebrated Principia Regulative, which henceforth became the fundamental School Law for the province of East Prussia. This prescribed conditions for the building of schoolhouses, the support of the schoolmaster, tuition fees, and government aid. The following digest of the section of the Principia relating to these matters gives a good idea as to the nature of the school regulations the King sought to enforce:
1. The parishes forming school societies were obliged to build school- houses and to keep them in repair.
2. The State was to furnish the necessary timber and firewood.
3. The expenses for doors, windows, and stoves to be obtained from
collections.
4. Every church to pay four thalers a year toward the support of the
schoolmaster.
5. Tuition fees for each child, from four to twelve years of age, to
be four groschen per year.