Deciding clearly where the nation was to go and the route it was to follow, and that education for national ends was one of the important means to be employed, the different parts of the educational systems in the States—elementary schools, secondary schools, universities, normal schools, professional schools, technical schools, continuation schools— were carefully integrated into a unified state system, thoroughly national in spirit, and given a definite function to perform in the work which the Nation set itself to carry through. Nowhere have teachers been so well trained to play their part in a national plan, and nowhere have teachers acquitted themselves more worthily, from the point of view of the Government. As Alexander [27] has well said:
During the nineteenth century the leaders of Germany decided that Germany should assume leadership in the world in every line of endeavor, particularly in commerce and world power. They set this as the very definite goal of their national ambition. The next question was how that aim could be accomplished. It was to be done through education. Accordingly school systems were organized with this aim in view. In a State such as the Germans proposed building there were be leaders and followers. The followers were to be trained for a docile, efficient German citizenship; that is, the lower classes were to be made into God-fearing, patriotic, economically-independent Germans. This was the task of the Volksschule, and it has been wonderfully well accomplished. This type of German is created to do the manual labor of the State.
The leaders were to be trained in middle and higher schools and in the universities. There were to be different grades of leaders; leaders in the lower walks of life, leaders in the middle walks of life, and leaders of the nation. The higher schools and the universities were employed to produce these types of leaders…. The leaders think and do; the followers merely do. The schools were organized for the express purpose of producing just these types.
So well was this system and plan working that, had the Imperial Government not been so impatient of that slower but surer progress by peaceful means, and staked all on a gambler's throw, in another half-century the German nation might have held the world largely in fee. As it is, the results which the Germans attained by reason of definite aims and definite methods are both an encouragement and a warning to other nations.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Point out the extent of the educational reorganization which resulted from the reform work begun at Halle.
2. How do you explain the very early German interest in compulsory school attendance, when such was unknown elsewhere in Europe?
3. Compare the Prussian Regulations of 1737 with what was common at that time in practice in the parishes of the American Colonies.
4. Show the wisdom of the early Prussian kings in working at school reform through the Church. Could they well have worked otherwise? Why?
5. How do you explain such a slow development of a professional teaching body in Prussia, when all the state influences had for so long been favorable to educational development?