In German secondary instruction the realistic instruction of the pietists was brought by Hecker (see p. 176) to Berlin, where he started his famous Realschule in 1747, and before the beginning of the nineteenth century similar institutions had spread throughout Prussia. Early in the nineteenth century the course of study in the gymnasiums of Prussia was considerably modified, and, as part of the compromise, some science was introduced. The movement later spread into the secondary education of states in South Germany, and, while the Real schools, gymnasiums, total amount of science was not large, it managed to hold its place in the gymnasial curriculum even during the reaction to absolutism between 1815 and 1848. But, as we have seen ([p. 378]), two types of real-schools were eventually recognized,—Realgymnasium and Oberrealschule, and they at present devote approximately twice and technical schools. as much time to the physical and biological sciences as do the gymnasia. Technical and trade schools, with scientific and mathematical subjects as a foundation for the vocational work, have also appeared as a species of secondary education in Germany (see p. 420). The first of these were opened in Nuremberg in 1823, but their rapid increase in numbers, variety, and importance has taken place since the middle of the century, and their development in organization and method has occurred within the past twenty-five years.
The scientific movement was also felt in the elementary schools of Germany during the early part of the nineteenth century. Science was considerably popularized by the schools of the philanthropinists ([pp. 227] f.), and was widely introduced into elementary education by the spread of Pestalozzianism in Prussia and the other German states (see p. 289 f.). Before the close of the first quarter of the century the study of elementary science,—natural history, physiology, and physics, appeared in various grades; geography and drawing were taught throughout the course; and geometry Volksschulen. was included in the upper classes of the Volksschulen.
France.—Before the Revolution in France the higher French collèges and universities. and secondary institutions found little place for instruction in science. There was a chair of experimental physics at the College of Navarre of the University of Paris and at the Universities of Toulouse and Montpelier, and natural history was also taught at the more independent College of France, but, as a whole, education was dominated largely by humanism. However, with the establishment of the republic a new régime began in education, as in other matters, and science entered more largely into higher and secondary instruction. Most of the revolutionary proposals subordinated letters to science, and in 1794 the republic founded a great central normal school, where the famous Laplace and Lagrange for a short time gave instruction in science. In 1802 Napoleon Lycées. had included in the scientific course for the lycées natural history, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and mineralogy, and a definite advance in quantity and method of the scientific instruction in the secondary schools was made in 1814. On the ground that they were injuring classical studies, Cousin in 1840 had the sciences curtailed, but he was shortly forced to restore them upon an optional basis. A contest between the two types of studies was carried on in the lycées until 1852, when a bifurcation in the course put the two theoretically upon the same basis. The scientific course, however, has never been considered equal in prestige to the classical, although it has constantly increased in length and difficulty.
Some instruction in science has come to be given during Lower and higher primary, the past forty years even in the elementary schools of France. In the lower primary schools the work is informal, and consists mostly of object lessons and first scientific notions. These are developed in connection with drawing, manual training, agriculture, and geography of the neighborhood and of France in general. Instruction becomes more formal in the ‘higher primary’ schools, and includes regular courses in the natural and physical sciences and hygiene, as well as geography, and normal schools. drawing, and manual training. In the normal schools for primary teachers instruction in all the physical and biological sciences is even more thorough, and includes not only the facts and theories of general scientific importance, but it also emphasizes their applications to everyday life. For example, the flora and fauna of the neighborhood are studied in their special relation to agriculture.
England.—In England, several chairs in the natural sciences were established at Cambridge during the eighteenth century. But it was almost the middle of the nineteenth century before the biological sciences and the laboratory method of instruction were introduced, and not until toward the close of the century did science become Cambridge and Oxford, prominent at Cambridge and Oxford. And the most marked promotion of the scientific movement in England has occurred within the past fifty years through municipal universities, the foundation of efficient municipal universities in such centers as Birmingham, Manchester, London, and Liverpool (see p. 392). For many years the laboratory instruction was given only in institutions outside the universities. Higher courses in science by the new methods were afforded through the foundation of the Royal School of Mines (1851), the Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (1864), and the Normal School of Science (1868), which were all combined in 1890 into a single institution known as the Royal College of Science, and in 1907, when the Technical College (founded 1881) of the City and Guilds of London Institute was also merged, the entire corporation became and Imperial College of Science. known as the Imperial College of Science and Technology. An agency that was instrumental in encouraging the advanced study of science, although it accomplished even more for elementary and secondary schools, Science and Art Department. was the national Science and Art Department. This organization was founded in 1858 to bring under a single management the science, trade, and navigation schools already existing, and to facilitate higher instruction in science, and a few years later began to offer examinations and to grant certificates to teach science in the elementary schools. It was taken over by the national Board of Education, when that body was organized in 1899 (see p. 389).
Academies,
In English secondary instruction the ‘academies,’ in which science first appeared ([pp. 157] f.), had before the close of the eighteenth century greatly declined, and the humanistic ‘public’ schools and secondary institutions of a private character had as yet paid almost no attention to the sciences. In the first half of the nineteenth century an anti-classical campaign began, and, continuing with ever increasing force until the middle of the century, it brought about the foundation of numerous schools to embody the new ideals. Toward ‘secular’ schools, the close of 1848 the first ‘secular’ school was opened by Combe (see p. 403) at Edinburgh, and included in its curriculum a study of geography, drawing, mathematics, natural history, chemistry, natural philosophy, physiology, phrenology, and materials used in the arts and manufactures. Similar institutions were organized at Glasgow, Leith, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Belfast, and many other cities of the United Kingdom. While short-lived, these schools did much to promote the introduction of sciences into secondary education that soon followed. Shortly after the middle of the century Rugby, and then Winchester, introduced science into the regular curriculum, and by 1868, as a result of the governmental investigation of the endowed schools, which showed an almost complete absence of ‘modern side’ in public schools, science in the curricula, all the leading secondary schools began to establish a ‘modern side.’ This course generally included physics and natural history, as well as modern languages and history, but it was most reluctantly organized by the institutions, and, while it has attained to great efficiency, it has never, except in a few schools, been accorded the same standing as the classical course. and Department of Science and Art. The Department of Science and Art also afforded much encouragement to secondary instruction in the sciences by subsidizing schools and classes in physics, chemistry, zoölogy, botany, geology, mineralogy, and subjects involving the applications of science. Before its absorption into the Board of Education some ten thousand classes and seventy-five independent schools of secondary grade received assistance from this source.
Grants for science work in elementary schools.
The Department also gave aid to the study of science in elementary education. As early as the fifties, grants were made to establish work in elementary science, art, and design, but the educational value was for more than forty years subordinated to practical applications. And while, after the report by a Committee of the British Association in 1889, much aid was furnished for the equipment of laboratories, lecture rooms, and workshops, and an increase in the staff of instructors, for a decade no subjects except the rudiments were required in the elementary course, and such ‘supplementary’ subjects as elementary science and geography, if taught, were given a special subsidy. But since 1900 this scientific work has been made compulsory in the elementary curriculum.
The United States.—In the colleges of the United States the courses show considerable evidence of science Beginning in the colleges during the eighteenth century. teaching by the eighteenth century. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, King’s (afterward Columbia), Dartmouth, Union, and Pennsylvania had all come to offer work in ‘natural philosophy’ or ‘natural history,’ which terms might then be used to cover physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, botany, and zoölogy. However, before the Revolution physics seems to have been a subordinate branch of mathematical instruction, even less importance was attached to biology, and chemistry was only occasionally taught as an obscure and unimportant phase of physics. Laboratories and instruments of precision did not yet exist.