EDUCATION IN GERMANY DURING WAR
Meeting of the Prussian Assembly
March 16th, 1916, 11 o'Clock Morning Session
On the Ministerial Bench: V. Trott zu Solz (Minister of Religion and Education).
The subject of discussion was: The Education and Religion Budget, and as a special topic: The Higher Schools of Prussia.
Taking part in the discussion: Dr. Karl Liebknecht (Social Democrat), Wilderman (Centrum), Frhr. v. Zedlitz (Free Conservative), Minister (Progressive People's Party).
In this discussion Liebknecht exposes the method and system of teaching in the higher schools of Germany and gives full play to his great courage. "The ideal classical education lies in the spirit of independence and humanity," he exclaimed. And, addressing himself to this reactionary parliament, he added: "Your ideal of classical education is 'the ideal of the bayonet, of the bombshell, of poison gas and grenades, which are hurled down on peaceful cities, and the ideal of submarine warfare.'"
He also proves that an educational system cannot be separated from social conditions and demands, along with a reform of the entire school system, particularly that promotion from the primary school to the high school shall not be considered any longer an act of charity but a right to be demanded for every able pupil.
His remarks brought out a cyclone of protest. Liebknecht was twice recalled to the subject and thrice to order, and as the President inquired of the House after the third call to order if it wished to listen to the speaker any longer, the entire house, with the exception of the small group of Social-Democrats, voted that he be denied the floor. In this way they avoided listening to Liebknecht's indictments.
Dr. Liebknecht: The real character of capitalistic society is shown in inequality of education, especially the inequality of the Prussian state with its three-class system of voting, in the three-class system of education: primary schools, higher schools, universities. The educational system cannot be separated from social conditions. In order to acquire education, time and economic opportunities are necessary. Education in the capitalistic order of society is not an aim in itself. Utilitarianism dominates our education. The higher schools serve as preparatory institutes for higher official positions, whereas the primary schools teach the fundamentals which serve to make tools for capitalistic society. Social misfortunes come to the surface now more than ever before: overcrowding of the classes, insufficient rooms, scarcity of teachers, frequent change of teachers, undernourishment and overfatigue of the children, and child labor. Especially does undernourishment weaken the health of the proletariat and thus hinder even the limited educational work of the primary school. But more than ever before the primary school is used to-day in order to make firm the position of the ruling classes, to capture the souls of the young proletariat for the ruling class, for Militarism. When we think of all that, we recognize how urgently the proletariat must work for a fundamental reform of the entire school system.
Neglect of youth through the war cannot be denied, exists in spite of all camouflage. There is not enough rain in the heavens to wash away this sin from the bourgeois form of society. Improvement of this condition can be obtained only by sharp criticism. When one sees that,—as happened to people at the Berlin Police Headquarters,—young working girls 16 and 17 years old, who were arrested for some reason, are told: "You should be put against the wall and shot down" ("Hear, hear!" from the Soc.-Dem.)—then it must be recognized that we really do not live in an age where class differences do not exist and where the entire people stands united, but that, on the contrary, dissimilarities are intensified now in the most inciting way. Where is, in face of this fact, the sensitive German nature about which there is so much discussion here?
Very desirable would be statistics as to how few children of the proletariat on account of existing institutions have obtained opportunity to reach a higher school education; then the unimportance of these few will be recognized, when compared with the millions and millions to whom the road to all the splendor and magnificence which the human spirit can receive, is closed. The amendments proposed (he refers to amendments which will make it easier for able pupils of the primary school to attend the higher schools in larger numbers than had been the case; another amendment introduced by Dr. Porsch (Centrum) proposed that the so-called Rektorat-Schools, which are for procuring a higher education for moneyless pupils, should be supported—S. Z.), are merely patchwork experiment, because what is proposed will be to the advantage only of the poor bourgeoisie, but not of the proletariat. Don't you really sense what it means, when they try to make the pathway to higher education an act of grace, whereas in reality it is an original human right? The mass of the people will feel that instead of their rights there is given to them Bettelsuppen (coarse soup made of black bread). Certainly only to such proletarian children will those privileges be accorded, whose souls, which make them independent, are already broken, who are robbed of their class consciousness and who become accessories of capitalist society. And at the same time these laughable experiments are presented to the people with a self-sufficiency which makes it possible for them to recognize very well the insincerity of the ruling classes. In closing educational opportunities we see a brutal waste of spiritual energies, a waste of human strength in the treadmill of mechanical labor, the denial of human economy. It is as plain as law that the children of the proletariat are held down by darkness of the soul. Touching is the description of Dante who walks with Virgil through the forest of the spirits which have not sinned, but have suffered because they did not receive baptism; to-day it is because they are deprived of money! ("Very true!" from the Soc.-Dem.)