The Order of Service lays down that in the instruction given at the Academy certain practical applications shall never be omitted:—
"As a continuous commentary on the lectures, the students, under the guidance of their professors, are to visit the military workshops, technical institutions, and exercising grounds at Berlin and Spandau, and the fortifications of Spandau. They are to attend the exercises of the railway regiment, and make journeys of instruction on the military railway.
"The lessons in tactics, fortification, and transport are to be supplemented by practical exercises. Moreover, during a portion of the holidays after the first and the second year, each officer is attached for instruction to a regiment of one of the two arms to which he does not properly belong. Lastly, the third year's course is always to conclude with a three weeks' tour, for practical instruction in staff duties."
The Order of Service concerns itself no further with the scope and method of teaching, but decrees that these shall be determined by the order of teaching to be issued by the chief of the general staff of the army.
The Order of Teaching of the War Academy at present in force was issued by Count Moltke at the close of his career at the head of the Prussian staff.[[2]] Its value can be made clear only by a reproduction of its principal clauses. But a true judgment of an educational institution must be based upon the existence of a standard of comparison, an ideal which may be readily accepted as the measure of perfection. Such a normal type may be sought in the best University training of the present day, of which the spirit may perhaps be expressed in a few sentences.
A system of instruction, intended not for children but for men, which is not an attempt to make good the defects of early education, but addresses itself to minds already trained and disciplined, cannot be regulated mechanically. In all intelligent education the order of teaching is at once natural and rational. The subjects group themselves by their relation to the end in view, and the necessity of each new advance is evident to the student as soon as he is prepared for it. Such a course of study has a unity, and a completeness, which is of great significance in view of the formation of a type of character. The highest education, however, has features peculiarly its own. It is founded in the conception of science, not as a department of knowledge, but as "the proper method of knowing and apprehending the facts in any department whatever."[[3]] From this idea of method flow practical consequences. The student, as soon as maturity is approached, abandons the general realm of knowledge, and concentrates himself upon a single province,[[4]] in which, however, he becomes not merely a follower, but an independent worker, seeing and judging for himself and co-operating with his teacher in advancing the bounds of knowledge. Above all, "it is not the substance of what is communicated, but the act of communication between the older and the younger mind, which is the important matter."[[5]]
From this educational standpoint, Count Moltke's Order of Teaching deserves a close examination. Its opening paragraphs must be given in full:—
"THE COURSE OF STUDY.
"In accordance with the objects for which the Military Academy is instituted, its course of study must aim at a thorough professional education; it must not lose itself in the wide field of general scientific studies.
"A sound formal education is the indispensable pre-requisite of a thorough military professional education. The deepening of the formal training, of the general intelligence and judgment, must therefore never be lost sight of during, and side by side with, the professional studies. Accordingly the course will be based upon the knowledge gained in the cadet corps, the military schools, the school for artillery and engineers, and, as regards general knowledge, in the gymnasia. But a simple repetition of things already known, by way of refreshing the memory, cannot be sufficient. As the whole course aims at a higher culture, it must proceed independently, entirely free from the constraint of a school.