The views which guided these reforms, the improvements and advantages which were hoped to be thereby obtained, were, in general, the following:—
1. The military profession, like every other, requires a general school education intended generally to cultivate the mind, distinct from the subsequent special and professional education for which the former is the necessary groundwork.
The former is tested in the examination for the Swordknot, the latter in the officers’ examination.
2. The preparatory education required from the candidate for a Swordknot is the function of the ordinary schools of the country. Nothing but what they can impart is required, and from consideration of the youthful age of the candidates (seventeen years,) the amount of preparatory training required is not the attainment of the highest class of the gymnasium, but only that required for admission into the Prima.
3. The required previous training not only gives the candidate a more certain basis for his subsequent military education, but, as being the groundwork of all professions, leaves him afterwards at liberty to cultivate the special knowledge requisite for any profession that he may prefer.
4. The division schools are freed from a multifarious course of instruction in the scholastic sciences, a task beyond their power: the result of which was that the majority of scholars were very little advanced in formal and general education, and but superficially grounded in the elements of the professional sciences, while they spent years in being drilled for an examination, instead of being educated for life.
5. If the division schools have an able staff of military teachers, they can give a good professional education. The younger officers, even if they never received the full training of the gymnasium, may still, by their professional training, raise themselves above their subordinates, (a class in Prussia often highly educated,) and are started with an excellent preparation for their professional career.
6. By the amount of liberal education required in the examination for the Swordknot, the friends of those destined for the military profession are admonished to provide them an education equal to that received by the members of other professions.
7. By the method pursued in the examinations the power is retained of raising or lowering the standard according to circumstances. When the supply of officers is deficient, the standard can be lowered; at other times, as at present, it may be raised. Since the above-mentioned regulations, the following essential alterations have been introduced:—