The connection of orthography and writing, especially if combined with early reading, is natural.
The exercises of induction, which in the lower classes are well drawn out, deviate from the appropriate track in the fourth class, and in the geographical and historical courses do not return to it. The system in both these branches is rather synthetical than inductive. There is a great temptation to break away from this method, into that of giving positive instruction, from the apparently greater rapidity of progress of the pupil; some teachers have abandoned it altogether, as too slow, though ultimately to their cost, as appeared to me in cases where I had an opportunity of comparing the results.
The writing is preceded by an introductory course of drawing, which might with excellent effect be so extended as to branch out into complete courses of drawing and writing.
As this plan results from an extended experience, the number of hours of instruction, per week, necessary to secure the results, is an important datum, and as such I have retained it, whenever it was inserted in the original programme.
[II. THE SCHOOL DIVISION OR NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS’ SCHOOL.]
A military school of a somewhat peculiar character for training up young men for the duties of non-commissioned or under officers exist at Potsdam, and is known as the School Division.
The rules of the Prussian Military system, which require only three years absolute service in the standing army in time of peace, evidently entail a great practical difficulty in this respect. The soldiers, as a rule, prefer to quit the service at the end of their three years’ time, and require great inducements to persuade them to remain. As one inducement, the state has declared that twelve years’ service gives a non-commissioned officer a formal claim to civil employment; as, for example, on the railways or in the custom-houses. Their pay also as non-commissioned officers goes on increasing according to the length of their service; and it was stated to be the usual practice not to advance soldiers to be non-commissioned officers until they had signed an undertaking to serve for a longer period than could be exacted of them otherwise.
A further means of supplying the want has been sought, and appears to have been found in the School Division. The circumstances of its origin have placed this establishment in immediate connection with the Corps of Guards, to which, in a military sense, they belong, at whose head-quarters, the town of Potsdam, their buildings are situated, and whose garrison duty in the town they occasionally undertake.
At its first commencement the pupils chiefly came in drafts from the Military Orphan-Houses. But the applications from the country in general have been so numerous that this practice has been, it is said, abandoned, and a higher class of admissions has been attempted. The Commander of the Battalion of Landwehr for the Circle (Kreis) receives all applications in that Circle; he sees that the candidate is examined on the spot, in reading, writing, and cyphering; and forwards the name, height, age, and other particulars (the Nationale) to the authorities. The decision is said to be mostly made by the candidate’s height, and his medical certificate, and to be rather a difficult matter. Only one-third of the applications are successful. A new boy had just presented himself with his father at the time of our visit; both son and father were well dressed, and apparently belonged to the middle rather than the lower classes. There seems every reason to be satisfied with the amount of acceptance with the country which the school had begun to receive.
The age of admission is from seventeen to twenty, and the youth on entering the school takes a military engagement to give two years of service in the standing army for each year of his maintenance at the school, in addition of course to those three years of military service to which every Prussian is bound, but with the privilege of counting as military service the period spent at the school.