Education in Germany to-Day

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IN the summer of 1927 a desire to find out what changes in the field of secondary education had taken place in Germany, France, and England since the World War led me to make a personal visit to about thirty-five typical schools, both state and private, and to study the school systems of these countries. As a result of my investigation I found that, whereas changes in the school systems had been made since the war, the most significant reform had occurred in Germany. I shall confine my observations, therefore, chiefly to this country. Before the war, as far back as 1893, I had been a not infrequent visitor in Germany. I had passed long months in Heidelberg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Marburg, and Berlin. I had traveled over most of Germany, visiting its chief literary and historic shrines. I had tramped in the Black Forest and canoed down the Moselle and the Danube in an Oldtown canvas canoe. I was familiar, therefore, with both the people and their language. But those were the old days—the days of imperial greatness, the goose step, and dueling. They were also the days when the universities were as a magnet to American students, when German scholarship was held in high esteem, and when German professors used to keep open house for the young strangers from across the seas. Those of us who once had a chance to enjoy such hospitality mid such a scholarly atmosphere can never forget it.

In 1912, together with many other American teachers, I made an educational tour of Germany. We were received everywhere with the greatest cordiality, and wherever we went the school children would sing for us. As I write this fifteen years later, I can still hear the voices of boys and girls pealing forth their joyous songs; and the refrain of an old sixteenth-century hymn still sounds in my ears as it was sung by a group of poor boys in Jena, perhaps one of the hymns that Luther used to sing when he roamed the streets in the Currende. My surprise was great, however, one day on hearing a group of girls, in one of the large girls’ schools, sing a song so martial in tone and meaning that I could not refrain from commenting on the fact to the director, who was standing by; whereupon, as all the girls stood erect at attention, he said in a loud voice, ’What else can you expect from these girls who know that they are to beget a race of warriors to defend their Fatherland!’ That was in 1912. To-day hardly a soldier in uniform, much less an officer, can be seen on the streets. During my recent stay in Germany, in which I visited many different sections of the country, I saw only one officer. He was walking at the head of a company of troops in Berlin. The military uniform has practically disappeared from Germany except on gala occasions and at special memorial exercises. The absence of military drill in the German schools is in strong contrast to the English public schools, which are nearly all organized into O. T. C. units and where the boys have practice drill in uniform once or twice a week.