602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE GERMANS AT SCHOOL 



By Professor HUGO MUNSTERBERG 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



AT the time of their political weakness the Germans were derisively 

 called the thinkers and dreamers. When the other great nations 

 divided the world of reality among themselves, the Germans took refuge 

 in the realm of fancy. The stronger peoples considered them as the 

 members of a rich household look on the poor schoolmaster at their 

 table. That time has passed away. The politics and commerce and in- 

 dustry of Germany have secured its powerful position in the world, and 

 no one doubts the strength of the Germans in the field of the real facts. 

 But there was mingled with the derisive mood of previous times a silent 

 respect for that German idealism. The name of thinkers and dreamers 

 appeared to some, and not to the worst, a title of honor. The world ac- 

 knowledged that in scholarship and research and education the Germans 

 were able to teach mankind. Their schools were models and their meth- 

 ods superior, and in the days of war the world accepted the saying that 

 the German schoolmaster had won the battles. How much of this honor 

 and glory has been left in these days of German commercial, industrial 

 and political advance? Has the forward striving in the realm of might 

 and power meant loss of prestige, and, what is more important, loss of 

 true achievement in the field of thought and education, or did the 

 progress of modern Germany involve as much intellectual gain as prac- 

 tical profit? The Germans at work easily win the admiration of every 

 visitor who goes to their centers of industry. Are the Germans at 

 school equally deserving of honorable praise, or are they simply resting 

 on their laurels? 



The educational life of a country is always a great organism in 

 which all parts are interdependent. There can not be good schools 

 without good universities, nor good universities without good schools. 

 The quality of the teachers and the quality of the pupils, the general 

 education and the special instruction are all intimately related to one 

 another. We must look into this organic system if we want to ascer- 

 tain its strength and endurance. A few educational show pieces are not 

 enough. Is there progress and growth in all the essential parts. We 

 may begin with the German university, which is, after all, the real heart 

 of the whole Organism and which had more direct influence on American 

 educational life than any other part of the German educational system. 

 Those who built up the great American institutions in the last genera- 

 tion from mere colleges into true universities had received the decisive 

 impulses in German academic halls. To be sure in recent years a kind 



