THE GERMANS AT SCHOOL 611 



to learn the facts but the methods to find out the true facts from various 

 sources. They are to be brought into contact with the old reports by 

 which the events of the past are transmitted. The knowledge of the 

 languages ought to be gained by practise in conversation, the knowledge 

 of the earth by wandering and living in nature. 



This is typically combined in the much-admired institutions of 

 Dr. Lietz, the so-called Landerziehungsheime, educational homes in 

 the country. Lietz was a young enthusiastic teacher who was moved 

 by the ideal of building up healthy, strong, joyful, energetic and judicial 

 men who would be in sympathy with their fellow creatures and under- 

 stand the needs of the common people, and yet who would be inspired 

 by art and science and technique. He has created in the loveliest 

 regions of Germany three national schools, for the youngest children 

 between seven and twelve in Ilsenburg in the Hartz, the second in 

 Haubinda in Thuringia for the boys between twelve and fifteen and 

 the third in the castle of Bieberstein in the Rhon Mountains for boys 

 between sixteen and twenty. All three places are far removed from the 

 turmoil of the world, and the boys find there a most harmonious 

 interconnection of intellectual training, handicraft work, agricultural 

 activity, sport and inspiring social intercourse between teachers and 

 pupils. It is a delight to see those happy youngsters under conditions 

 in which their natural instincts for out-of-door life and for social com- 

 panionship, for manual activity and for sport, are so wholesomely satis- 

 fied and at the same time where their intellectual development is 

 secured by individualizing training in scholarly method. They learn 

 really to love the literature and the history of their country and to 

 become personally interested in the political and the economic structure 

 of their nation. Their minds are opened to music and art, to religion 

 and morality. Small groups of them undertake walking trips not only 

 into the near neighborhood, but to far-distant parts of the fatherland 

 in a simple camping style. Sometimes even long journeys to Egypt 

 and elsewhere have been undertaken in the vacation time. Truly it is 

 an ideal method to develop a healthy mind in a healthy body. Whether 

 it will become the crystallization point for general educational changes 

 in Germany is, however, more than doubtful. So far these reforms are 

 in an uphill fight. They suffer from that which they feel as an unfair- 

 ness, namely, from the fact that their schools must lead the boys to the 

 same examinations which the regular school boys have to pass if the 

 pupils are to go over to the university or to any other official career. 

 This demands that in the last years much cramming be introduced and 

 that features be forced on these new boy paradises which seem very 

 foreign to their spirit. They demand, accordingly, new regulations 

 which will give to the new types of schools more appropriate examina- 

 tions as end points. As long as this is not granted, these schools remain 



