6i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



be aimed at. Continuation schools for candy makers and continuation 

 schools for shoe makers had to be different. There are five chief types : 

 the general continuation school, the commercial, the industrial, the 

 rural and, exclusively for girls, the household economy school. Each 

 of these types is realized sometimes in schools of obligatory character, 

 and sometimes in schools where the attendance is voluntary, as well as 

 in schools with prescribed courses, and in others with great freedom of 

 election. The most famous system of continuation schools, the discus- 

 sion of which has had most valuable influence on the whole German 

 situation, is that of the city of Munich, where the indefatigable superin- 

 tendent of schools, Dr. Kerschensteiner, has succeeded in a perfect 

 adjustment of educational needs to the practical requirements of the 

 community. Particularly his industrial continuation schools have been 

 organized in such a way that almost every important business is repre- 

 sented by special classes for apprentices and special classes for journey- 

 men and older working men. There are classes for chimney sweepers 

 and for cabinetmakers, for coachmen and for ivory carvers, for watch- 

 makers and for photographers, for tailors and for locksmiths, for barbers 

 and for gardeners, for office boys and for waiters. There are altogether 

 two hundred and ninety-six classes for the first years and one hundred 

 and thirteen classes for those who are beyond the years of apprentice- 

 ship. About ten thousand boys are regularly attending. Every class 

 has a careful program in which elements of general human education, 

 elements of technical theoretical information and technical practical 

 training, and finally elements of civic and sociological instruction, are 

 harmoniously combined. This blending of different factors shows itself 

 in the appointment of teachers. In the two hundred and ninety-six 

 classes for the younger boys, for instance, we find seventy-seven general 

 and thirty-seven technical teachers who devote to the work all their 

 time and two hundred and twenty-one elementary-school teachers and 

 one hundred and eleven technical and professional teachers who give 

 instruction in their specialties as a side function, and one hundred and 

 sixty teachers of religion. The essential point for an American spec- 

 tator is, however, that the instruction for those thousands of young 

 people in the midst of their practical life is given in the best hours of the 

 day, either in the morning or in the afternoon, and that the employers 

 are obliged to give them the opportunity to attend from six to ten hours 

 a week for four years. Obligatory instruction in the evening when the 

 young people come fatigued from their daily labor is excluded by the 

 scheme. There is perhaps at present in the system of German school 

 work no feature which so much deserves the attention of the American 

 reformer as this whole plan of continuation schools as developed in the 

 city of Munich and as more or less similarly organized in a large number 

 of German cities. 



