32 Prussia and the German System of Education. 



In Bavaria, Wirteraburg, the Duchy of Baden and 

 Nassau, as much, and in Wirtemburg and Baden, perhaps 

 even more, has been done to promote the intelligence, 

 morality, and civilization of the lower orders of society, 

 than in Prussia. In each of these countries, every village 

 has a good school-house, and at least one learned and 

 practically efficient teacher, who has been educated for 

 several years at a college ; every town has several well- 

 organized schools, sufficiently large to receive all the child- 

 ren of the town, who are between the ages of six and 

 fourteen ; each of these schools contains from four to ten 

 class-rooms, and each class-room is under the direction 

 of a highly educated teacher. 



In each of these countries, every parent is obliged to 

 educate his children, either at home or at some school, 

 the choice of means being left to himself. In none of 

 these countries are children left to grow up in vicious 

 ignorance or with debasing habits. 



In none of these countries, is there any class of children 

 analogous to that which swarms in the back streets, alleys 

 and gutters of our great cities and towns, and from which, 

 our paupers, our disaffected, and our criminals grow up, 

 and from which our " ragged schools " are filled. All the 

 children are intelligent, polite, clean, and neatly dressed, 

 and grow up from their sixth to their fourteenth year under 

 the teaching and influence of educated men. 



In each of these countries a sufficient number of normal 

 colleges has been founded, to enable it to educate a suffi- 

 cient supply of teachers for the parishes and towns. 



In each of these countries, all the schools of every sect 

 and party, private as well as public, are open to public 

 inspection, and are visited several times every year by 

 learned men, whose business it is to examine both teachers 

 and scholars, and to give the government, the chambers, 

 and the country, a full and detailed account of the state, 



