348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fession, or it may be, in the technical language of society, to "finish " ; 

 to study with private tutors, or in the gymnasium, or the liealschule 

 (real-school). Though many of these students are girls, and many of 

 the objections given also hold good in their case, we shall confine our- 

 selves to boys. Of course, no careful parent would permit his daugh- 

 ter to reside in a foreign country, save under judicious chaperonage ; 

 no young girl should be personally subjected to the trials of making 

 her own way among the officials and the managers of pensions in a 

 German city. Some parents place their sons in Leipsic or Berlin, be- 

 cause they have observed that it is the thing to do ; others, because 

 they honestly think their children will profit by it — that is, more than 

 they would at school, during the same time, at home. The fame of 

 German schools and teachers may justify the latter view. In scope, 

 purpose, and magnanimity, no schools surpass the German gymnasia and 

 real-schools ; and if we take the system throughout the nation and set 

 it beside our school system as a whole, as applied in town and country 

 and in various States, it is far superior, in all that education means, to 

 it and to any other existing system. But, after a residence of over 

 two years in German cities, and after some study of their secondary 

 schools, I am convinced that our best high-schools and academies, pub- 

 lic and private, are equal to the best German schools. The question, 

 however, whether a boy at a German school would be better taught 

 in his languages and mathematics, his sciences and his history, is not 

 here pertinent. Grant for the moment that he is better taught ; is he, 

 by his German training, better fitted as a man to meet the questions 

 of American life, and to succeed in his calling in America? At the 

 age when his mind is most plastic, when those impressions are received 

 that are to abide by him longest, he is transplanted to a society whose 

 salient features are in reality startlingly unlike those amid which he. 

 is to make his way in life. I shall not attempt to decide whether 

 these traits and ideas are preferable to our own ; it is enough that they 

 are different. Certain it is, for instance, that a boy in Germany is 

 made unpractical ; and that is a fatal quality in an American boy. 

 He is filled with a love of research for its own sake, not for the sake 

 of its bearing upon direct practical results. I should say that this is 

 the chief quality w^hich the boy is sure to get, and which will, in vary- 

 ing degrees, unfit him for the demands of his later work in any calling 

 at home. He will be made impractical and speculative. The Ger- 

 mans are discoverers and recorders of facts, but they are poor at ap- 

 plying them. The boy also loses his sense of the value of time. Where 

 all men, business and professional, move slowly, where it is the rule 

 for the merchant, or the editor, to spend two hours at midday at his 

 dinner and coffee, where "soon" means half a day, and "at once" an 

 hour, the native boy does not suffer if he grows up in an atmosphere 

 of deliberation. But this will not do in Broadway. Again, German 

 boys are overworked. The American boy's school-life is easy com- 



