Decembek 34, 1886. J 



SCIENCE. 



593 



practical use the knowledge acquired, and are 

 based upon the same principles of education that 

 govern the methods of the earlier schools. 



Such a system is consistent in all its methods 

 and aims ; it maintains a constant unity of pur- 

 pose ; while each department is distinct in its own 

 individuality, and bears a proper relation to the 

 whole. C. E. Meleney. 



MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD'S REPORT ON 

 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ON THE CON- 

 TINENT. 



Mr. Matthew Arnold has but lately resigned 

 the office of her majesty's inspector of schools, a 

 position which he has filled for many years with 

 credit to himself, and with great benefit, we are 

 sure, not only to such schools as have come under 

 his immediate supervision, but also to English 

 educational interests in general. One of his last 

 official duties of any importance was to visit Ger- 

 many, Switzerland, and France, and to write an 

 official report on certain specified points con- 

 nected with elementary education in those coun- 

 tries. Some portions of that report were used by 

 Mr. Arnold in his address before the University of 

 Pennsylvania, which was printed afterwards in 

 the Century magazine. But the entire report is 

 of the liveliest interest to American educators ; 

 for several of the points investigated by Mr. Ar- 

 nold are those to which no little attention is being 

 paid in this country, and all the information gath- 

 ered by him is part of the material to be used by 

 the comparative method in studying educational 

 institutions and methods. 



By the terms of Mr. Arnold's instructions, his 

 attention was to be more particularly directed to 

 Germany and Switzerland, and the points he was 

 to study were four in number : 1". Free educa- 

 tion ; 2". Quality of education ; 3°. Status, train- 

 ing, and pensioning of teachers ; 4°. Compulsory 

 attendance, and release from school. Only four- 

 teen weeks were given to the inquiry ; and of 

 these, five were spent in Prussia, two in Saxony, 

 two in Bavaria, two in Switzerland, and three in 

 France. Mr. Arnold's latest mission, as he ex- 

 pressly states, diflfered from those of 1859 and 

 1865 in that he did not go now to study systems 

 of education, but only to report on the four 

 above-mentioned points. These points Mr. Ar- 

 nold takes up in order. 



Under the head of free education, he was in- 

 structed to ascertain whether gratuitous education 

 is confined to elementary schools, or extends to 

 other schools or colleges ; what reasons induced 

 the state to establish the gratuitous system ; in 

 what way (directly or indirectly) the lower classes 



of society are made to feel the 'weight of the ex- 

 penditure on education ; in what way the dirty 

 and neglected children in large towns are dealt 

 with, and especially whether all descriptions of 

 children are mixed in the same schoolroom ; 

 whether there is a legal prohibition against char- 

 ging fees in public schools, even if parents and 

 children are willing to pay ; whether the attend- 

 ance of children has increased or diminished since 

 the establishment of free schools, Mr. Arnold 

 answers these questions first with the information 

 gained by him in Prussia. In the Prussian con- 

 stitution of 1850 is this provision : In der offent- 

 lichen volksschule wird der unterrieht unentgeltlich 

 ertheilt. But this provision has generally re- 

 mained inoperative, because the popular school is 

 to be maintained by the Gemeinde, or commune, 

 and the communers have not in general found 

 themselves able to forego the income from school 

 fees. And, on the other hand, the state has not 

 been able or willing to provide gratuitous instruc- 

 tion in the communes. Some few communes, how- 

 ever, have been able to throw their popular 

 schools open to all classes of the population, free 

 of all charge. Diisseldorf has done so : so has 

 Berlin. The Berlin schools have been free since 

 1870, and last year it cost more than 6,000,000 

 marks to support them. At the time of the in- 

 troduction of free schooling, the municipality had 

 49 communal schools, with 31 ,752 scholars ; in 

 1885 it had 146 such schools, with 132,889 schol- ' 

 ars. These communal schools are the only body 

 of schools in Berlin or throughout Prussia in 

 which school fees are not paid. Herr von Goss- 

 ler, minister of education, was found by Mr. Ar- 

 nold to favor making the communal schools free 

 everywhere, and Prince Bismarck is said to agree 

 with him. But among the public generally, in- 

 cluding the teachers themselves and the govern- 

 ment officials, the weight of opinion is against 

 such a course. Even where school fees are 

 charged, they meet but a small portion of the 

 total expense. On an average for the whole of 

 Prussia, school fees furnish 20.58 per cent of the 

 cost of teaching in the popular schools ; endow- 

 ments, 12.02 per cent ; the communes, 55.26 per 

 cent; and the state, 12.14 per cent. In some 

 towns, Cologne for example, where the popular 

 schools are not free, provision has been made for 

 giving free instruction to poor children in schools 

 by themselves. But in Berlin the children of the 

 working and middle classes all attend school to- 

 gether. The only distinction made on the ground 

 of poverty at Berlin is that school-books and 

 school-material are supplied gratuitously whenever 

 the teacher finds that the child cannot aflford to 

 buy them. 



