December 24, 1886.] 



SCIEJ^CE. 



595 



tory, geography, natural history, arithmetic and 

 algebra, geometry, writing, drawing, singing, 

 and gymnastics. English must be taught in the 

 popular schools from the third class upwards, and 

 French comes in as an optional matter (the only 

 one), and to take it the consent of the oherschul- 

 behorde is required. The two lower classes have 

 each of them 26 hours of schooling a week, the 

 class next above them has 28, the four higher 

 classes have 32 each. Some of the popular 

 schools in Hamburg, like those in Berlin, meet 

 once a day only. In summer the schools meet 

 at 8 m the morning, and the different classes go 

 on till 12, 1, or 2 on different days in the week, 

 so that each class shall make its proper number of 

 weekly hours. In winter they meet at 9 and go 

 on an hour later. No week-day is a holiday, like 

 the Saturday with us and the Thursday with the 

 French. Other schools have two daily meetings, 

 from 8 to 11 or 12, and from 2 to 4, the proper 

 number of hours for each class being again al- 

 ways made. Local convenience determines 

 whether the school shall have two daily meet- 

 ings or one. The pressure which the long at- 

 tendance from 8 to 2 or from 9 to 3 would seem 

 likely to exercise is remedied by an arrangement 

 which I found general in German countries, and 

 which works very well. At the end of each hour 

 the class disperses to the corridors and play- 

 ground, and the teachers to the teachers' meet- 

 ing-room. Irr ten minutes a bell rings, and the 

 classes and teachers re-assemble refreshed. How 

 mucli the work of a long morning is lightened by 

 this simple plan may be observed by any one of 

 school experience who will pass a morning in a 

 Crerman or Swiss school." 



In German grammar the children learn the 

 declension of nouns, comparison of adjectives, and 

 conjugation of verbs. In history, where the pre- 

 scribed aim is to make the pupil acquainted with the 

 prominent persons and points in the development 

 of mankind in general, and of the German nation 

 in particular, biographical notices form the prin- 

 cipal subject-matter. In religion, parables and 

 hymns are learned and said by heart, and instruc- 

 tion is given in the literary history and transla- 

 tion of the Bible. Everywhere in Germany Mr. 

 Arnold thought the text-books used, good. The fol- 

 lowing passage merits quotation in full : "In the 

 specially formative and humanizing parts of the 

 school-work, I found in foreign schools a perform- 

 ance which surprised me, which would be pro- 

 nounced good anywhere, and which I could not 

 find in corresponding schools at home. I am 

 thinking of literature and poetry and the lives of 

 the poets, of recitation and reading, of history, of 

 foreign languages. Sometimes in our schools one 



comes across a child with a gift, and a gift is 

 always something unique and admu'able. But in 

 general in our elementary schools when one says 

 that the reading is good, or the French, or the 

 history, or the acquaintance with poetry, one 

 makes the mental reservation, 'good, consider- 

 ing the class from which children and teachers 

 are drawn.' But in the foreign schools lately 

 visited by me I have found in all these matters a 

 performance which would be pronounced good 

 anywhere, and a performance, not of individuals, 

 but of classes. At Trachenberg, near Dresden, I 

 went with the inspector into a schoolroom where 

 the head class were reading a ballad of Goethe, 

 ' Der Sanger.' The inspector took the book, 

 asked the children questions about the life of 

 Goethe, made them read the poem, asked them to 

 compare it with a ballad of Schiller in the same 

 volume, ' Der Graf von Habsburg,' drew from 

 them the differences between the two ballads, 

 what their charm was, where lay the interest of 

 the middle age for us, and of chivalry, and so on. 

 The performance was not a solo by a clever in- 

 spector : the part in it taken by the children was 

 active and intelligent, such as would be called 

 good if coming from children in an altogether 

 higher class of school, and such as proved under 

 what capable teaching they must have been. In 

 Hamburg, again, in English, . and at Zurich in 

 French, I heard children read and translate a 

 foreign language vvith a power and a pronuncia- 

 tion such as I have never found in an elementary 

 school at home, and which I should call good if 

 I found it in some high-class school for young 

 ladies. At Zurich, I remember, we jDassed from 

 reading and translating to grammar, and the 

 children were questioned about the place of pro- 

 nominal objects in a French sentence. Imagine 

 a child in one of oui- popidar schools knowing, or 

 being asked, why we say on me le rend, but 

 on le lid r^end, and what is the rule on the 

 subject ! " 



And the instruction is better in foreign schools, 

 because the schools are better organized, and the 

 teachers better trained, than those in England 

 This brings us to the third general subject treated 

 in the report, — the status, training, and pen- 

 sioning of teachers. 



To begin with, it may be safely said that teach- 

 ers in Germany, France, and Switzerland, come 

 from the same class of society as do teachers in 

 England. For mention of all that is interesting 

 and valuable in Mr. Arnold's report about the 

 training of teachers, we have no space : but we 

 give an abstract of the training in a typical 

 instance, in Saxony. 



The training-school course there lasts six yeai"S. 



