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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 255 



to arouse an interest in tlie suppression of alcohol traffic in Africa, 

 ought to know, that, even if its aims were reached, the negroes would 

 be little better off. There is only one way to improve their state : 

 it is to develop their arts and industries ; to improve the methods 

 of agriculture where such is practised, to further stock raising and 

 trading where the negroes are stock raisers and traders. After this 

 has been done, the missionary may be able to Christianize his pupils. 

 The intelligent missionaries, who understand that an improvement 

 of the material welfare of the natives must precede any teaching 

 of religion, are not many. The author, whose aims are very praise- 

 worthy, has not grasped the question of education of the natives 

 He overestimates one cause of their ruin, and underestimates their 

 faculties. The spread of Mohammedanism shows that the nati\{e 

 is well able to protect himself from alcohol, if his other energies are 

 not destroyed by foreign influence. This shows that the principal 

 problem is not the prohibition of alcohol, which of course is the 

 chief aim of the Woman's Temperance Association, but the 

 stimulation of the energies, and development of the faculties, of 

 the natives. 



THE GERMAN SYSTEM OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.' 

 In Germany schools have a social as well as an educational 

 rank. They may in general be divided into lower, middle, and 

 higher schools. The tuition, which is common to all, is graded, so 

 that the poorer and lower social classes are driven into the lowest 

 grade of schools. These are called Vo/is, or people's schools. In 

 Prussia ninety-one per cent of all children attend them ; in Bavaria, 

 ninety-six per cent. Their course of study is rounded up and com- 

 plete in itself. This school leads into no higher school. The 

 length of its course of study is eight years, — from the age of six 

 to that of fourteen. It is for this grade of schools that the Ger- 

 man normal schools prepare, and have always prepared, teachers. 

 The higher schools are taught by classically trained university men, 

 even in the elementary grades. 



German normal schools arose in the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, and were established and maintained almost wholly from 

 philanthropic motives. They educated pious young people for a 

 business to which was attached neither competence nor worldly 

 honor. Externally their growth was greatly stimulated by the rise 

 of that great democratic wave which has swept through the world 

 during the present century ; furthermore, by that fear of an unedu- 

 cated proletariat which arose with the French revolution ; and, 

 finally, by that high patriotism which saw in the education of the 

 German people the hope of freeing Germany from the domination 

 of Napoleon. Internally the normal schools received a new birth 

 through the educational revival which arose with Rousseau and 

 Pestalozzi. 



But at the close of the Napoleonic wars, Germany relapsed into 

 the old police state, and soon suffered the internal contradiction of 

 a free intellectual development of the people in its schools, and the 

 cast-iron rigidity of a bureaucratic and despotic system of govern- 

 ment. This contradiction culminated in the revolution of 1848. A 

 re-action followed, and the normal schools, which had grown nu- 

 merous, were accused of being the main disseminators of revolution- 

 ary ideas. In 1854 there followed the three famous Prussian Reg- 

 ulations, which eliminated from the normal schools the spirit of 

 Pestalozzi and modern development, and reduced them to medieval 

 handmaids of the Church and a bureaucratic State. Other German 

 powers followed the example of Prussia. Authority took the place 

 of self-activity in the schoolroom, and German education sank 

 from its high estate. This was the condition of education in Ger- 

 many until the great day of German unity, which came at the close 

 of the Franco-Prussian war. The oppressive Regulations were re- 

 pealed, the spirit of progress and free development of mind re- 

 turned, and Germany resumed her former place as the leader of 

 educational advancement. The number of normal schools in- 

 creased, until there were enough to supply all teachers needed for 

 the people's schools. The number in 1882 in Prussia was one 

 hundred and eleven, nine of which were for women, the rest for 

 men, there being no co-education in German normal schools. Each 



^ Read at the National Teachers' Association, in Chicago, July, 1S87. 



school has a director, a head teacher, four ordinary teachers, and 

 one assistant. It is attended by about a hundred students, about 

 two-thirds of whom board in the school. The board is very cheap, 

 not exceeding a dollar a week. The State pays the deficit, if one- 

 occurs. I apprehend that the main reason for this close connec- 

 tion with the school is to be found in the tendency of the normal 

 students to imitate the excessive beer-drinking and carousing sa 

 common among the students of the university. The employment 

 of women as teachers in Germany is yet regarded as an experiment 

 in many parts of the country, and occurs usually only in graded' 

 girls' schools. Director Leutz of Karlsruhe said to me, " So far, 

 they give good satisfaction, for they are still young and fresh, 

 but who knows what they will become when they get old and 

 cross ? " 



The fact that Germany can supply all its Volis schools with 

 graduate teachers from the normal schools, finds its explanation in 

 these facts : i. All students take a continuous course, and all 

 graduate, as indeed they must before they can become teachers ; 2. 

 Nearly all graduates remain teachers, for a German rarely becomes 

 that for which he was not specially educated ; 3. Teaching is a pro- 

 fession in Germany, since none but trained persons are allowed 

 permanently to teach in that country. The teacher is a civil officer, 

 and holds his position with a life-tenure. I find by computation 

 that the average length of service of Prussian teachers for the last 

 fifty years is sixteen and nine-tenths years ; so that, aside from the 

 increase in the number of schools, but five and nine-tenths per cent 

 of the whole number of teachers must be renewed yearly. Direc- 

 tor Rein of Eisenach, in Sachen-Weimar, and Director Leutz of 

 Karlsruhe, in Baden, both assured me that not more than five per 

 cent of the number of teachers in those states is renewed yearly. 

 This makes it possible, with a reasonable number of normal schools, 

 perhaps one for each hundred thousand inhabitants, to supply 

 trained teachers for all schools. Every year, however, in Illinois, 

 over tvifenty per cent of all teachers are beginners. At this rate, to- 

 supply our Illinois schools with trained teachers, it would take one 

 hundred and forty-two normal schools, each having one hundred 

 students, a three-years' course, and graduating thirty-three students 

 annually. We have, in reality, two normal schools, which gradu- 

 ate from twenty-five to forty students each year. 



German normal schools are administered by the state educa- 

 tional minister or commissioner, a provincial school commission, and 

 by the director. 



The same difficulties which have beset us, concerning the proper 

 preparation of candidates for the normal schools, exist in Germany, 

 Most of their candidates come naturally from the Vo/ks or people's 

 schools ; but, as we have seen, their course of study is strictly ele- 

 mentary, and closes when the student is at the age of fourteen. 

 The common rule is to require three years of preparation before 

 entering the normal school. This preparation is obtained in any 

 one of three ways : i. Privately (this happens in villages where 

 only the Vo/is school is found); 2. In the advanced grades of mid- 

 dle and higher schools ; 3. In special preparatory schools. Of 

 this kind, Prussia has thirty, whereas each normal school of Saxony 

 has its own preparatory school. The pupils are here taken at four- 

 teen direct from the Vo/is school, and graduated six years later. 

 The course of study in the preparatory schools is purely academic, 

 and consists of (i) religion, (2) German (reading, grammar, etc.), 

 (3) mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, geometry), (4) history, (5) 

 geography, (6) natural science, (7) writing, (8) drawing, (9) singing, 

 (10) violin, (11) piano, (12) harmony, (13) gymnastics. 



That every normal school must have a model and training school 

 has long since been established by law in Germany, and is no 

 longer a question of debate. As the late Director Kehr, of the 

 Halberstadt Normal School, said, " a normal school without a 

 training-school would be like a swimming-school without water." 

 The only feature to which I wish to call your attention is the fact 

 that in Prussia each training-school has a country or district schoo 

 department, i.e., a model of a school taught by one teacher, so thati 

 the students have a complete picture of a village ungraded school. 

 I do not dwell upon the subject of the training-school, for I believe 

 that this country has now become pretty thoroughly converted to 

 the idea that the training-school is a necessary part of any thor- 

 oughly equipped normal school. Some of you will remember, how- 



