316 Proceedings of the Fioyal Society 
mentioned that in Berlin (which has about three times the popu¬ 
lation of Edinburgh) there were some time ago about 55,000 
children in the elementary schools, and it was estimated that each 
of these children, in addition to the school fees, cost the municipality 
about L.l sterling per annum,—the total expenditure on this object 
being about twelve per cent, on the municipal budget. 
We have seen how the primary schools in Prussia are filled, and 
how they are supported ; we have now to inquire Iioav they are 
managed. The Volksschule has never forgotten the tradition of 
its origin, at the time of the Reformation, as an ecclesiastical 
institution. The immediate and local management of all the 
schools is practically in the hands of the clergy. The clergyman 
of the parish is ex officio local inspector of the common school. He 
is chairman of the school board, which consists of representatives 
of the householders. He has really onerous duties in connection 
with the school. He is expected to visit it constantly, in some 
places as often as once a week. He is not merely the inspector of 
the school in the sense of examiner and critic, but he is responsible 
for its management and superintendence. He has to prepare the 
children for confirmation by a religious lesson of at least an hour a 
day for the two or three months preceding Easter. 
The central power is said to regard the clergy as useful in 
repressing the instinct of self-government in the commune. The 
clergy are said generally to take a bureaucratic and centralising 
point of view in the discharge of their functions as school inspectors. 
But they have a difficult and thankless office. They have to 
encounter the jealousy of the school board, and often the discontent 
and mutiny of the schoolmaster, who has, perhaps, the chronic 
grievance of an inadequate salary, and who, having been profes¬ 
sionally prepared in a training college, finds himself controlled by 
one who has no technical acquaintance with the details of school 
management. 
In the political disturbances of 18-18-49 i^which were designated 
as “ the schoolmasters’ rebellion ”), one of the great cries was for 
the autonomy of schools, that is, for greater freedom from the 
control of the Church. And this is one of the things which the 
Prussian Liberals expect from the Educational Bill of the future. 
They do not seem to ask for a secular system of instruction, but 
