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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
peasant and labourer have, as a matter of course, the arts of 
reading, writing, and cyphering, know the Church formulas and a 
good deal of the Bible, and can take part in singing a hymn or 
national chorus. 
But I think that one misses in these schools anything calculated 
to raise the intelligence of the people, anything analogous to the 
influence of the parochial schools of Scotland. The repression of 
the high-flown Pestalozzian aspirations has been too absolute. 
The definition of an elementary school has been too logical. 
There is nothing to lead on towards the higher grades of education. 
The people’s school seems sharply separated off, and to give the 
children of the people no encouragement or opportunity to rise. 
One proof of this may be found in the fact that pupils who, at 
fourteen years of age, have passed eight years in the primary 
school, and who then have two years further preparation under a 
public schoolmaster or clergyman, are, at sixteen years of age, 
commonly unfit to enter upon the very simple curriculum of the 
training college. 
It may be asked whether industrial or technical instruction does 
not form part of the Prussian system ? But in the ordinary 
people’s school nothing of this kind is attempted. The Prussian 
Educational Department conceives that it has a particular function 
to discharge for the people, and of this it acquits itself, and does 
no more. It is argued that seven or eight years’ schooling, at the 
rate of twenty-six hours per week, is not more than sufficient for 
imparting to all with certainty the elements of common knowledge 
and religion, and that any attempt at technical instruction would 
only interfere with this; and everything technical must be learnt 
practically, or otherwise, after the age of fourteen. One means of 
supplementing the meagre results of the people’s schools, consists 
in the Fort-bildungsanstalten, or “improvement schools.” These 
exist generally in the shape of evening classes in mathematics, 
French, &c., for youths and adults. They have not been organised 
systematically, and even if they were, could hardly supply the 
want of a more early awakening of the intellect. 
But, of course, many children, and some even of the poor, quit 
the elementary school at nine years of age, to enter on the course 
of higher instruction. 
