VOLUME VIII SLICE X Echinoderma to Edward (continued 9)

The most marked change in the outward aspect of education has been the modification of the curriculum of school and university by the introduction of various branches of natural science. Conjointly with this has been much increase Curriculum of instruction. of specialization, and that not only in the university but in the school. There is no longer a universally recognized circle of knowledge constituting a liberal education preparatory to specialist studies, as there was in the middle ages. Nor is there general agreement as to what such educational institutions as schools and universities should attempt to do, or even as to the end that should be sought by education as a whole. Nor can agreement on such points be expected while men differ widely as to the meaning and purpose of life. The work of the organization of the material means of education has largely been accomplished by the civilized world: that of determining the true theory and practice of the educative process itself is still incomplete. To that, both discussion of the philosophy of life and of the relative values in life, of various kinds of experience and experiment in the light of the conclusions reached, are needed. The problem will never be absolutely solved, for that would imply an absolutely best education irrespective of conditions, but its practical solution will be reached when a true adjustment is made between the process of education and the life for which that education is intended to be a preparation.

See also the articles Academies; Classics; Co-education; Examinations; Polytechnic; Schools; Technical Education; Universities; Women; &c.

(J. Wn.)

II. National Systems of Public Education

A statement of the principles commonly recognized by modern communities as governing the action of the state in relation to education may facilitate at the outset a clearer understanding of the problems which the organization of public education presents. The cardinal doctrine of state interference in the educational domain is universally accepted by all the great nations of the modern world; and in regard to its extent and limits a large measure of agreement has now been reached.

In the first place, it is recognized as the duty of the state to insist upon a certain minimum of education for every future citizen. This does not necessitate a monopoly of education on the part of the state, such as was claimed Principles of state interference. by the Napoleonic despotism under the traditional influence (it would seem) of the old authoritative Gallo-Roman tradition, transformed in its outward manifestation but not in its inward spirit by the French Revolution. Such a monopoly would be plainly repugnant to the spirit of Anglo-Saxon individualism, and it is interesting to note that attempts to reassert it have in recent times been repudiated in republican France by some of the best exponents of modern free thought, as an infringement of personal liberty not calculated to justify itself by any corresponding public gain. Nevertheless, the recognition of this primary duty of the state plainly implies a state system of at least elementary education. The masses of the industrial population cannot afford the necessary minimum of instruction which the public interest demands, and private and voluntary effort cannot efficiently supply the want resulting from the unequal distribution of wealth. But it is in the nature of things that, so far as private effort attempts anything in this direction, it should be motived in the main by religion and associated with the great historical religious organizations; thus it comes about that the moment the state steps in to make good the deficiency of voluntary effort a fruitful and embittering source of difficulty and friction is disclosed. Hence, in England, the history of public elementary education since the beginning of the 19th century has been very largely the history of what is called the religious difficulty. Here we find ourselves in the region of acute controversy in which it is useless to do more than note empirically the various solutions adopted by different states. Perhaps all that can safely be indicated as commanding universal acceptance is the principle that the state must not impose upon an individual citizen in the person of his child any form of religious instruction to which he conscientiously objects. Modern controversies show the difficulty of applying even this rudimentary principle to the complicated circumstances of a free community split up into a number of groups differing profoundly in religious sentiment, and zealous each for the recognition of its own ideal within the common system. So far, however, as secular instruction (i.e. the teaching of other subjects than religion) is concerned it is now generally accepted that the elementary minimum must be both compulsory and free for every individual child whose parents will not or cannot (as the case may be) provide such instruction for it efficiently elsewhere than in the state-supported schools.

Next, the action of the modern state cannot stop short at elementary education. The principle of “the career open to talent” is no longer a matter of abstract humanitarian theory, a fantastical aspiration of revolutionary dreamers; for the great industrial communities of the modern world it is a cogent practical necessity imposed by the fierce international competition which prevails in the arts and industries of life. The nation that is not to fail in the struggle for commercial success, with all that this implies for national life and civilization, must needs see that its industries are fed with a constant supply of workers adequately equipped in respect both of general intelligence and technical training.

On political grounds too, the increasing democratization of institutions renders a wide diffusion of knowledge and the cultivation of a high standard of intelligence among the people a necessary precaution of prudent statesmanship, especially for the great imperial states which confide the most momentous issues of world policy to the arbitrament of the popular voice. The state then must satisfy itself that the means of education are placed within the reach of all, in grades adapted to the varying degrees of intelligence and educational opportunity to be found among a community upon the majority of whose members is imposed the necessity of entering upon the practical business of life at a more or less early age. The organization of the higher grades of education constitutes a task of less formidable magnitude than the organization of elementary education, for the reason that, at any rate in the prevailing social conditions, it is only a minority who can benefit by it, and that of this minority a large proportion can afford the whole or a considerable portion of the cost in each individual case. The class, however, whose education must needs be assisted by the state if it is not to remain inefficient must always be considerable; and account must be taken also of the necessities of the further class whose exceptional mental development is such as to make it worth while for the state to bestow gratuitously an education higher than elementary at the public expense. University education is distinguished from education of the lower grades by the fact that, being necessarily restricted to an élite of intellect or birth, it cannot, save in very exceptional circumstances, usefully be organized locally. Although universities are the necessary complement of a public educational system they do not in strictness or necessity form part of such a system, and in so far as they are brought within the purview of public authority it must be as a matter of national, rather than municipal or provincial, concern. Accordingly university education is separately treated (see Universities), and will not be referred to, save incidentally, in the present article.

Reserving to a final section the history of education in the United States of America, a brief description is given here of the educational systems of the leading European countries by way of introduction to a more detailed, but still summary, historical sketch of public education in England. The highly organized educational systems of France and Prussia (as representing Germany) are manifestly suitable for the purposes of a general study of the principles of educational polity as worked out upon logical and consistently thought-out plans by highly centralized states. As to other European countries, a brief mention must suffice of certain features of special interest presented by smaller progressive states of such different types as Switzerland, Belgium and Holland. Similarly, in the case of the United Kingdom, considerations of space forbid more than a brief notice of the educational systems of Scotland (q.v.) and Ireland (q.v.). For other countries see the sections in the articles under the headings of the respective states.

France.

France (q.v.) presents the most complete type of a state system of education organized under a strongly centralized administration in all grades. This centralized administration in education, as in other departments, represents the Napoleonic heritage of the Republic, and, although there has been an increasing tendency of recent years to study local conditions in the internal organization of schools, anything approaching to local autonomy is unknown in educational affairs. The necessary checks upon bureaucracy are supplied not by popularly elected municipal bodies but by a strong infusion of the pedagogic element in the administrative machinery. The pedagogic element in turn does but represent another side of the collective activities of the state. The teaching profession both in the primary and higher spheres—and the two are sharply marked off from one another—consists of a highly organized body of state functionaries, united by a strong esprit de corps and actuated by ideals and aims which are inspired by the state. The importance of this condition of things lies in the fact that the Republic is something more than a form of government: it is the social and moral expression of the democratic ideal as conceived by a people profoundly imbued by tradition with the sense of social solidarity, or collectivism; and nowhere has this expression been more characteristic or more complete than in the domain of public education. Yet the educational system of modern France is by no means exclusively the creation of the Third Republic, and the main stages in its development deserve to be traced historically.

No historical sketch, however slight, of French education can ignore the great Catholic religious educator of the 18th century, Jean Baptiste de la Salle, the founder of Les Frères de la Doctrine chrétienne, commonly known as the Frères de la Doctrine chrétienne. “Christian Brothers.” The Brothers were not merely pioneers of elementary education, they may also be regarded (as M. Buisson, formerly director of public instruction, has shown) as the originators of higher primary instruction. Under the Restoration they upheld the method of simultaneous teaching against the partisans of the mutual (or monitorial) method, successfully demonstrating the superiority of the trained teacher. The unfortunate effects of the monitorial system upon English education show the reality of the service which this religious congregation rendered to the national pedagogy in France.

The Constitution of 1791 decreed that primary instruction should be compulsory and gratuitous. (It may be explained that the term “free education,” instruction libre, does not bear the same meaning in France as in England. In The Revolution and Napoleon. France a free school means a school not under state control and not forming part of the state system.) In this as in much else the Revolution was powerless to do more than enunciate general principles which it left for later generations, in the present instance after the lapse of nearly a century, to carry into effect. True to its theories of individualistic liberty, the Revolution admitted liberty of teaching. Napoleon, on the other hand, by the law of 1806, centralized all forms of education in one official teaching body under the name of the Imperial University, thus securing a monopoly of teaching to the state. The Napoleonic idea of the university, doubtless because a true expression of the national genius, has never ceased to exert a profound influence upon French education, an influence which of late years has been revivified and reinforced by the modern ideal of social solidarity.

Under the Restoration education fell inevitably under the control of the church, but under the Liberal Monarchy Guizot in 1833 passed a law which laid the foundations of modern primary instruction, obliging the communes to maintain Reforms of Guizot. schools and pay the teachers. It is also to the credit of Guizot as an educational reformer that he perceived the necessity for the higher primary as distinct from the secondary school. The higher primary schools which he founded were unfortunately suppressed by the Loi Falloux; their restoration constitutes one of the great positive services rendered by the Third Republic to the cause of popular education.

The Loi Falloux of 1850, passed by the Second Republic under the influence of the prince president, is chiefly memorable for its restoration of the liberty of teaching, which in a Catholic country means in effect free scope for priestly Loi Falloux. schools. This law also made provision for separate communal schools for girls, for adult classes and for the technical instruction of apprentices. In 1854 France was divided for purposes of educational administration into sixteen academies, each administered by a rector with an academy inspector under him for each department. This organization survives to-day, with the difference that for each academy (except Chambéry) there is now a local teaching university.

The ministry of the well-known educationist M. Duruy (1865-1869), corresponding to the period of the Liberal Empire, was notable for marked administrative progress. A permanent Ministry of M. Duruy. memorial of this epoch is the enactment rendering primary schools for girls obligatory in communes of over 500 inhabitants. Duruy also provided for the introduction of gratuitous instruction at the option of the commune.

The task of educational reform imposed itself upon the republic by a twofold necessity. The wars of 1866 and 1870 were victories for the Prussian schoolmaster, and aroused all western Europe to the national importance of popular The Third Republic. education. For France then the reform of popular education was an essential part of the work of national restoration. For the republic too, menaced by older and hostile traditions, the creation of a national system of education inspired by its own spirit was an essential condition of the permanence and security of its government and the social ideals of which that government was the expression. Hence the energy with which the republican state addressed itself to the organization of primary instruction, “obligatory, gratuitous, secular.”

By the law of June 1, 1878, there was imposed upon the communes the obligation of acquiring their school buildings; and as a grant in aid a sum of £2,400,000 was set aside for this purpose by the state. In 1879 a law was passed Acquisition of elementary school buildings and organization of teaching profession. compelling every department to maintain a training college for male and female teachers respectively. The two higher normal schools of Fontenay and St Cloud were also founded to supply the training colleges with professors. During the same period, among other certificats or professional diplomas, there were established the certificat d’aptitude pédagogique, which qualifies probationer-teachers (stagiaires) for appointment as teachers in full standing (titulaires), and the certificat d’aptitude for primary inspectors and heads of normal schools. The law of June 16, 1881, rendered obligatory for all teachers, whether public or private, the brevet de capacité. It was found impracticable to carry this law into immediate effect, and as late as 1902 only about 60% of the men and 52% of the women were provided with the professional certificate necessary for becoming titulaires.

The laws making primary education gratuitous, compulsory and secular, are indissolubly associated with the name of Jules Ferry. The law of June 16, 1881, abolished fees in all primary schools and training colleges, the law of Reforms of Jules Ferry. Laicization. 1882 established compulsory attendance, and finally the law of October 30, 1886, enacted that none but lay persons should teach in the public schools, and abolished in those schools all distinctively religious teaching. In the boys’ schools members of religious communities were to be displaced within five years, but in girls’ schools the religieuses might remain till death or resignation.

Religious teaching was replaced in the state schools under the Ferry law by moral instruction according to official curricula, a change which has been described by M. Séailles (Éducation ou révolution) as a revolution of the profoundest Moral instruction. philosophical meaning. The difficult and delicate topics of the relation of the state school to religion and the value of the substituted moral instruction have recently received illuminating and objective treatment from different points of view in the series of reports on Moral Instruction and Training in Schools, edited by Professor M.E. Sadler (1908, vol. ii.); the barest reference to the questions at issue must here suffice. As regards the character of the moral instruction, it would appear to have shifted from a Kantian to a purely sociological basis. Roman Catholic opinion is at least not unanimous in regarding the “lay” or neutral school as essentially or necessarily anti-religious, and plainly there is no inherent reason why the neutrality should not be a real neutrality, but with the existing relations between the Catholic Church and modern thought in France the influence of the Normalist teachers is in fact apt to be anti-religious, and moreover no system of independent moral doctrine, whether based upon a priori or inductive reasoning, can be acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church. In whatever degree the blame may be rightly apportionable between church and state, the fact is that the two find themselves in acute conflict, and that from the conflict there has resulted a certain moral confusion which Christian and non-Christian moralists alike view with alarm. It may be that the mischief would have been mitigated had more moderate counsels prevailed at the time of the Ferry law, and had the church been willing to accept (as the Republic might then have been willing to concede) right of entry for the clergy into the schools. But the real causes of the trouble lie deep in the philosophical and religious problems of our time, and in the constant and self-sacrificing devotion of the French to logical ideals on either side. Perhaps it is not too sanguine to discern in the growing tendency to idealism in French philosophy, and to liberal ideas in French and Catholic religious thought, the promise of a happier state of things. In the meantime, the religious difficulty in the schools divides the nation into two hostile camps (les deux Frances, as a Swiss Protestant writer puts it) in the shape of the state secular schools on the one side and the private religious schools on the other.

In the year 1903-1904 the total number of pupils in private primary schools was 1,298,591, as against 4,935,000 in the public primary schools, but these figures were liable to be materially affected by the rigorous enforcement of the laws against the religious orders.

In 1889 an important change was made in educational finance by transferring the cost of teachers’ salaries in primary schools from the communes to the state, a right consequence of the changes which made the teacher a state official. Financial reform of 1889. Thus the state assumed the greater part of the burden of primary instruction, leaving to the communes merely the cost of fabric, and to the department the maintenance of the fabric of the normal schools and certain expenses of inspection.

At this point it will be convenient to describe shortly the various central and local authorities that constitute the official machine. The minister, the head of the entire hierarchy, is assisted by a conseil supérieur consisting of Administrative machinery. Minister and conseil supérieur. fifty-seven members, of whom the majority are elected by the higher teaching profession, while a few are nominated by the president, including a small number to represent private schools, and a few are elected by the primary teachers. Practically the ordinary work of the council is carried on by a sub-committee consisting of the nine nominees of the president and six others designated for this purpose by the minister. The council has administrative, judicial and disciplinary, as well as advisory, powers which enable it to exert a direct influence upon the internal organization of schools. There is also a pedagogic comité consultatif and a legal comité contentieux, whose respective functions are purely advisory.

The inspecteurs généraux “act,” says Mr Brereton in his official report to the English Board of Education, “as the eyes and ears of the central authority.” Their duties are: Inspecteurs généraux. first to inspect the normal schools; next to supervise the work of the ordinary inspectorate; lastly to give general and comparative information on the progress of primary instruction in the various parts of France. For the purpose of general inspection France is divided into seven districts.

As already indicated, for the purpose of educational administration, the departments of France are grouped in seventeen divisions called academies. At the head of each academy is the rector. He is appointed directly by the Rector and council of academy. president and must hold the doctor’s degree. He is not only the head of the local teaching university, but is also charged in a general way with the oversight of all three departments of education, superior, secondary and primary; in regard to the last, however, his functions are confined to the pedagogic side. The direct share of the rector in administration is mainly confined to the normal schools and the higher primary schools. The rector is assisted by an academic council composed almost exclusively of pedagogic elements.

Each department of France has an academy inspector appointed by the minister. The duties of the academy inspector embrace both higher and primary education. In the The academy inspector. latter sphere he is the real head of the local administration, and the primary inspectors are his subordinate officers. He appoints the probationer-teachers and nominates the regular teachers for appointment by the préfet.

The préfet, the chief administrative officer of each department, not only appoints the teachers upon the proposition of the academy inspector, he is also as president of the conseil départemental concerned generally with the Préfet and conseil départemental. externa of school administration, including the supply of schools. The conseil départemental with respect to its powers corresponds in some degree to our own local education authorities, but as regards its constitution it is in no sense a municipal body, the representatives of the conseil général of the department (which corresponds to the county council) being greatly outnumbered by the pedagogical members.

The inspectors of primary schools, as has already been stated, act under the academy inspector. They are appointed upon the result of examination and not by direct nomination Primary inspectors. as in England. The examination is severe, and it is from the body of the professors of the normal schools rather than from the ranks of the primary teachers that the successful candidates are chiefly drawn.

Very limited powers are entrusted to certain communal and cantonal authorities. The commission scolaire is a committee organized in each commune for the purpose of improving school attendance, to which end they administer Minor local authorities. a caisse des écoles or school fund for supplying clothing and meals to needy children. The maire of the commune has the right of visiting the schools, but neither he nor any of the minor local authorities can interfere with the teaching. Similar duties are assigned to the délégués cantonaux, who are appointed by the conseil départemental for each canton (a wider area than the commune), and can best be described as local visitors or visiting committees rather than managers in our sense of the word. “All this hierarchy of central and local officials,” says Mr Brereton, “will doubtless seem complicated to English minds. The extraordinary thing is that, so far as I could learn, the machine, for all its complexity, works smoothly enough. The truth is that the province of each particular functionary is so clearly defined that there is no debateable ground over which ambitious rival authorities can wrangle.”

In proceeding to sketch the French system of higher primary and secondary schools, it may be observed that European systems of higher education have generally been framed upon the view that the divisions of education Conception of secondary education. are longitudinal, not latitudinal, and that secondary education is a training complete in itself from the preparatory stage to the university, with aims and ideals of general culture which differentiate it radically and at the very outset from education of the elementary type. On the other hand, in the United States the view has prevailed that the divisions of education must be latitudinal, that the secondary school must be complementary to the elementary school, in which even the élite must receive their preparatory or elementary training. At any rate down to the reform of 1902, which will presently be explained, the French system could be regarded as a typical and even extreme example of the European theory, little consistent as this might seem to be with the broader principles of democracy. This view of the matter is expressed by the French terminology, by which what in England is called “elementary” is in France termed “primary” education.

The thoroughness with which the principle of the autonomous character of the two divisions of education was carried out undoubtedly favoured in a special degree the complete organization given to higher primary instruction in Higher primary schools. the écoles primaires supérieures under the Third Republic. The aim of these schools is to fill the void which must otherwise exist for those who need a higher education than the primary school can give, but for whose subsequent careers secondary education would be ill-adapted and injudicious. Throughout the organization of primary education the French have kept steadily in view the danger of creating an intellectual proletariate. “Nous poursuivons la culture générale du caractère et de l’esprit, mais nous cherchons en même temps à orienter l’enfant vers la vie pratique,” says an official report. The aim of the higher primary school is to continue education in this spirit up to the age of sixteen so as to prepare the scholar to take an honourable place in the higher ranks of skilled industry rather than to deflect him towards a professional career or intellectual pursuits for which he is unfitted, not so much by the accidents of birth and social circumstance as by his own natural aptitudes. Within the limits necessarily marked out for them the higher primary schools of France have aimed at imparting what may be termed a general culture as distinct from purely technical or trade teaching, and this development has been greatly furthered by the separate organization given to the latter teaching in the écoles professionnelles. At the same time, prominence is given in the higher primary schools to practical training of an educational character with special reference to the industries and circumstances of the locality, and in the rural districts a special agricultural bias is imparted to the curriculum. It is interesting to note that the institution of the higher primary schools was due in large part to the spontaneous initiative of the municipalities, and that in the later phases of state organization special care has been taken to avoid anything in the nature of a rigid uniformity in these schools.

A wider extension has been given to higher primary instruction by the establishment of cours complémentaires in certain schools, at centres at which it would be impossible to organize separate higher primary schools. A similar solution Supplementary courses. of the continuation school problem has recently commended itself to the consultative committee of the Board of Education for England.

Admission to the higher primary schools in France is only accorded to those who have obtained the elementary school leaving certificate, certificat d’études primaires. A feature of importance for continuation work in rural districts is the provision made for boarding scholars in attendance at these schools. The boarding arrangements are generally, as in the case of the secondary schools, left to the head teacher, but in some instances municipal hostels have been provided. No fees may be charged for higher primary instruction, and scholarships (bourses) are provided to a certain extent in the form either of boarding scholarships or maintenance allowances to compensate the parent for the loss of the child’s labour. The number of scholars in the public higher primary schools for the year 1903-1904 was 34,084, and in cours complémentaires 21,777, making a total of 55,861. In addition there were 8891 scholars in receipt of higher primary instruction in private schools.

French secondary education is given in the lycées which are first-grade schools maintained and controlled by the state, and the collèges, which are schools of the second grade maintained partly by the state and partly by the Secondary schools, lycées and collèges. municipality. A considerable number of scholars pass annually from the collèges to the lycées. In both grades of schools the teachers are paid by the state and nominated directly or indirectly by the minister of education. They are required to possess certain specified academic qualifications which can only be obtained from the université, but failing teachers with the prescribed qualifications the classes are taught by teachers styled chargés de cours as distinct from professors.

With a view to supplying teachers for the secondary schools, the state maintains the École Normale Supérieure, a college in which instruction, board and lodging are given free to a number of scholars selected by competition École Normale Supérieure. from the best secondary school boys, though residence in the institution is no longer compulsory. By the decrees of November 10, 1903, and May 10, 1904, the École Normale became practically the College of Pedagogy of the University of Paris. Its students are entered as students of the university, and study for their qualifying examination as teachers in secondary schools (agrégation) under university professors, partly at the Sorbonne, partly at the École Normale, while their professional preparation is entrusted solely to the latter institution.

The Republic has not reorganized secondary education by a comprehensive law; it has, however, introduced by decree, under parliamentary authority, an important reform in the internal organization of the schools which marks a notable Classical and modern education. Reform of 1902. departure from the traditional view of secondary education as a self-contained whole. Article 1 of the decree of May 31, 1902, declares that secondary education is co-ordinated with primary education in such a way as to constitute a continuation of a course of primary studies of a normal duration of four years. The decree goes on to provide for a full course of secondary studies of seven years’ duration, divided into two cycles of four and three years respectively. In the first cycle the scholar has two options. In section 1 Latin is obligatory and Greek optional from the beginning of the third year (classe iv.). In section 2 there is no Latin. At the end of the first cycle the state grants a certificat d’études secondaires du premier degré. In the second cycle one of four courses may be taken; section 1 with Latin and Greek continues the old classical education; section 2 with Latin and modern languages corresponds to the German Realgymnasium; section 3 with Latin and science, and section 4 with modern languages and science, to the Oberrealschule. The baccalauréat, or secondary school-leaving examination, conducted by the university, is adapted to all the courses on the principle that courses of study of equal length, whether classical or modern, literary or scientific, are entitled to equal advantages. This system of alternative courses with leaving examinations of equal value is mainly German in origin, and may be said to represent the results of the best European thought upon the problem of the organization of secondary education.

It is remarkable in view of the thoroughness with which the principle of laicization has been applied to the primary schools that the lycées still retain their chaplains (aumôniers) for the purpose of giving religious instruction. This Religious instruction in lycées. difference of treatment is apparently based upon the consideration that the gratuitous and compulsory character of primary education demanded a much stricter interpretation of the principle of the neutrality of the state than was necessary in the case of secondary education, which is neither compulsory nor gratuitous.

In addition to the state schools there have until lately been in France a large number of private secondary schools, the most important of which have been associated with the Catholic religious orders. The enforcement of the laws Private secondary schools. against these communities has resulted in the closure of a number of these schools, and in the reorganization of others under a lay teaching staff. It is conceivable that the action of the Republic may largely forward the movement, otherwise perceptible in the Roman Catholic Church, to transfer education, even when combined with specific religious teaching, from ecclesiastical to lay hands. Evidence of this tendency is to be found in the boarding-schools (some four in number) founded upon the plan of M. Demolins (author of A quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons) after the English public school model, but with a distinctly Catholic colouring.

Apart from the position of the religious orders, the future of private education in France is far from secure at the present time. The liberty of teaching secured by the Loi Falloux is regarded as a pseudo-liberty by the advanced republican educationists, and the principle that education is a function of the state and not a matter of supply and demand is deeply rooted in the public mind. Proposals have been mooted for making the baccalauréat strictly a school leaving examination attached to the state schools. The adoption of any such measure would practically destroy liberty of teaching by reason of the power which the baccalauréat secures to the state as the key to the professions.

The foundation of secondary schools for girls in connexion with the educational reform of Jules Ferry is in its way one of the most notable achievements of the republic. There is little doubt that the expulsion of the religious orders is Secondary education for girls. destined to exercise a profound influence upon the education of women in France. The place of the closed convent schools is being taken either by new state schools or by Catholic schools under lay teachers, and the number of scholars affected by this process of laicization is far larger in the case of girls than of boys. This change is calculated to produce far-reaching effects in the social and religious order, by no means necessarily, however, of an anti-Catholic or irreligious kind.

For an account of the resuscitation by the Republic of the local universities under the one great state teaching body collectively known as the University, see Universities.

Germany.

Under the German empire education is left to the exclusive control of each of the federated states. The only point of direct contact between the Empire and education lies in the mutual undertaking of the federated states to bring the law of compulsory school attendance to bear upon all subjects of the empire resident within their respective borders. Of far greater moment is the moral influence exerted upon the other states by the Prussian hegemony, in virtue of which the Prussian educational system comes to be in all essential characteristics typical and representative of Germany as a whole. It is remarkable that though, as Matthew Arnold was able to report to the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1866, “the school system of Germany in its completeness and carefulness is such as to excite the foreigner’s admiration,” neither Prussia herself, nor Bavaria, nor several other of the principal states of the Empire, have found it practicable to pass a comprehensive education law, owing to the religious and political difficulties with which any general legislative assertion of principle is attended in Germany as in England. The consequence is that the Prussian system in particular is the result of a long and complicated series of special laws, decrees and administrative regulations. In such circumstances it is inevitable that, especially in secondary education, some considerable local variations and anomalies should remain, but the centralized authority of the state has confined these to questions of patronage and external administration, and even within this sphere has successfully asserted its own ultimate supremacy as the guardian of the educational interests of its citizens. A detailed historical study would bring out clearly the intimate connexion between the development of the educational system and the growth of the Prussian state, and again between these and the expansion of the national life of the German people; incidentally it would exhibit the supremacy of Prussia in the modern Empire as the inevitable result not merely of military force but of a genuine hegemony of intellect and culture.

Stress is rightly laid by all educational writers upon Luther’s famous letter to the German municipalities in 1524, urging upon them the duty of providing schools and upon parents the duty of sending their children to school. An Influence of Luther. attempt to give effect to this teaching was at once made by the electoral government of Saxony, which by a school ordinance of 1528 provided for the establishment in every town and village of Latin schools, for in Germany as in England the influence of the Protestant reformers was solidly on the side of classical education as the key to the study of the Scriptures and theological learning. All the more remarkable, therefore, was the initiative of the electorate of Württemberg, whose school ordinance of 1559 represents the first systematic attempt to make provision for both elementary and higher education, directing that elementary schools should be set up throughout the country, and Particularschulen or Latin schools in every considerable centre of population. The educational efforts both of the early Reformers and of the remarkable Jesuit educationists, who contributed so largely to the partial reconquest of south Germany for the Catholic Church, were brought to naught amid the troublous times of the Thirty Years’ War, and the desolation and national decadence which that calamity brought in its train. To this result the aridity of the Protestant scholastics who succeeded Luther and Melanchthon, and the frivolity, incompetence and petty despotism of the small German courts, contributed in no slight measure. The permanent and positive value of Luther’s pronouncement of 1524 consists not so much in the direct effects which it produced as in the hallowed association which it established for Protestant Germany between the national religion and the educational duties of the individual and the state, and doubtless this association largely contributed to the creation of that healthy public opinion which in Prussia rendered the principle of compulsory school attendance easy of acceptance at a much earlier date than in England and elsewhere, save only Scotland, where a similar historical religious influence was supplied by John Knox.

State interference in education is almost coincident with the rise of the Prussian state. Already in 1717 Frederick William I. ordered all children to attend school where schools existed, and fixed the fee at 5 pf. (½d.) a week. This Early Prussian measures. was followed in 1736 by edicts for the establishment of schools in certain provinces and by a royal grant of 50,000 thalers for that purpose in the following year. In 1763 the General Landschulreglement of Frederick the Great laid down the broad lines upon which the Prussian state has since proceeded, asserting the principle of compulsory school attendance, fixing the fees, with provision for the assistance of very poor children, prescribing the course of instruction, and giving directions for the examination and supervision of teachers. Much progress was made, more especially in the organization of higher education, under Baron von Zedlitz, who was appointed minister for Lutheran church and school affairs by Frederick the Great in 1771, and retired under Frederick William II. in 1788. The last-mentioned year saw the establishment of the Abiturientenexamen, or leaving examinations, which form the determining element in the state organization of secondary education in Germany. As in England, the fear of the French Revolution produced a corresponding reaction in educational affairs, and the policy of Frederick William II. was to bind ever closer school and church in a system practically independent of state control. The first departure from this policy was marked by the Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794, which boldly proclaims that schools and educational institutions may be founded only with the knowledge and consent of the state, and must always be under its supervision and subject to its examination and control. This law also laid upon heads of families in every place the duty of providing and maintaining schools.

It was not till the disaster of Jena and the prostration of Prussia at the feet of Napoleon awoke the dormant spirit of patriotism, and concentrated all the intellectual forces of north Germany upon the task of national regeneration, Reconstruction after Jena. that the principles of the Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794 bore full fruit. “The organization of the Prussian school system,” says Dr James E. Russell in his work on German Higher Schools, “waited on the reorganization of the Prussian State.” One of the first acts of the great patriotic minister von Stein, upon his assuming control of the civil administration in 1807, was to abolish the semi-ecclesiastical Oberschulkollegium which had been set up as the central authority under the churchly policy of Frederick William II., and to place education under the Ministry of the Interior as a special section. Wilhelm von Humboldt was placed at the head of this section in 1809, and the work which this “great master of the science and art of education” (as Professor Seeley terms him in his Life of Stein) inaugurated in his one year of office entitles him to be ranked among the founders of German unity. Humboldt’s greatest positive achievements—the foundation of the university of Berlin and its organization under a professorial staff which included Fichte, Schleiermacher, Savigny, Wolf and Niebuhr, as also the internal reform of secondary schools undertaken with the pedagogical assistance of Wolf and under the inspiration of Fichte—lie beyond the scope of this article. It may, however, be observed that Humboldt’s policy in secondary education represents a compromise between the narrow philological pedantry of the old Latin schools and the large demands of the new humanism of the period; and the recent reform of the Prussian secondary schools may be said to represent a return to the spirit of Humboldt in this respect. The measure introduced by Humboldt in 1810 for the state examination and certification of teachers checked the then common practice of permitting unqualified theological students to teach in the schools, and at once raised the teaching profession to a high level of dignity and efficiency which of itself sufficed to place Prussia in the forefront of educational progress. It was due also to the initiative of Humboldt that the methods of Pestalozzi were introduced into the teachers’ seminaries, through them to vitalize the elementary schools. To the period of the national struggle belong the revival in 1812 of the Abiturientenexamen which had fallen into abeyance, and the institution about the same time of the local authorities called Schulvorstände for the country and Schuldeputationen for the towns.

Though the period which succeeded the peace of 1815 was one of political reaction, the cabinet order of Frederick William III. in 1825 strengthened the law of compulsory attendance and carried on the work of administrative Reforms of 1825 and 1834. Abiturientenexamen. organization by defining the duties of the Provinzial-Schul-Kollegium and the Regierung. In 1834 an important development was given to secondary education by making it necessary for candidates for the learned professions as well as for the civil service, and for university studies, to have passed the leaving examination of the gymnasia. Thus through the leaving examination the state holds the key to the liberal careers, and has thereby been able to impose its own standard upon all secondary schools. Apart from the privileges relative to professional studies, the system of leaving examinations has exerted a wide influence upon popular education in connexion with the institution of compulsory military service, in virtue of a regulation which entitles those who pass the leaving examination of any of the recognized kinds of secondary schools to the much-coveted privilege of service for one year as a “volunteer” instead of two years as an ordinary conscript.

The revolutionary and national movement of 1848 was followed by a period of further educational activity. The Act of Constitution of 1850 declared teachers civil servants and elementary education free. In practice, the abolition of school fees did not become general until 1888. Since then the view has more and more prevailed that elementary education must be free,2 and, broadly speaking, fees in elementary schools are now charged only for children attending from another school district.

In connexion with the Kulturkampf, or struggle between the state and the Roman Catholic Church, the Schulaufsichtsgesetz of 1872 reasserted the absolute right of the state alone to the supervision of the schools; but the severity Kulturkampf and the confessional system. of this law as a measure against Roman Catholic clerical education was considerably modified as a result of the subsequent reconciliation with the papacy under Leo XIII., and the Prussian system remains to-day both for Catholics and Protestants essentially denominational. All schools, whether elementary or secondary, are Evangelical, Catholic, Jewish or mixed. In the elementary sphere, in particular, recourse is only had to the mixed school (Simultanschule or paritätische Schule), where the creeds are so intermingled that a confessional school is impracticable. In all cases the teachers are appointed with reference to religious faith; religious instruction is given compulsorily in school hours and is inspected by the clergy. The general purport of the Prussian school law of 1906 is to strengthen the system of separate confessional schools, which it extends to certain provinces where it had not previously been in operation.

In financial respects the last-mentioned law effected some readjustment of burdens by charging a proportion of the expenditure upon landed property. Other recent changes relate to the reform of secondary education referred to below. The system of educational administration as it stood in 1909 may shortly be described as follows.

Under the ministerium in Berlin stands the Provinzial-Schul-Kollegium, the chairman of which is the Ober-Präsident of the province, composed of four or five Räte or Administrative machinery. councillors, generally selected from the directors of training colleges and gymnasia. This body is concerned mainly with higher education.

Each province is divided for purposes of general administration into two Regierungen or governments, and in each Regierung there is a section of usually three or four Schulräte, which controls the elementary schools. This council is usually recruited from the ranks of directors of training colleges and from the inspectorate. The Regierung is divided into Kreise or districts, and in each district an administrative officer, called the Landrat, represents the government. The Landrat is concerned with the provision and repair of elementary school buildings; as regards internal organization, the elementary schools are under the Kreisschulinspektor.

In the Protestant districts the inspectors (Kreisschulinspektoren) are usually Evangelical clergymen holding the position of superintendent in the Lutheran Church. In the Catholic and certain other exceptional districts Inspection. inspectors with pedagogical qualifications and the status of full government inspectors are appointed. Every candidate for Lutheran ordination is required to spend six months at a training college, but pedagogical opinion is hostile to the system, which must be regarded as a survival of the traditional union of church and state in educational affairs, retained at the present day from motives of economy and a desire to conciliate the church.

For every school there is an Ortsschulinspektor, usually the clergyman of the parish, who discharges the duties of local manager and correspondent. This local inspector is also chairman of the Schulvorstand or committee, elected by the Schulgemeinde, and charged with questions of attendance and maintenance rather than with internal affairs. The Schulgemeinde need not coincide with the civil parish. Parishes may unite to provide one school, or within one parish different religious communities may form separate school “parishes.”

Thus the administrative system of Prussia in education as in other matters may be described in general as a decentralized bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is somewhat checked by the rights of patronage attaching to the local boards in certain cases, but the exercise of such rights is in all cases subject to government approval. As regards higher-grade elementary and secondary schools, the local boards in the towns (Schuldeputationen) are able to exert a considerable influence in the way of selection of the type of school, and even of suggestion for the modification of recognized types, as is shown by the cases of the famous “reformed” secondary curricula of Altona and Frankfort. Still, the legal powers of the local board are restricted to the establishment of an approved type of school, the control of externa, and the right of nominating teachers.

Elementary Schools.—The single-class school (Einklassige Schule) and the half-day school (Halbtagsschule) are features of the Prussian elementary system which require notice. The Einklassige Schule is a school taught by a single Peculiarities of elementary education. teacher, who may teach a maximum number of eighty children. The Halbtagsschule is a single-class school of which half the children are taught in the morning and half in the afternoon. During the summer months, owing to the exigencies of agricultural labour, many single-class schools are taught as half-day schools. The system of course is regarded as a makeshift, but in this, as in the matter of buildings for rural elementary schools, the Prussian administration attaches great weight to the consideration of financial economy. As regards staff, a large measure of economy is rendered possible by the high average standard of merit reached by German elementary teachers, whose powers of oral exposition have struck English observers as specially remarkable, and again by the national readiness to be content with a moderate salary in return for official status. A survival of the old close connexion between church and school is to be found in the Kirchendienste, the duties of training the choir, playing the organ, &c., which are attached in many cases to the post of schoolmaster, and afford an additional source of emolument, rendered feasible by the practical absence of religious dissent.

For the preliminary training of elementary teachers there are special schools called Präparanden-Anstalten, of which most are state institutions, some are municipal, and a few are private. The training colleges themselves are provided by the state and have a three years’ course.

Continuation Schools (Fortbildungsschulen).—Germans have been foremost to realize the truth which is gradually being brought home to English educationists, that adequate value for the heavy expenditure of public funds upon Continuative education. education can only be obtained by providing for the continued education for two or three years of the children of the working classes who leave school at fourteen years of age. One of the educational results of the war of 1870, with its great lesson of the importance of national education, was the Saxon law of 1873 making attendance at continuation schools compulsory for three years (i.e. up to seventeen) in that kingdom: The Saxon law appears to have been justified by the experience of nearly a generation. It must suffice here to note the following features of its working. (1) The schools are taught by the primary teachers, supplemented in the towns by some technical instructors. (2) The school session may be either for the whole year or for only half the year, and may also be held on Sunday, like the old English secular Sunday schools. (3) The schools are brought into close relation with trades, not only for purposes of curriculum, but also with a view to considering the exigencies and meeting the convenience of employers with respect to hours of attendance. (4) The discipline of the continuation school is extended to supervision out of school hours. “Visits to dancing-halls and all such exhibitions as are dangerous to uprightness and purity are forbidden to scholars of continuation schools.” Further, useful institutions such as savings banks, and also associations for social intercourse and the promotion of esprit de corps, are organized in connexion with continuation schools. There is no doubt that in this matter of continuation schools, as in so many other fields of social organization, the adoption of compulsion has been facilitated by the habituation of the working classes to compulsory military service, which has made the German workman more disciplined, more “organizable” as a social unit, more accustomed to subordinate the principle of individual freedom and self-will to the collective claims of the state, than the workman reared in the traditions of Anglo-Saxon individualism.

Attendance at continuation schools is now compulsory by state law in 12 states, including (besides Saxony) Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The city of Munich is notable for its highly organized system of technical continuation schools for apprentices. In Prussia compulsory attendance is still the exception (save in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, where it is enforced by state law), but the permissive act is being rapidly adopted by the great cities, including Berlin.

Secondary Education.—The official classification or grading according to the type of curriculum of secondary schools in Prussia (and indeed throughout Germany) is very precise. The following are the officially recognized Grading of secondary schools. types. I. Classical schools: (a) Gymnasium, with nine years’ course; (b) Progymnasium, with six years’ course. II. Modern schools: (a) with Latin (semi-classical)—(i.) Realgymnasium (nine years’ course), (ii.) Realprogymnasium (six years’ course); (b) without Latin (non-classical)—(i.) Oberrealschule (nine years’ course), (ii.) Realschule (six years’ course). The six-year classical and semi-classical schools are comparatively unimportant subdivisions in smaller towns.

Lower-grade Secondary Education.—Inasmuch as French is taught in the lowest class of the Realschule under the official curriculum (English, on the other hand, beginning in Tertia, the fourth class from the lowest), it follows Co-ordination of elementary and secondary education. that this, the lowest type of secondary school, is not directly co-ordinated with the elementary school. The Realschulen of Berlin, however, form an important exception to the general rule; their curriculum, sanctioned by the ministry at the instance of the Berlin municipality, provides for the beginning of French in Quarta (the third class from the bottom) and English in Secunda. The consequence is that in Berlin a very large number of pupils pass from the elementary schools to the Realschulen, which take the place of the Mittelschulen or higher-grade elementary schools that are to be found in some towns, though something in the nature of higher elementary education is afforded by the top sections of the elementary schools.

First-grade Schools.—One of the most striking features of German secondary education is the careful differentiation of schools according to the type of curriculum adopted. Thus, every German school is a homogeneous unit First grade secondary schools. with a definite educational aim and organization, conforming to a common standard approved by public authority for the particular type to which it belongs. Hence the importance attached by the Germans to nomenclature; so that in selecting a Gymnasium, a Realgymnasium or an Oberrealschule, the parent knows exactly the type of education he is going to secure for his son. In England, on the other hand, as has often been observed, a great school tends to multiply within itself different types of curricula in a haphazard way according to the demand of parents, whose original choice of school is based rather on social than on educational grounds. Modern sides, army classes and engineering classes grow up as excrescences upon an originally classical type, with the waste of power that results from loss of consistency and concentration of purpose. The difference between the English and German systems is due ultimately to the adoption in Germany of the day-school system and the absence, very remarkable in an otherwise aristocratically governed country, of the caste spirit in education above the elementary level, thanks to which the nobly born are not ashamed to sit on the school bench side by side with the children of the trading classes. On the other hand, the English boarding-school system, despite all the want of social solidarity, and all the class jealousy and exclusiveness with which it is inevitably associated, has admittedly favoured those ideals of the cultivation of character as distinct from book-learning which give a special value to what is in England called a public school education.

The present differentiation of first-grade schools in Prussia is the result of a natural educational development corresponding with the economic changes which have transformed Prussia and the empire from an agricultural to an Rise of semi-classical schools. industrial state. It was in 1855 that semi-classical schools (teaching Latin without Greek) were first recognized for a nine years’ course under the title of Realschule I. Ordnung, and in 1871 pupils possessing their leaving certificates were admitted to mathematical studies in the universities. The Latinless Realschule II. Ordnung is the direct product of the great industrial development of the modern empire. In 1882 the Realschule I. Ordnung received the title of Realgymnasium, and the Realschule II. Ordnung that of Oberrealschule, both types being at the same time admitted to certain privileges in the universities, schools of technology and civil service.

About the same period official recognition was obtained for reformed secondary curricula, first at Altona and afterwards (1892) at Frankfort. These two types differ from each other in detail, but the feature which distinguishes The “reform school” movement. both from the older types is the postponement of Latin to Untertertia. The design is to secure for all types of secondary education a common non-classical base coextensive with the first three years of school life, followed by a trifurcation or threefold choice between the classical, semi-classical and non-classical types. The principle of the “reform-school” has been adopted in a considerable number of German (chiefly Prussian) schools, but it would be premature to see in it at present more than a new variety of Realgymnasium or semi-classical school; it can hardly be said as yet to have affected the course of classical studies in the full sense. The widespread sentiment of discontent with the old philological type of classical school was vigorously expressed in a private letter written by the emperor William II. as crown prince of Prussia in 1885, but not published until some-years later. In December 1890 the Prussian ministry convoked a conference at Berlin of secondary school experts, and the emperor presided in person at the opening session. His majesty delivered a speech criticizing the Gymnasia as wanting a national basis. “It is our duty to educate young men to become young Germans and not young Greeks or Romans” was the keynote of the imperial discourse. The outcome of the conference was a shortening of the hours allowed to Latin in the Gymnasia, a reduction of the hours of study in view of over-pressure, and an expression of official opinion adverse to the Realgymnasium. These changes, introduced in 1892, did not go far enough to satisfy the reformers, whilst the reduction of the hours allowed for Latin caused misgivings among the upholders of the traditional Gymnasium. Moreover, the Realgymnasium showed greater vitality among the large towns than its official critics anticipated. The ensuing decade witnessed a certain reaction in favour of the classical humanities as a barrier against the materialistic influences of the new industrialism. At the same time the protagonists of the classics came to recognize that side by side with the old humanities there must be accorded to modern and scientific subjects that place in the high-grade schools which the practical exigencies of industrial life demanded. Thus, the opinion grew that the best line of defence for the classical schools lay in the concession of equal privileges to the non-classical types; in this way only could the classical schools be kept safe from demands upon their time that could not be conceded without endangering their proper work. It was upon this basis that an agreement was reached between the contending parties at a second school conference that met in Berlin in June 1900. As the result of this conference there was issued a royal decree laying down certain general principles, of which the following are the most important. (1) There must be equality of privileges as between classical, semi-classical and non-classical first-grade schools. The decree recognizes, however, that this principle must be applied with a certain elasticity and with due regard to the necessity for training in particular branches of knowledge as a preliminary to certain lines of university study and certain professional pursuits. Consequently the Prussian system of privileges has become extremely complicated, and it is truer to speak, as the decree goes on to do, of an extension of the privileges of the non-classical schools, rather than of absolute equality. (2) “In thus acknowledging the equality of the three types of higher institutions, it will be possible more thoroughly to strengthen the special characteristics of each type. In this connexion,” the royal decree proceeds, “I shall offer no objection to an increase in the number of hours devoted to Latin in the Gymnasium and Realgymnasium.” Thus, both as to the place of Latin in the curriculum of classical schools and as to the status of semi-classical schools, the decree of 1900 involves a reversal of the policy of 1890. (3) The decree expresses approval of the reformed curricula of Altona and Frankfort, and a desire for an extension of the experiment where the conditions are suitable.

Notwithstanding the growing official encouragement of education upon semi-classical or non-classical lines, the upper and professional classes of Germany continue to show a marked preference for the fully classical Gymnasium; hence, in Germany as in England, the tendency for a widening gulf to disclose itself between the education of the directing classes in politics and administration and the bulk of the industrial population, which suggests that the problem of combining in just proportions the liberal and practical elements in a thoroughly national system of education has not yet reached the solution that the needs of the age require.

Switzerland.

Switzerland affords perhaps the best type of a democratic system of local authorities. The central authority is the canton, not the federation. The interference of the federal authority is confined to the imposition of certain broad Educational influence of federal constitution. principles by the constitution, to the indirect influence exerted by the examination of recruits for the national army, and to financial grants for technical instruction, its most important direct educational work being the support of the technological university at Zurich. The federal constitution (1) states that primary instruction must be under the control of the canton (an important point in view of the strength of ecclesiastical influence in some of the Catholic cantons), and must be compulsory and gratuitous; (2) declares that it must be possible for the public schools to be attended by the adherents of all creeds without hurting their freedom of conscience; (3) forbids the employment of child labour before completion of the fourteenth year, with a provision that in the fifteenth and sixteenth years factory work, together with the time given to school and religious instruction, must not exceed eleven hours a day. (4) All recruits for the federal army (in which service is compulsory on a militia basis) are examined in their twentieth year, and the results are published. This examination affords an instructive index to the state of education in the several cantons and promotes a healthy emulation among them.

The cantonal organization of education presents the variety which the extraordinary diversity of race, language, religion and physical conditions of the component states of the federation would lead one to expect. The large canton Cantonal organization. of Bern may be instanced as the type of a strong central authority. The commune or parish is the unit for elementary education. The communal council nominates a school board of at least five members, whose function is to spend the money voted for school purposes by the general communal council. Several communes in combination form a district authority for the support of what are in reality higher primary schools, though called in Switzerland Sekundarschulen, maintained by the district. The maintenance both of the primary and higher primary schools is aided by grants from the central authority. The true secondary schools, called middle or higher schools, are maintained and controlled by the central or cantonal authority. The existence of separate local authorities for each grade of education is characteristic of Switzerland generally, this system being the opposite to that adopted in England in 1902.

The central grants in Switzerland always take the form of payments to the local authorities of a proportion of the teachers’ salaries; they are never, as in England, assessed upon the number of children in attendance, nor are they dependent, as was formerly the case in England, upon the results of examination, nor again are grants made in respect of particular subjects as is the case with the grants for special, i.e. practical, instruction in England.

Religious instruction in the Swiss communal schools generally follows the faith of the majority; in a few cantons separate schools being provided for minorities if sufficiently numerous. In the town of Lucerne, Catholic instruction is given in school hours and Protestant instruction is provided out of school and out of hours for the Protestant minority.

In 19 out of the 25 cantons attendance at continuation schools is compulsory (at least in some districts) for boys up to 17, and in 3 cantons it is compulsory also wholly or in part for girls.

Belgium.

The interesting feature in Belgian education is the treatment Belgian treatment of religious question. of the religious question in successive laws.

1. The law of 1842 obliged the communes to provide primary instruction, which was to be free in the case of poor children. The state made grants in aid, subject to inspection. Subject to a conscience clause, religious instruction was obligatory, and was placed under ecclesiastical inspection.

2. The law of 1879 removed religious instruction from the curriculum, and provided for facilities to the clergy to give such instruction outside school hours. This law furnishes a striking instance of the futility of a parliamentary majority legislating in a sense opposed to the convictions of a considerable section of the community. The law evoked a storm of opposition in the country, still profoundly Catholic and attached to ecclesiastical traditions, and within eighteen months the Catholics founded private elementary schools with 455,000 scholars. In 1883 the Catholic private schools numbered 622,000 scholars, whilst the attendance at the communal schools had sunk to 324,000. Their doctrinaire treatment of the education question resulted in the political annihilation of the Belgian Liberals, and was responsible for the strongest and most persistent Roman Catholic reaction that has been witnessed in western Europe since the beginning of the 19th century.

3. The law of 1884 was the work of the moderate Catholic party. It did not make religious instruction obligatory, but it gave liberty to the communes to provide for the giving of religious and moral instruction at the beginning or end of school hours, subject to a conscience clause. Power was given to the communes to “adopt” private confessional schools and maintain them. Provision was further made entitling any twenty parents of children of school age to demand a school of the normal communal type as against a proposal to adopt a confessional school. Power was also given to a like number of parents to compel the adoption of a confessional school in the case of the commune refusing to provide religious instruction of the type demanded by them, or putting obstacles in the way of its being given by the clergy or their representatives.

4. The law of 1895 is the work of the more authoritarian Catholics, and makes religious instruction obligatory, placing it directly under the control of the clergy. It also increased the subsidies to private schools. This law was passed in face of opposition from the moderate section, who saw in it an exaltation of state authority which might be turned by opponents to the disadvantage of the religious interest. It is by no means clear that Belgium has yet attained a final solution of the religious difficulty; the life of the present law is probably to be measured by that of the Catholic political majority.

Holland.

The outstanding feature of public education in Holland is the strength of the private primary schools. Under the law of 1857 secular teaching alone was provided in the primary schools at the public cost. The law of 1878 allowed communes to make grants to private schools on condition of their becoming neutral in the matter of religion. The law of 1889 allowed private denominational schools to receive government grants while retaining their denominational character, but forbade further grants to such schools by the communes.

In 1905 there were 566,460 children in the public and 278,632 in the private schools.

Scotland.

The diverse religious and social conditions of the three constituent parts of the United Kingdom must necessarily cause the education problem to assume a different shape and to receive different solutions in England, Scotland and Ireland respectively; latterly also the special conditions obtaining in Wales have received partial recognition at the hands both of the legislature and the executive. In Scotland the conditions have been less complex than in England. The practical unanimity of the people in religious faith, which has remained undisturbed by the institutional divisions of recent times, the wider diffusion of a sense of the value of education, the greater simplicity of life which has rendered all classes largely content to avail themselves of the preparatory education afforded by the common school and favoured the development in the secondary sphere of day rather than boarding schools, are among the causes which have contributed to the early building up of a national system which in some respects resembles the continental rather than the English type.

The national appreciation of education is found marked already before the Reformation in a statute of James IV. (1494) requiring all freeholders of substance to send their heirs to school and to keep them there until they had Historical development. perfect Latin. The Reformation, asserting itself by common consent under one ecclesiastical form, and free from the divisions of religious organization which tended to neutralize it as an educational force in England, put fresh life into the educational aspirations of the people. As early as 1560 the Church Assembly, largely under the influence of John Knox, put forth the Book of Discipline, providing that “every several kirk” in a town “of any reputation” was to have its Latin school, that the “upaland” or country parts were to have a teacher of the “first rudiments” in every parish, and that each “notable” town was to have “a college for logic, rhetoric and the tongues.” Practical effect was later given to this scheme by an act of the Scottish parliament in 1696, under which parish schools were set up in connexion with the Established Church of Scotland. This system was extended by an act of 1803, which made better provision for teachers’ salaries and also confirmed the position of the parish school as an adjunct of the parish church. The system of inspection and state aid introduced in England in 1839 was made applicable to Scotland, thus grafting upon Scotland the English system of voluntary state-aided schools. At the same period another new factor was imported into Scottish education by the ecclesiastical disruption of 1843. As a result of these changes in 1861 a new act was passed which relaxed, though it did not sever, the ties which bound the parish school to the church.

The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 set up elective school boards for parishes and boroughs, and vested in them the existing parish and burgh schools. Long prior to the act it had been the practice of the Church of Scotland Scottish school boards and school attendance law. to allow exemption in the schools from religious instruction; consequently in imposing a compulsory conscience clause the act did little more than confirm existing usage. The school boards were left full liberty as to the religious instruction to be given in their schools, and in practice school boards universally adopt the Shorter Catechism, which is acceptable to all denominations of Presbyterians. The act made the school boards responsible for the supply of school accommodation, and introduced compulsory attendance, for which opinion in England was not at that time ripe. By the act of 1901, the age of compulsory attendance was raised to fourteen, with provision for exemption after twelve.

The experience of the Scottish Education Department, like that of the English, has led to the gradual abandonment of individual examination as the basis for the payment of grants. The institution of the merit certificate is Administrative progress. one of the features in which the Scottish system differs from the English. Prior to the code of 1903 the merit certificate, awarded on examination after the age of twelve, was properly described as the leaving certificate of the elementary school. Under the more recent codes merit certificates are awarded under a system designed to encourage the transference of promising pupils at an early age to supplementary courses or higher-grade departments. Under this system the fitness of the pupil to enter upon a course of higher studies is determined not solely by the results of a single examination, but by the whole character of his work during the preceding school course.

A notable factor historically in Scottish education was the extent to which the parish schools supplied their best pupils with higher or further education. The administrative changes last mentioned have led to a remarkable Higher-grade schools. development of organized higher-grade schools and departments. These departments have now been organized upon the lines of the higher primary schools of France, “to continue a stage further” (says the report of the Scottish Education Department) “the general education of that considerable body of pupils who, under new conditions, may be expected to remain at school till fifteen or sixteen.” The function “of giving something of the nature of a specialized education to pupils who will leave school at a comparatively early age” is now discharged by the supplementary courses.

Elementary education has generally been rendered free by the fee grants under the parliamentary vote, and by the sums accruing under the Local Taxation (Customs Free education. and Excise) Act 1890 and the Education and Local Taxation (Scotland) Act 1892.

Voluntary schools are not numerous, being chiefly those of the Roman Catholic Church. The average cost of maintenance per child in average attendance in public schools (according to the official report 1907-1908) was £3, 11s. 1¼d., of which £2, 4s. 4½d. was met by government grants for elementary education. In voluntary schools the average cost of maintenance was £2, 15s. 1¾d., of which £2, 2s. 7d. was met by elementary grants, including a special aid grant of 3s. per head under the Education (Scotland) Act 1897.

The total number of children (1907-1908) in average attendance in grant-earning schools was 712,076, and the percentage of attendances to numbers on the register was 87.66%. As regards teaching power, 81.52% of the male teachers and 56.71% of the female teachers in the elementary teachers had been trained in training colleges.

Certain miscellaneous additional powers are conferred upon school boards by the Education (Scotland) Act 1908, including powers to provide school meals; in outlying parts, to provide means of conveyance, or pay travelling expenses Education (Scotland) Act 1908. of teachers or pupils, or defray the cost of lodging pupils in convenient proximity to a school; to provide for medical inspection; and as to children neglected by reason of the ill-health or poverty of the parent, to supply food, clothing and personal attention.

Perhaps the most noteworthy provision in the act of 1908 is that which enables (not obliges) school boards to make bye-laws requiring attendance at continuation classes up Compulsory continuation classes. to the age of seventeen years. Apart from compulsory attendance, the act lays upon school boards the duty of making suitable provision of continuation classes with reference to the crafts and industries practised in the district.

The Scottish Education Act of 1872 distinguished certain burgh and parish schools as “higher class public” or secondary schools. The act of 1908 deals in some detail with secondary education, modifying and strengthening Secondary education. the framework in various ways, but without introducing organic changes. “Secondary” schools are distinguished from “intermediate,” the former being defined as providing at least a five years’ course; the latter as providing at least a three years’ course in languages, mathematics, science and such other subjects as may from time to time be deemed suitable for the instruction of pupils who have reached a certain standard of attainment in elementary subjects under the code. Intermediate and secondary schools may be provided and maintained either by school boards or otherwise, and provision is contained in the act for the transfer of endowed schools to the school board. Thus secondary (as well as elementary and continuative) education is organized upon the basis of the parish or burgh; it receives, however, grants in aid through the agency of county (or large urban) authorities (called district committees) constituted under schemes of the Scottish Education Department. For the purpose of such grants in aid the funds available under the various local taxation acts, together with parliamentary grants, other than a fee grant at the rate of 12s. per child in average attendance, form a fund called the Education (Scotland) Fund. After provision has been made for (inter alia) grants for universities, higher technical education and training colleges, the fund is allocated to the district committees according to a scheme laid before parliament and approved by the king in council. Out of the “district education fund” the school board receives (ordinarily) a sum equal to one-half of the amount by which the net cost to the school board (after deducting income from grants made by the department and from fees) exceeds the amount which would be produced by such rate per pound upon the district of the school board as the committee may determine, not being more than a rate of twopence in the pound. Important powers are also conferred upon the district committee for organizing and aiding within their district the provision by the school boards of medical examination and supervision of school children, the supply of bursaries for purposes of all forms of higher education, and the provision of instruction in special subjects, such as agriculture, &c.

Ireland.

The full development of a system of public education in Ireland has been hampered and retarded by the general difficulties inherent in the problem of Irish government. In consequence of the fundamentally different social, Special difficulties of Irish education. religious and political conditions in the two countries, the English and Irish systems have developed down to the present time upon divergent lines. In England, popular education was founded in the first instance upon individual initiative combining in organized voluntary effort, and, though the voluntary agencies have been first supplemented and latterly to a large extent supplanted by public action, the tendency has been in the direction of municipalization rather than in that of central state control. In Ireland, on the other hand, education has suffered in the past from the general absence of individual initiative and local interest almost as seriously as from the mistakes of the English government. These causes, more directly perhaps than the prevailing poverty of the country, made it necessary to throw the burden of supporting the schools to an increasing extent upon the state, while the want of local self-government precluded any devolution of powers and duties upon municipal authorities.

State intervention is actually of earlier date in Ireland than in England. From the reign of Elizabeth onwards, English Protestant schools were founded by the government in a sporadic and intermittent fashion in pursuance Historic retrospect. of its Anglicizing policy. To mention briefly one or two historical features, the great religious educational enterprise of Edmond Rice in founding the well-known Irish Catholic order of the Christian Brothers in 1802 forms an exception to the general lack of initiative among the people themselves. About the same period the Kildare Place Society (founded in 1811 while the first commission of inquiry into Irish education was sitting) attempted to grapple with the peculiar difficulties of the religious situation upon lines somewhat similar to those just laid down by Lancaster and his followers in England. This organization comprised both Roman Catholic and Protestant schools upon a common religious basis of Bible reading without note or comment, and received government grants which rose to £30,000 a year before they were discontinued in 1833. The religious compromise which the system embodied broke down in consequence of Catholic dissatisfaction, and that it was at first fairly successful may seem extraordinary in view of the later attitude of the Catholic Church towards the question of common schools and combined religious instruction.

In 1833, as the result of a second commission of inquiry (1824) and a select committee of the House of Commons (1828), Mr Stanley inaugurated the national system of elementary schools under a board of commissioners nominated The national system. from the different religious denominations. The government appears from the outset to have aimed at combined secular and separate religious instruction for Roman Catholics and Protestants. At the same time, an attempt was inconsistently made to provide an ethical basis for the secular instruction by means of Bible extracts. The story of the preparation of these extracts by an ingenious compound of the Protestant Authorized and Douai versions of Scripture is in its way one of the curiosities of religious history. The extracts were designed to meet the recognized Catholic objection to the indiscriminate reading of the Bible without note or comment. In practice they were chiefly used in the Protestant schools (in which their use is now practically extinct), and the growing Catholic objection to the policy of the National Board in this respect found authoritative, though somewhat cautiously worded, expression in a decree of the Roman Congregation De Propaganda Fide of January 11, 1846, declaring that non-sectarian religious instruction was dangerous to youth. “Tutius multo esse ut literarum tantummodo humanarum magisterium fiat in scholis promiscuis, quam ut fundamentales, ut aiunt, et communes religionis Christianae articuli restricte tradantur, reservata singulis sestis peculiari seorsum eruditione. Ita enim cum pueris agere periculosum valde videtur.” The religious difficulty in Irish elementary education may be said to have been solved in process of time by the conversion of the national system in practice, though not in theory, into a system strongly denominational and therefore widely different from the design of its founders, combined Biblical instruction being discarded, and separate schools for the most part taking the place of common schools for the two creeds. In the latter respect the like tendency has been noted in the case of Germany.

The following are the chief specific points upon which the Irish system of elementary education differs from the English.

Finance.—The state still makes building grants to the extent of two-thirds of the cost. Such grants are only made to what are called vested schools, that is to say, schools of which the premises are vested in trustees or in the Irish elementary education. commissioners themselves. The state further pays in the case of all national schools the entire cost of maintenance except only the upkeep of the building, and the provision of books after the exhaustion of a first free grant.

Appointment and Payment of Teachers.—For the purpose of promotion the state through its inspectors undertakes the duty of classifying the individual teachers in four grades, passage from one grade to another being secured by examination. Appointments of teachers to schools are made by the school managers subject to the approval of the commissioners. Rights of dismissal are reserved to the local managers and also to the commissioners independently. Lastly, the teachers’ salaries are now paid directly by the state. The old system of payment by results was abandoned in 1900, and the teacher is paid (a) a fixed salary according to grade, (b) a continued good service salary which may be increased triennially, (c) a capitation payment.

Convent Schools.—In addition to the national schools supported as above, there are a considerable number of convent or monastery schools which receive capitation grants after the English plan, but not direct salaries. There were 308 such schools in 1908, with an average attendance of 70,003. There were also 83 other convent or monastery schools paid by personal salaries, with an average attendance of 11,075.

School Attendance and Free Education.—The Irish Education Act 1892 provided for compulsory attendance in towns and for the adoption of compulsion in other districts. In virtue of the financial sections of this act, which provided an increased grant for salaries, most national schools have become free.

General Elementary-School Statistics.—In 1908 the average number of scholars on the rolls of all the schools was 708,992, and the average daily attendance was 494,662, or 69.8% as compared with the number on the rolls. As regards religious denomination, 74.42% of the scholars on the rolls were Roman Catholics; 28.6% were in schools attended by both Roman Catholic and Protestant children and 71.4% in schools attended solely by Roman Catholics or solely by Protestants. The total expenditure on the schools and teaching staffs was £1,591,214, of which £1,451,139, equivalent to £2, 19s. 3d. per scholar, was contributed from state grants, and £140,074, equivalent to 5s. 9d. per scholar, from local (i.e. voluntary) sources, the rate per scholar from all sources being £3, 5s.

Training of Teachers.—Salaried monitors are employed in the Irish schools, but, unlike the English pupil teachers, are not explicitly recognized as forming part of the school staff. There are now seven training colleges, viz. one undenominational college maintained by the commissioners, five Roman Catholic colleges, and one college in connexion with the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland. Of the scholars in the undenominational college, 73 out of 312 were Roman Catholics. The total number of students in training was 1189, viz. 514 men and 675 women. The percentage of trained teachers to the total number of teachers was 64.7. A special training college for the instruction of teachers in Irish has been recognized.

One of the chief desiderata in Irish education is a single central authority for all branches of education, elementary, secondary (or “intermediate”) and technical. There are two central authorities dealing with secondary education, viz. the Secondary education. Intermediate Education Board and the Department for Agriculture and Technical Instruction. The Intermediate Board administers sums available under the Intermediate Education Act of 1878 from the Irish Church Surplus, and also the sum allocated under the Local Taxation Act 1890. The vice of the system in the opinion of educational experts lies in the statutory obligation to award grants on the result of an individual examination of the scholars. As a result of the vice-regal commission of 1898, power was taken to introduce a system of school inspection, though not to dispense with the individual examination as the basis for the award of the grants; this measure of reform was ultimately carried out in 1909. The sum distributed in result grants is about £50,000 per annum.

Prior to the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act 1899, science and art grants were administered by the Science and Art Department in England; by this act they were transferred to the new Irish Department for Agriculture and Technical Instruction. This department makes block grants to secondary schools in respect of science and art teaching, and manual instruction or domestic economy. Measures have been taken for the co-ordination of the duties of the Technical Department and the Intermediate Board, and the impetus given to the teaching of experimental science by grants for the erection of laboratories represents a reform of undoubted value for higher education in Ireland, especially when considered in connexion with the enlistment of the local interest of the technical education committees in the intermediate schools. Nevertheless, in the absence of a reform of the results system of intermediate grants, the special subsidizing of science teaching has tended to put an undue premium upon this subject to the detriment of the rest of the curriculum.

Ireland possesses no such system of scholarships for assisting the passage of scholars from the elementary to the secondary school as England enjoys as a result of the municipalization of the educational system. Nevertheless, Irish children as a fact pass much more freely from the elementary to the secondary school than is the case in England where social prejudices are stronger. The schools of the Christian Brothers are usually organized in two departments, primary and intermediate, and thus supply for the Roman Catholic population the demand for the cheap type of secondary day school represented by the municipal schools in England. It must be added that the Irish intermediate schools are purely denominational. The widespread demand for secondary education among the people, to which the report of Messrs Dale and Stephens bears witness, is a gratifying feature of Irish life, while the recent establishment (1908) of the long-deferred national university, and the perceptible quickening of intellectual interests throughout the country in connexion with the Celtic revival, point to better conditions for higher education and to the development of a wider, deeper and truer, because more national, culture.

England.

It was justly observed by Sir Joshua Fitch (Ency. Brit., 10th ed., xxvii. p. 655) that “the public provision for the education of the people in England is not the product of any theory or plan formulated beforehand by statesmen or philosophers; it has come into existence through a long course of experiments, compromises, traditions, successes, failures and religious controversies. What has been done in this department of public policy is the resultant of many diverse forces and of slow evolution and growth rather than of pure purpose and well-defined national aims. It has been effected in different degrees by philanthropy, by private enterprise, by religious zeal, by ancient universities and endowed foundations, by municipal and local effort, and only to a small extent by legislation. The genius—or rather characteristic habit—of the English people is averse from the philosophical system, and is disposed to regard education, not as a science, but as a body of expedients to be discovered empirically and amended from time to time as occasion may require.” Clearly, then, the English system of public education, as it results from successive acts of the administration and the legislature, is one which can only adequately be appreciated in the light of an historical survey of the various stages which have led up to it and the social conditions by which they were determined. The history of state education in England begins tardily in 1832, when after a generation of hesitation and controversy a beginning was made upon an exceedingly modest scale with the system of treasury grants in aid of elementary schools. The diverse forces which were at that date at work in the education of the nation as a whole, retarding state interference and marking out the limits within which it was long to be confined, derive their origin from a much remoter period.

The apprenticeship laws of Henry VIII. contain the earliest germ of state interference. These laws obliged children between five and thirteen years of age who were found begging or idle to be bound apprentices to some handicraft. If the immediate Influence of the English Reformation. object was the prevention of crime rather than education as such, this early legislation is at least significant of the primary and intimate connexion that exists between popular education and industrial and economic needs. Yet in the shaping of the educational system the original influences were religious rather than economic; hence the importance of the canons of 1604, which secured the control of education to the Established Church. This of course was no novel doctrine, but merely the reaffirmation by the Reformed Church of the Catholic tradition of religious exclusiveness, presenting itself to the mind of contemporaries rather as the recognition of a national, that was also a religious, duty than as the assumption of an ecclesiastical privilege. Whatever mischief the Tudor statesmen wrought by indiscriminate destruction of chantries and other foundations which combined educational work with observances that the new religion branded as superstitions, however far the English Reformation fell short of the organized enthusiasm for popular education and culture that marked the first most vigorous and constructive period of Lutheranism in Germany, the Protestant, and especially the Puritan, spirit unquestionably inspired a considerable volume of individual educational effort during the latter half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries. Here, as in Germany, the influence of the Reformation was wholly on the side of classicism, the dead languages being the key to the theological learning which was of primary concern to the men of that theological age. The conception of elementary education as a system complete in itself and adapted to the needs of the masses of the people was unfamiliar at this date. The earliest elementary schools were petits schools, which (as the name implies) were really preparatory departments of the grammar-schools. Education in fact was still regarded as the privilege of an élite, but, as in the middle ages, the élite for whom it was sought to provide a ladder to the university by means of the endowed schools so numerously founded about this time was an élite of intellect and not of mere wealth; the class feeling which became so marked a feature of English higher education was of much later growth.

Towards the end of the 17th century elementary education began to differentiate itself, partly by way of reaction against the unnatural classicism of the preceding age, but more especially as the result of the growth of towns and the Rise of elementary education. creation of a considerable industrial population. At the close of the century the moral evils attendant upon industrialism alarmed the religious conscience and prompted one of the great educational movements that stand to the credit of the national church. In 1699 Dr Bray founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the movement thereby initiated may be traced in the numerous “charity” or “Blue Coat” schools scattered plentifully throughout the country and especially in the great centres of population. The foundation of these schools, which was pushed forward with vigour during the early years of the 18th century, represents an energetic and well-planned attempt to cope with the social evil of poverty by educational means. The instruction was elementary, the scholars were clothed as well as taught free, and the schools in the first instance were supported not so much by permanent endowment as by voluntary effort, so that with this movement the voluntary system may be said to make its appearance. Lastly, all these philanthropic efforts were inspired by a solid but sober piety nurtured by a church which came nearer than at any other period of its history to enjoying the undivided allegiance of the people. Another notable movement in connexion with the church was one confined to Wales, that of the Welsh “circulating schools” established by Griffith Jones about 1730, consisting of an organized staff of schoolmasters who went round teaching adults to read the Bible in Welsh. In the English rural parishes the comparative religious unanimity favoured the quiet development of elementary education in a small way upon less specifically religious lines. Numerous small endowments for the elementary education of poor children were provided by well-to-do parishioners; indeed to such an extent did the practice of making charitable (and largely educational) bequests increase that the legislature intervened in the interest of private inheritance by reviving the law of mortmain in an act of 1736. The village schoolmaster became a feature of rural life, frequently enjoying a schoolhouse provided sometimes by endowment and sometimes even directly by the parishioners at the cost of the rate levied by the vestry, but more often aided only by a little stipend from an endowment for teaching poor children, and eking out an always scanty subsistence by the fees of such paying scholars as he could succeed in getting together.