Note 74 — Chapter IV

The foundation of German business efficiency not on the practical science of the specialist but on theoretic and general mental exercise is further illustrated by the great and increasing prevalence of Latin and Greek in German education ... while again our own "Business Experts" are reversing the process. The passages that follow are quoted from a letter of Dr. Rice Holmes in The Times of August 11, 1916.

"In German schools not only are classics taught more systematically and more thoroughly than in all but a few of our own, but they are learned by a greater proportion of the population; and, moreover, the hours devoted to natural science in those schools in which it is taught are fewer than in our public schools.... Since 1903 the number of German boys receiving a classical education has steadily increased. In 1904 there were 196,175 pupils in schools (Gymnasien and Realgymnasien) where Latin is compulsory, of whom 153,680 belonged to the classical schools (Gymnasien), and therefore learned Greek as well (W. Lexis, Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich, ii. 218); in 1911, as Mr. R. W. Livingstone has shown (The Times Educational Supplement, April 4, p. 49, col. 2), the corresponding figures were 240,000 and 170,000; and in 1908, 'out of a total of 31,622 students entering 18 out of 21 German universities (Munich, Erlangen, and Wurzburg not reporting), ... only 7-1/2 per cent entered without Latin or Greek' (Professor Francis W. Kelsey, Latin and Greek in American Education, 1911, p. 43). "Möge das Studium der griechischen und römischen Literatur immerfort die Basis der höheren Bildung bleiben." So wrote the greatest of the Germans; and the countrymen of Goethe, whose genius was scientific as well as poetical, have not forgotten his words. On the other hand, in the modern schools (Realgymnasien and Oberrealschulen) only a small fraction of the time-table—from two hours a week (out of twenty-five) to six (out of thirty-one)—is devoted to natural science. To anyone who has read Matthew Arnold's Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, or Dr. M. E. Sadler's The Realschulen in Berlin, or who is acquainted with the opinions expressed by Helmholtz, A. W. Hofmann, Bauer, and other 'eminent scientific professors,' it will not appear paradoxical that the object of thus restricting the hours devoted to the teaching of natural science in schools is to promote the scientific efficiency of the German nation. It was with this object that by the regulations published in 1901 the time devoted to Latin in the Realgymnasien was increased. And those who do not learn natural science learn what for the nation is equally important—the value of scientific method."