Although the history of the German people, certainly up to the close of the Thirty War, is a history of evolution in decentraliza tion, public instruction can be said to have de veloped along lines of just the opposite prin ciple. The days of the Renaissance found not only the German scholars but the German people as a whole ready and prepared to absorb the additional influx and enrichment. The im mediate result in Germany, in spite of political decentralization and inefficiency, was the foun dation of a veritable host of universities for which in turn the schools were obliged to offer adequate preparation. The interests of the state— whether the state be large or small, empire or duchy or municipal community—and interests of the intellectual plurality of - the nation most be regarded as some of the deter mining factors in the history of German edu cation. A third factor largely determining the character especially of the German only indirectly the character of the universities — is the unique influence of the home and family. There can be no doubt that the youth of the German people has early been disciplined within the humble order of parental tradition toward readily accepting the validity of one golden rule, namely, that a task, no matter whether pleasant and 'attractive or not, must be respected for its own sake and that intel lectual activity to the untrained is not a matter of choice but of duty as long as there are elders who assume the responsibility to make such a task compulsory. Based undeniably on author ity, yet stimulated at the same time by an enor mously suggestive environment, German school ing has been productive not so much through blind obedience but through home-made power of imagination and through home-made zeal toward learning as such.
Within the general system of the German schools, two distinct subdivisions must be treated separately: the public schools (volks schule) and the schools of the higher order (gymnasium, realgymnasium, ober-realschule).
Girl-schools are modelled much after either the lower or the higher schools for boys; only in very small communities there are no special schools for girls, which causes coedu cation as a matter of necessity rather than of choice.
The public school (volks-schule, sometimes also called offers a curricu lum to be covered in eight years of instruction, free of charge throughout the country. The number of individual classes actually established on this eight-year plan depends on the size of the local population, to some extent also on its wealth, although any marked lack of local funds — (municipal budget) —invariably means that state funds will be offered for the maintenance of a fixed minimum as regards equipment, teachers' salaries and pension. In most of the towns, even of smaller size, public schools are found with eight classes and at least one teacher to each class, while many of the schools in the country (dorf-schulen), in villages with no larger a population than 2,000, have from four to five classes and as many teachers. There are communities in rural districts with hardly more than 50 children between the age of 6 to 14. It is in such cases that the "one class — one plan is carried out throughout the entire eight years of compulsory school attendance. But even in the latter case the idea
of invisible division is not given up; it calls for a highly developed method which, of course, is one of the chief objects of the teachers' training schools.
As an example of an elementary school showing the highest degree of differentiation a schedule of the public schools of Greater Berlin may be studied: In the case of girl-schools, geometry is not begun until the seventh year and there are but two periods instead of three in the classes I and II. There are instead two periods less in these classes in arithmetic, also one period less in history in the last form than in the boy-school. There are added 14 hours of instruction in sewing and needle-work, i.e., two each in the forms VI, V and IV, three in form III and four in the two upper forms.
As a selection representing average condi tions the following sketch may serve to illustrate general conditions in the rural dis tricts: The village of Badersleben, north of the Hartz Mountains and south of Brunswick (Lat. 32°, Long. 11°, i.e., a selection al most from the centre of the German Empire), formerly within the of Halberstadt, has a population of about 3,000 inhabitants, of whom about two-thirds are Protestants and one third Roman Catholics. In this community two public schools are maintained, one for the chil dren of the Protestants of five classes with five teachers, the other for the Catholic children accordingly smaller. In the main the village budget defrays the expenses of these schools, but the Protestant church being richly endowed in real estate is sharing heavily toward lessen ing the burden to the community. This has been possible on account of the co-operative spirit between the trustees of the church and the board of local aldermen. In addition to the five classes and teachers — the latter live in settlement in separate houses surrounded by ample garden land— there is a (sixth) class for kindergarten work with a specially ap pointed (woman) teacher. The senior teacher (Haupt-Lehrer) is practically the director of the entire school, while the responsibility of general supervision (visitation within certain Intervals, the submitting of reports to the cen tral board of the province, etc.) rests in both instances with the local minister of the church. The minister is one of the local school board but otherwise not engaged in instructing classes beyond the annual religious preparation of the children who are to be confirmed (Konfirman den-Unterricht). In the regular periods of in struction in religion the accent is on the his torical side of the Christian religion, the chief aim being to give a fair acquaintance with the development of Jewish religion (Old Testa ment) and with the main events in the history of the Christian Church until the present day. Literary documents, including some of the more popular hymns, the subjects of special attention; confessional differences, although being made clear, are not to be overemphasized. A whole some jealousy on the side of the teachers who do not wish to see religious instruction slip back into the hands of the Church is a fair guaranty for a prudent discharge of this ob viously delicate duty of the German educator.