Burlington free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1827-1865, 1859-02-11
Correspondence Of the Free Press.
LETTERS FROM EUROPE.
NO. LVIII.
Education IN Austria.-S. Stephens.

In the matter of public education, Aus
tria holds a prteminent rank. She has
excluding Hungary, nine prosperous univer-
stiles having an aggregate of about Ia 900
students, 5000 of whom arc III the two uni
vcrsites of Prague and Vienna. Besides
universities there are numerous lyceums and
other higher seminaries. normal schools in all
the principal towns and about 80 900 com
mon schools with 40 900 teachers and about
2,5OO,0OO pupils. The Austrian system of
public education is thoroughly organized and
developed under the regulations of the govern
ment, and the schools are gratuitously open
to all, and system of indirect compulsion
has most salutary effect in securing the at
tendance Of the CHI ldren. No one is permit
ted to exercise a trade, to be employed AS
workman, to hold Office or enter the army or
even to be married. without a certificate of
having attended school and of certain
amount of educational progress;-a large en-
ploycr in one of the provinces was fined for
employing a workman who had not the prop
per certificate Of education. Nor is the sys-
TEN except in its latest improvements, new
1t is the growth nearly one hundred years.
The system of Normal schools for the supply
of teachers, without whchno system of COM
mon schools can prosper, was introduced by
Maria Theresa in III, and the generous
encouragement Of education has been a
f,v, & : b, l;,,bt ,voI,u
who have succeeded her, till public education
has given anu will hereafter, in an increased
degree, give to the Austrian empire pro-
ductiye industry, strength, and influence, far
beyond what she could ever have attained
without it, a hundred fold above its cost.
We sometimes hear of the despotic bigotry
of Austria. As a nation she is intensely Ro-
man catholic;hcr sovereigns have always been
among the most devoted and faithful sons of
that church, and perhaps we Protestants are
too willing to believe and apt to exaggerate
causes of complaint against Roman Catholics,
and as Republicans too ready to look upon
Desp otto power as necessarily all evil, Bat
one cannot travel through her great domin-
ions without seeing everywhere the evidences
Of an enlightened government securing the
happiness and prosperity ofthe people, which
is the true end of government. have now
Travelled 700 miles under the protection of
her black eagle, subject to her strongest
police and under her rigid passport system,
without an annoyance-seeing everywhere
prosperity and contentment and attachment
to their institutions, -everywhere religious
liberation OF course there is no religious
equality, FOR that is quite impossible with an
established religion, but Protestant places
of worship are open and fully protected.
There is Protestant Theological Seminary
in Vienna, Of some 50 udent s.There is
Normal School for jewish teachers in Prague,
supp lrted by Tin: G 'vernment. The religion
of every child i, respected in the Public
connection with the School. religious instruc-
ton from teachers of his own faith, while N
secular studies the Catholic and Protestant
are educated osethcr. Under an absoluti
Government, and the system of indirect ca "a
pulsion to which have alluied, this is man
aged without dihi ulty. And with religion
and learning taught systematically and
thoroughly in the common Schools. by rei-
giOus ami secular teachers appointed and
supported Dy the Government, and under its
supervision AM control through its public
oil. ,,-1,. i',J a.,
will grow up, generation after gcncratio
thoroughly grounded in the existing state OF
things and in obedience and in attachment TO
the Government. What u lofty, reliant and
human policy it is, thus to strengthen a
Government by people universally intcli-
gent, religious and productive, knit together
by an attachment to the throne, inculcated
as school instruction from infancy to man
hood.
What shall we say, then, o! ourselves? If
universal public education can fortify and
make acceptable to people the systems of
arbitrary power in Church and State which
exist in Europe; what then. can it not do for
as? AMI how, with one accord. every State
of the American Union should fortify itself
with systems ofPublic Schools, against which
the enemies Of Freedom can never prevail
Austria is tasting now but the first fruits
of her educational policy. One hundred
years ago, Maria Theresa began the great
educational reform in her dominions by a
thorough revolution in the University of vi
emma and when, few years later, in tie
Convent School of St. Stephens, was begun
the imperfect and experimental Normal
School for improving and multiplying the
class of teachers, even the hopeful Empress
c uld hardly have forescen half the results
which the century has produced, much less
those which the lapse of three generations
more shall produce. Those who labor for
the reform Of national habits and customs,
alwayS seem to hope against hope, for altho'
the force Of habit, as positive and active
force is entirely overlooked and ignored in
the plausible fllaces of political economy,
it is still altogether the most powerful resist
ance ever encountered in measures of nation
al improvement and reform and hence such
measures at first move slowly, and 1t is not I'M
til by the lapse of generations the force Of old
habits is overcome, that the hopes of progress
are fully realized. Another hundred years and
what will not the Austrian Empire become by
the mere force of education operating direct
upon the people and indirectly upon the
| government am not ignorant that
Austria is Il despotism in Church and State,
nor that the state of morals among her p.o-
pie is in many respects deplprablc in some al
most hopeless. Sexual RIGHTEOUSNESS, the
most degrading Unpopular vices, the most