The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-08-28
GERMAN SCHOOL BOY LIFE
SOME or THE DEFECTS or GERMAN
EDUCITION.
conditions Bear Hardly Save on the
Most Robust students.

Germans excel in theory, but limp il
practice. And even in theory they havu
begun in educational matters by max
ing very grave mistake, inasmuch al
they exclude therefrom all female infiu
encing. The experience which is Wol
In lower grades of activity is valued by
the matter Of education the primary
stage and its lessons, as well as its
learners are disregarded. No account
is held of mothers experiences what
ever. Their fine-grained, spiritual ap,
prehension of juvenile aptitudes; theil
insight into juvenile capacity, mora
and physical, go altogether unheeded
A primitive and raw bias of brutal sex
causes the nation that grades every
thing else to act against its principle
and strike out of consideration the first
stage of educational apprenticeship.
Thus the law expressly delivers chill
dren into male control, and society
gives its verdict in support of this for
NAL legislation by entertaining the idea
that "women's rule produces fools, and
by practically agreeing to the law in
RELOCATING their valued children, which
is to say, their boys, wholly to the COM
mands of their fathers and teachers;
while men alone undertake to deter
mine and fix every particular Of school
life. So the German system of educa-
ton, to point out the first fault in it, is
a one-sded, masculine one; not merely
in the school, but in the home.
Take the matter of school attendance
for an illustration of the difference be-
tween 1t and the American way. The
government, which, like the giant in the
story, puts it's finger In every pie or
ders that this shall be strenuously en-
forced. No child may be absent from
his class one day without bringing a
written excuse of weighty import, from
his father, ON the following day.
Now, in a very raw and uneven eli
mate, where children go to school in
summer shortly after six O'clock in the
morning, in order to be at school by
seven, and in winter have to breathe
their chilling path through the smoke
thickened fog or drizzle of the early
morning and be at school by eight, the
cases of failing health are naturally
very frequent. An American child
would complain to its mother, and if her
verdict fell out against the child's fit
ness for school work that would end the
matter in ninety cases out of one hum
dred. Her acquaintance with the
symptoms of childish ailments and with
Z. It'll H.
taken by the father of the child as be-
ing better than his own, and better also
than the teachers; while her solicitude
To- have her child progress in his school
work, as he says to himself is quite as
great as his own or the states can pos
sibly be.
There are German fathers who would
defer to the same suggestions of COM
mon sense. But the average man is
bigotedly convinced like his govern
ment that a woman is certain to be
foolish and indulgent; and. the more
conscientious he is, therefore, the surer
he is to pooh-pooh the mothers judg-
ment, and repeat the national proverb
that boys must be men. In school q
similar complaint Of feeling i'll is apt to
be repulsed with the same idle COM
ment. My own child has come home
from his recitation with a fever SO high
that it would have needed but a touch
ing of the pulse to have obtained con-
firmation of his tale of ill-health, and
gentlemen of my acquaintance attrib-
ute certain lifelong ailments of theirs
to the rude domination of the dogmatic
theory of hardening youth as exer-
cised by parent without nursery ex-
perence, and by teachers wanting in
medical understanding.
If it could be proved that the results
of the method are so good in the main,
that the exceptional victims of it ought
not to count; that, as rule, it produces
men more Spartan-like in temperament,
with stronger physique, harder oonsti-
tuition brighter souls in sounder bodies
than the American method of co-pater-
nal home management of school attend
ance then objection to it would be more
timid and diffident. But while there
have been many eulogizers of the Ger
man educational system, there exist so
far as I know, no American extollers of
the German people as one which is
sounder physically, more self-restrain-
Ing and more intelligent than other no
lions. On the other hand many reports
from school commissions. and countless
everyday lamentations in families be-
longing to all classes of society," concur
In unfolding the fact that the evil eff
fects wrought by the school system as
It is carried on by the order of govern
ment are NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. to the
soundness of the youth of the country.
Now, Germans attribute these effects
quite logically, not to what | am here !
pointing out,--they are quite blind to |
he fact that the very base and founda-
lion of their system is laid not upon the |
-ock of nature, but in the artificial sand |
If biased theory; they see not in the
absence of nursery experiences the pri- |
nal germs of the troubles they COM |
slain of,-but to something which an |
American schoolman hears with wonder |
to pupils being overburdened |
With lessons Thus the sophomore in
college in this city pursues nine studies:
Religion Latin. Greek, German, French,
German history German ge-
,graphy and anthropology, and the no.
ion prevails that these are two many;
lIthough in religion he has but two les
ons a week in Latin, eight; in Greek,
even; in German, two in French,
hree; in geometry, three in history :,
wo. in geography, one, in the winter