Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-05-07
THE HISTORY OF THE
WAR

AL
WHAT are the children Of Ger
w many being taught about the
World war, its causes and results7
We note in an article in the Liter.
airy Digest that Mr.. William D.
Shepherd started out OF find the
answer to that, and he prints the
following in "Our World:
I'm Germany school children in
various districts have different his
tory books. In one district the book
will contain all the old illusions to
the kaiser and the greatness of his
family. In another district all of
this has been cut out. There is
such a discrepancy between the
various books that the explanations
of the school officials are highly
entertaining. I sought out DR..
Becker, secretary of the Prussian
ministry Of education. He is an
avowed republican.
"'There are two things that we
are not teaching Jul children he
said. One subject that is forbid
den is the kaiser and his dynasty.
The other is the war
"'But there are history books
that tell of the kaiser / said.
eyes he smiled, but let me ex-
plain. You see, books cost a great
deal of money. The old histories
used to glorify the kaiser. We still
have many copies of these old
books on hand. We can not afford
to throw them away. But we have
issued orders to all teachers that
they must not ask the children to
study the kaiser and his dynasty.
That part of the book is skipt over
in every school in Prussia. But we
have gone further than this. When
ever a publisher issues a new edi-
ton of a sc~hool-book, he cuts out
every reference to the old dynasty.
We have given orders to all the
publishers of school-books that this
must be done. The editing is care
fully done, and whenever a child is
given a new history book in the
Prussian schools, you may be sure
that every bit of kaiser-worship
and king.worship has been cut out
of it,
HAS anything new been put in
its placer
"'No. Editing does not cost so
much, but the addition of material
is a difficult thing
"'But are the children being
taught nothing about the WARP
"'Not a single word said DR..
Becker. The teachers are not al
lowed to discuss the war. Their
history boqxs do not contain a
single word about the war;
ais this done purposely?' I
asked.
YES he explained. It's poll
tics. You see there are six differ
ent parties in Prussia. Each diff
ferent party has a different idea
about the causes of the war, the
events and the mistakes. As soon
as the ministries of education start
to prepare a story of the war for
the school children, some leader of
a party arises and says that the
story is wrong, in some detail.
Then we have to drop the whole
thing and start over again. We
must find some story that will suit
all the parties, including the social
lists and the extremists on both
1t is an impossible thing to
do. and we have quit trying.
"'Our latest plan is to have a
chronology of the war appear in the
school-books so that the children
may learn the dates Of various i'm
events. We have four
experts working on this now, but
they agree on dates, they can
not agree in describing what hap
pened on those dates. Something
about the inwardness of the war is
to creep into any arrange
nent of dates, and SO we are in as
much trouble with our new plan
we were with our previous ef-
forts. W. must try to satisfy the
parents of the children as we'll as
the party leaders, continued DR..
Becker. Parents are giving their
version of the var to their children
at home, and if our school-books
give a different explanation from
that believed by the parents, we
will be in trouble.
"'The schools are not as they
,,,.d 20 hA ~ <ha k,;eArss tive