1900; the vast majority of these were educated in the classical gymnasium with its compulsory Latin and Greek. (2) Even in 1911, of over 400,000 boys receiving secondary education in Germany, 240,000 were at schools in which Latin is compulsory, and 170,000 of these at schools where Greek is compulsory also. (3) In the remaining, purely modern,' Realschulen, so far from physical science occupying the chief place in the curriculum, only two hours out of twenty-five per week are allotted to it in the lowest forms and six out of thirty-one in the highest. The moral of these facts is that the highest scientific eminence can be attained by a nation in whose secondary education physical science is subordinate. They prove with absolute conclusiveness that a classical education is not in itself the obstacle which prevents our becoming a 'scientific' nation. It is surely not too much to ask that our critics of the classics should attend to these figures, especially if they criticise in the name of science. In their own subjects they would consider it a duty to collect and weigh all the available facts before they arrive at a con clusion. They are not exempted from doing so, when they come to talk about education; but if anyone reads the Report of the Conference at Burlington House, he will find no trace that these elementary and accessible facts had ever been considered by the speakers who attacked the classics. Yet they are very instructive. They do not prove that all boys should learn Latin and Greek, or that modern schools are unnecessary, or that physical science can be ignored, or that everything is for the best as it is; but they do prove that a nation can be scientific,' though compulsory classics are the staple of its secondary education, and though the majority of its youth is trained in classical schools. It is generally assumed by the critics of the classics that they are at any rate useless to the future scientist. Here again it is interesting to glance at Germany; not that German education is perfect, but that it exhibits the results of experiments that bear on our present dispute. In 1870, as we saw, the universities became partly open to students who did not know Latin and Greek. In 1880, after ten years of trial of the new system, a manifesto was addressed to the Prussian Minister of Education by all the members of the Philo sophical Faculty of Berlin University; it records the opinion of the results of the change which was entertained by the most eminent teachers and savants of Germany. It should be remembered that the Philosophical Faculty in Germany includes Mathematics and Physical Science; the manifesto was thus signed not only by historians like Mommsen, Droysen and Curtius, philosophers like Zeller, and scholars like Vahlen and Nitsch, but also by the leading men of science in Germany, among them men of world-wide reputation like A. W. Hofmann (chemistry), (chemistry), Helmholtz (physics), Kiepert (geography), and by many other scientists. Here are some extracts: "It is also emphasised by the instructors of chemistry that graduates of Realschulen (Modern Schools) do not stand upon the same level with graduates of Gymnasia (Classical Schools). Professor Hofmann observes that the students from Realschulen, in consequence of their being conversant with a large number of facts, outrank, as a rule, those from the Gymnasia during the experimental exercises of the first half-year, but that the situation is soon reversed, and, given equal abilities, the latter almost invariably carry off the honours in the end; that the latter are mentally better trained, and have acquired in a higher degree the ability to 1 Inaugural Address delivered by A. W. Hofmann on Oct. 15, 1880, with appendix, translation published by Ginn & Heath, Boston, 1883, P. 49. 21b. p. vii. the chief university of Germany, after ten years' trial of the 'modern' schools. Similar views were expressed in 1897 by the professors of the Technical High School at Karlsruhe, who declared that "the systematic study of Latin as a school discipline was of the highest value for engineers, botanists, zoologists, mineralogists, chemists and physicists. The memorialists indeed advocate the study both of Greek and Latin at schools, in the case of a boy intending to follow any of the above scientific pursuits, but of the two ancient languages, they emphasise Latin as the more indispensable." There again we have a considered opinion of scientific specialists, with no axe to grind, and with experience of the results of both classical and modern education.1 1 Sir M. Sadler, Problems in Prussian Secondary Education (Board of Education Special Reports, vol. 3, p. 218). In the same place is quoted the interesting protest by the late M. Jaurès in favour of classical education. "He spoke against giving equal recognition to the classical and modern sides in secondary schools on the ground that, in the headlong competitive struggle of the present time, the sterner mental discipline afforded by Latin and Greek will give way before what Americans call 'soft options' in school curricula, unless a premium is set on the former. He pleaded for the preservation of classical studies... as a memento of disinterested culture. Otherwise even the field of education would be submerged under the rising tide of commercialism." |