Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/60

 48 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

apartment, 1 and lavatories; in the basement, shower baths, soup kitchen and luncheon-rooms, workrooms for wood-working and for metal-working-, and the steam-heating apparatus; in the court, kindergarten, playground, and school kitchen garden. In some of the other buildings are, further, rooms for punishment of the children, for medical examination, for nature-study, and others. The German Gymnasium has long been considered a model for classical schools ; but the modern tendency to regard the non- classical school, with its more practical preparation and the greater opportunity for selection of a career offered to its stu- dents, as less one-sided, and quite as educational is slowly but surely making headway in Germany as well as elsewhere. The tendency toward modernization of education is, however, even more noticeable in the elementary schools. Workshops for manual training are provided in almost every new school build- ing erected. In Strassburg the boys are trained for special trades instead of being prepared, as is usual, for general work with opportunity of choosing a particular trade later. Worms makes manual training compulsory for the boys, as she does domestic science for the girls. Education is compulsory in Ger- many between the years of six and fourteen. Further instruction is given evenings and Sundays, usually two to six hours each week, to those who wish to continue their studies after having left the schools to go to work. Attendance is in some states com- pulsory, as, for example, in Saxony where the boys must attend for three years, and the girls for two years. The aim is "a broader, general education of the pupils, and particularly a fore- arming with that knowledge and preparation which is necessary for civic life," These schools are organically connected with the public schools, and the instruction usually consists of repetition or continuation of the work in the primary schools. Some schools, however, offer, besides this instruction, classes intended "to give the pupil the necessary knowledge and preparation for his trade." Dresden has such classes in two divisions : those who draw, as locksmiths, blacksmiths, mechanics, joiners, carpenters, masons, decorators, china painters, architects, and lithographers;

1 The janitor usually lives in the school building.