Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/317

Rh and the enormous increase in suicides during the last few years is one of the saddest and most striking phenomena of German society, high and low.

That there is an over-production in the professional fields nearly all German thinkers agree. How can it be helped? The Government has lately called the attention of parents and teachers to the fact that the higher administrative positions in the civil service are all provided for, and that all vacancies for years to come can be filled from the present candidates. The opponents of the real schools now come forward and say: "We can help the matter very easily. Shut out real-school graduates from the philosophical faculty and there will be room enough for the surplus students of law and medicine to find careers." Some professors voted for exclusion because they thought that the shutting out of real-school students would meet this rapidly-growing evil of over-production in professional spheres.

We think enough has been advanced to prove—1. That the Berlin report has little bearing on the question we are discussing in this country as to the respective merits of classical and modern training, for the simple fact that it was on an altogether different point. 2. That as to the particular subject, in regard to which it was prepared, it can lay no claim to be considered final, because it was made prematurely, at a time when the institution judged could, by the very nature of the case, have had no fair trial, and because it was made by prejudiced parties without sufficient investigation, and influenced by considerations which should have had nothing to do with the decision.

As a matter of fact, the opinion seems to be quite general in Germany that the real schools are bound to go forward to new struggles and to new conquests. They have lost none of the ground which they have ever won; they are gaining new ground every day. It is a mere question of time when the medical schools will be opened to them, and some even dare hope that the law schools must yield also. They may suffer temporary reverses, but they are sure to win in the long run. One significant fact may be noted, which is beginning to tell in their favor. The men in Germany who have made the deepest and longest studies in the science of education are assuming a more favorable attitude toward the real schools.

The writer recently visited Professor Masius, who holds a chair of Pedagogics in the University of Leipsic. He was for years the director of a gymnasium, then of a real school of the first rank, and then for years a member of the Ministry for Public Instruction in Saxony. On being asked what his position on the question of real school vs. the gymnasium is, he replied: "If you mean to ask me, whether the real-school graduates I get in my work are the equals of the gymnasium graduates, I should say, no! If you mean whether our real schools, as they are, afford as good a liberal training as the gymnasia, I should say, no! If you mean whether a real-school, as fully