Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/98

90 very great importance. It proves at least this, that there are in Germany men of acknowledged ability, undoubted honesty, and sincere love of education, and able to judge of the system from personal experience, who desire such a change in the preparatory schooling as would permit a student to go to the university without having studied Greek at all. Is it a sign of a shallow mind to discountenance in America, under circumstances that make the experiment far less likely to succeed, what is thus proved to be partially a failure even in Germany? Is it true that those who hold such views are justly chargeable with a wanton desire to destroy a well-tried system of "thorough" education, in order to introduce new-fangled notions of their own?

But the gymnasium is not the only school that prepares for the university. At present another school in which less Latin and no Greek are taught, called "Realschule," has also the right to give its graduates a certificate of "maturity" which entitles them to membership in the university, at least in some of the courses of the "Arts" department. This fact should, therefore, be borne in mind: that the German universities do admit students who, instead of Greek, offer other studies, very much as Harvard would have done if the proposition of its faculty had not been overruled by the superior board. The professors of the German universities mostly favor the "gymnasium," from which almost every one of them was graduated, but they are not so unreasonable as to set up their own individual preferences against the intelligent views of a considerable number of highly educated people who are not professors. Hence, whatever the example of German universities may teach us, the lesson of intolerance is not taught by it; at least not of intolerance in the sense that the views of an intelligent minority must be absolutely disregarded by the majority.

The German "Realschule" teaches science and mathematics, Latin, French, English in connection with the other branches, German language and literature, etc., common also to the gymnasium. It is claimed that this course is not so beneficial to the student as that of the gymnasium, and a ten years' trial of the Berlin philosophical faculty seems to have proved this. We will not here enter upon a discussion as to the probable causes of this failure of the Realschule beyond stating the well-known fact that hitherto the Realschule has not been generally patronized by those who aspired to the higher education of the university. The prejudice in favor of the old, well tried, and splendidly equipped gymnasium was so great that this school naturally attracted the majority of those who wished to go to the university later. The course of the Realschule (i. e., that of the first order or class, there being also a lower order or class) is just as long as that of the gymnasium, but the graduates of the Realschule are few in number, and it is the exception, and not the rule, when one of them finally attends the university. Hence it is manifestly unfair