Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/348

 pedagogy was exclusively applied, as if other races did not have other needs. Then an account must be taken of the influence of the Established Catholic Church, hostile to the growth of modern ideas in schools, and the result was a type that only Czarist Russia was willing to imitate. Among the Czech people secondary schools as purely Austrian official institutions, were far from popular, although their number grew, because without their diplomas public posts could not be obtained and because no other higher education was available.

In the Bohemian lands development of secondary education, in spite of enforced uniformity, was marked by certain special characteristics. Language struggles and economic influences made themselves felt. For a long time Austrian ministers would not permit the introduction of Czech language into the secondary schools. When finally in the revolutionary year 1848 one Prague gymnasium was transformed into Czech school, the concession was recalled shortly after, when absolutism came back. But from 1860 the Czech language makes a victorious progress in all directions. The government, unable to suppress national aspirations, at least refused to establish new state schools. Czechs knew how to help themselves, and Czech cities, their request for a gymnasium turned down by the government, established their own secondary schools out of their insufficient means. Still more difficult was the struggle in the Moravian cities in which Germans maintained themselves articicially in control. The Czech people made penny collections and maintained secondary schools through special organizations, called School Funds (Matice Školská). Strangers find the development of these peculiar self-help organizations highly interesting. Later as the influence of Czech deputies grew, the government was compelled to take over the maintenance of these municipal and private institutions. But it had to be done in the Austrian way: if a Czech school was taken over by the state, a German school was immediately established, so as not to “favor” unduly the Czechs. Thus it came to be that Germans have in the Bohemian lands a great surplus of secondary schools; in Prague and suburbs, where Germans form about one-fourteenth of the population, there are 10 German state schools in comparison with 21 Czech. Altogether there are in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia 72 Czech gymnasia and “real” gymnasia, and 43 “real schools”, whereas the Germans have 58 gymnasia and “real” gymnasia, and 26 “real schools”. The Austrian government maintained for the Germans up to the very end quite superfluous schools in Czech districts, for instance an eight-grade gymnasium with 88 scholars and a seven-grade “real school” with 64 pupils. On the average Czech gymnasia had 350 students, German 220, Czech “real schools” 320, German 260.

Secondary schools thus became one of the bones of contention in the struggle of nationalities. Often in small towns both German and Czech secondary schools were erected, as the two nationalities vied with each other in the size of their educated classes. Whereas in France there was one secondary school to each 115,000 people, in the United States to 100,000, in Austria to 62,000 and in Germany to 48,000, in the Bohemian lands there was a secondary school to each 50,000 Czechs and 36,000 Germans. Thus we get one high school student to each 160 Germans, 170 Czechs and 407 Frenchmen.

Another peculiarity appeared in the development of secondary education in the Bohemian lands. Whereas Galicia, Tyrol and the southern Alp lands remained faithful to the classical course, among us there was more interest in the modern course. “Real schools” grew in number and all were filled to capacity; nearly as many students are found in them as in the gymnasia, although the number of the latter is nearly double. That is explained by the growing industrialization of our lands, although even before this process made itself felt, attempts were made to break the monopoly of classical schools. Half a century ago an attempt was made to push back the necessity of choice between gymnasium and “real school” to the third grade by the establishment of “real-gymnasia”, in which the pupil made the choice in the third grade between Greek and French. When this type of school disappeared through the dislike of the government, our lands were again foremost, after the reform of 1909, to transform nearly one-half of the gymnasia into the new “real-gymnasia” without Greek.

In another department also the Czechs secured primacy. The first girls’ gymnasium in all Austria was established in