RE-EDUCATION A SOLID PROBLEM IN GERMANY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 92, 8 September 1948, Page 5

RE-EDUCATION A SOLID PROBLEM IN GERMANY

British Work On Positive Lines (By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist)^ Berlin, July 2fi. Germans have been running their own education in the British occupied zone of their country since January 1, 1947. On that date the British tossed them the responsibility of filling the mental canyons left’by Hitler’s system. The educational adviser to the Military Government, Mr R. Birley, told in an interview of British endeavours to give Germans minds of their own. 4 The British tried something positive by suggesting lines along which teaching should go. By the time it was judged opportune to hand education back to the German authorities, the British had all but a few thousand of the 3,000,000 children in their zone back to school. Instead of laying down general principles of education when they handed it over, the British chose to work through personal contacts. About 200 education officers were deployed through the zone. The British were trying to persuade the German teachers to choose

the textbooks for their own classes, but the teachers still wanted them chosen somewhere above, and the German educational officials, extremely bureaucratic and reactionary, thought this new proposition deplorable. Universities Mr Birley found to be reactionary but anti-Nazi. They wanted to get back to the pre 1914 world, and retire from the intellectual struggle altogether. Professors were not interested in a sound intellectual basis for the revival of their country. “We feel we have to build up a revolutionary force inside the University,” he said. A step towards this had been the setting up of a University Commission. One leading member was a trade unionist, and this was the first time in Germany that trade unionism had had anything to, do with the University, which it had hitherto regarded as hopelessly reactionary. Four principles of legislation for primary and secondary education have been laid down, to be framed as the German administration thinks best. •* First, secondary education must be free. Up to the present secondary education, beginning at 10, has been extraordinarily divorced from reality, and; regarded only as a preliminary to the equally unreal Universities. Second, there must be no legislation which renders impossible the later extension of the elementary education period up to 14 or 16. The elementary period now ends at 10 in the British zone, 14 in Berlin, and 16 in the Russian zone, where parents pay contributions. Third, the status of teachers and training colleges must be raised., Fourth, private schools should not be abolished, both because it is bad in Germany to have all education, run by the State, and because there is. no wish to quarrel with the Church. . The Russian approach- to re-edu-cation was quite different from the British. They believed their only hope was to work on, the working people. This they did through politically reliable Germans, implementing clear directives from Ijffoscow. The Americans, whose approach was much the same as the British but more centralised, were having a trying time with a very reactionary German government in Bavaria. The French very largely ran reeducation themselves, instead of through German teachers.