SUPER-SPECIALISTS

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2254, 14 September 1914, Page 3

SUPER-SPECIALISTS

ASPECTS OF GERMAN EDUCATION . RESULTS OF OVERWORK (By Charles Tower, in the Loudon "Daily News and Leader.")' [This article is of special interest in view of Lord Haldano's insistence both on tho danger of competition by people trained on the German system and on tho necessity for equality of opportunity in British education. "Latent among tho children of the, working classes, most of whom do not get an opportunity, there is the most splendid talent. The Turners and Roynoldsos, the .Kelvins and Faradays are concealed there, all for want of opportunityt."] If tho genius of modern Germany is of organisation it is at least allied to something which is not genius, namely, an infinite capacity for taking pains. Possibly the same combination is not to bo acclimatised elsewhere, for each nar tionality has■ doubtless its'own genius. But the capacity for taking pains can be cultivated, elsewhere; and allied to the peculiar genius of any other country it might bo expected to produce results as satisfactory as in Germany, though thoy would doubtless not be the .same results. The leaven might be same, but the cake would be different. Gorman education is part of the German system of taking pains. It is a standardisation of parts: its object is the smooth working of the whole, machine, not tho equalisation of opportunities for all individuals.

A Bit of Machinery. "The English genius is; or has been looked upon as the genius of individual effort: 'always and everywhere) ono man's work;' It might be suggested therefore that English education, to subserve national interests in the competition of nations, should bo adapted .for precisely that equalisation of opportunities which is not really the. basis of the German scheme. Individual genius is'liable, to crop up anywhere: m the farm hand as well as in the city clerk, in the machine-minder as in the son of a belted earl. In Germany the discovery and exploitation of individual genius is left to some considerable extent to the intelligent arrangements, of big firms (the Allgemeine Elektricitaets' Gesellschaft is a noteworthy example), for the State system, does not favour the sudden : outcrop . of special genius in a special line, it is constructed and- Organised to fit each man. for the particular place in its machinery selected by or for him from the outset. It follows that if the suppression of individuality is not pursued directly as an object it tends to appear as a characteristic. The German educational system, therefore, does not appear to the foreign observer as strictly an equalisation of individual opportunity, for that should mean equal opportunity to every individual to get his head above the ruck. Tn order to take full advantage as an individual of tjio cheapening of the higher special, branches of German education it might appear that the German must either take the specialised courses late or else commence to train himself for a special function in the State before he has had time to find out whither'his individual genius really tends. . The virtues of the German educational system are sufficiently obvious: its cheapness is admirable: its thoroughness (as special training, not •as general education) is anming and admirable, -and its uniformity is either amazing or admirable, according as ono does or does not approve its political object." , ' ■' • • Child Suicide Problem. The vices most commonly attributed to it are over-pressure of young brains at an. early stage, hothouse cultivation, and the suppression of individuality. The actual hours'of work in a German •school cannot be taken as a norm for purposes of comparison, because almost every German school-child has to add to them a great amount of home-work. This additional. home-work begins with the beginning of t>chool-life,_ arid continues to the end in progressive intensity. It is charged hot infrequently that tho result is an over-tax of the brain of the growing child with such concomitant symptoms as that of childsuicide. The.. Prussian statistical Year Book for' the year 1912 ' states that whilst' there were altogether G604 malo suicides in Prussia-in the year under review,' 94 were boys of from 10 to -15, and two were children under 10. The suicides of schoolboys and . lads emerging from the school age are not includ-ed-in these figuros._

"I collected cuttings relating to suicides of schoolboys for about six months from last September, and was struck by cne feature especially: namely that in very' many cases the lad was described as "one of the best scholars" at his school. Fear of punishment for minor offences _ is occasionally attributed (try to imagine an English village schoolboy committing suicide -in fear of punishment for stealing apples!). Sometimes (as in two cases this year at Elborfield and others elsewhere) the report frankly admits that the, lads "had to face their final examination"; , sometimes (Berlin, Geestemunde, Brem'orhaven, and elsewhere) overwork is publicly attributed; once ot twice I find that ths final examination had actually been passed successfully, and in a few cases it is admitted that failure to pass the final or other intermediate examination was the cause. It' should, perhaps, bo added that the blame is frequently laid on the parents, whose over-anxiety for the child's material prosperity later causes'them to deal harshly with temporary'school .failures. .Whether this charge can be substantiated I do not know. It would appear to follow that the suicides, if they are rightly attributed to overstrain of the brain in many cases, are not only, and perhaps not often, determined by anxiety regarding the loss of the social prestige attached to the "Reserve-lieutenant's" " patent, but to sheer turning of the brain by overwork. Whether this is a correct de-' duction or not is a' matter of annual dispute in Germany itself.

"In any case, 'however, that final passing examination and the qualifications, for the one: year's service in the Army with subsequent rank as lieutenant of the reserve is not an essential feature .of iho German educational system, but an' oxcrescenco produced by the military system. Demands for its abolition are frequent, both from tho Liberal ranks, where its effects on the child's mind are deplored, from Radicals, who correctly regard it as an offshoot of the militarist claes-systom, and even from the militarists themselves, who argue that so many highly-educat s ed youths should not be deprived annually of the beneficent effects of two or three years' military training!"