deception practised for the paltry political end of rearing the individual to be part and parcel of an artificial and despotic system of government, of training him to be either its instrument or its slave, according to his social station." Laing ends his comments on Prussian education with these denunciations: "If to read, write, cipher, and sing, be education, they are quite right-the Prussian subject is an educated man. If to reason, judge, and act as an independent free agent, in the religious, moral, and social relations of man to his Creator, and to his fellow-men, be that exercise of the mental powers which alone deserves the name of education, then is the Prussian subject a mere drum-boy in education, in the cultivation and use of all that regards the moral and intellectual endowments of man, compared to one of the unlettered population of a free country. . . The social value or importance of the Prussian arrangements for diffusing national scholastic education has been evidently overrated; for now that the whole system has been in the fullest operation in society upon a whole generation, we see morals and religion in a more unsatisfactory state in this very country than in almost any other in the north of Europe; we see nowhere a people in a more abject political and civil condition, or with less free agency, in their social economy. A national education which gives a nation neither religion, nor morality, nor civil liberty, nor political liberty, is an education not worth having."

We may well ask whether those who brought this German influence to our country never warned us against the pernicious features in it. To this the answer is an emphatic "Yes." No American visitor failed to realize that behind all German education was the dominance of an absolute oligarchy; that much of German education was carried on, not for the welfare of the citizen, but for the economic and military efficiency of the state, and hence of the monarchy. To Horace Mann these features of German life and education seemed most detestable. The diary of his trip and his printed report to the Massachusetts Board of Education contained many statements about Germany which seemingly

then fell upon deaf ears but which have been most strikingly proven true by recent events. He was shocked to find little power in the hands of the people, particularly in Prussia and Austria: "a representative assembly in Saxony with Austria on one side and Prussia on the other is like a bit of good ham in an otherwise miserable sandwich." Education in Prussia seemed to him to be aimed to produce "a spirit of blind acquiescence to arbitrary power adapted to enslave and not enfranchise the human mind." In Austria "education is very inferior and the government means to keep it within its present limits." Many of the schools which he visited, he said were excellent: "nothing is wanting but freedom." In Prussia "education performs the unnatural and unholy work of making slaves." What was taught was taught by government dictation rather than out of the fullness of the teacher's heart. Mann states that the government compelled certain forms of religion to be taught or else it would take away the bread from the teachers.

Altho the military aspects of German educational life were then much less important than now, they amazed Mann. "In Germany everything is conducted on an inexpensive scale except war and military affairs." All the physical training in the schools seems solely designed to prepare soldiers: "it is not yet discovered that activity and energy are necessary in any occupation save that of killing our fellow men." Some of his severest indictments are upon the compulsory religious instruction in the German schools; he had no words too strong to condemn this, particularly when conducted by teachers who thought all the instruction a lie, upon pupils who only studied in order to secure the certificate of confirmation, a necessity "for anyone who wishes to obtain a place as a servant, an apprentice, or even to get married."

But Mann's greatest disappointment in the German educational and political system was found in the way it sacrificed the peasantry to the whim of the ruling class. He vigorously denounced the German lack in "bringing up the rear of society." He clearly realized, as many worshipers of

modern Germany did not until 1914, that there is no such thing as German democracy in her schools or politics. In an indictment which sounds decidedly modern, he asks why "with such a wide-extended and energetic machinery for public instruction, the Prussians, as a people, do not rise more rapidly in the scale of civilization, why the arts remain among them in a half-barbarous condition?" His answers are: First, children are driven from the people's schools of Prussia at fourteen; their education is then over. Second, there is a lack of books and papers for the public to read; this is due to the rigorous censorship which aims to keep books and papers from the hands and minds of the lower classes. Finally, he gives evidence of a lamentable lack of morality on the part of the German people, vulgarized vices among the low, and profligacies among their social superiors. The ruling class is voluptuous; the late king was a liar who falsified his word that he would give the people a constitution, and hence, in spite of the splendors of his mausoleum, is remembered in the hearts of his people as one who "violated his royal faith and died forsworn."

Greatly as Mann praised certain features of the German schools, the political injustice behind them all, which we are now fighting to overthrow, remained his deepest impression of Germany in 1843. Listen to his indictment, written seventy-five years ago, but true today, of a governmentdominated educational system which makes slaves and puppets of its pupils: "There, government steps in to take care of the subject, almost as much as the subject takes care of his cattle. The subject has no officers to choose, no inquiry into the character or eligibleness of candidates to make, no vote to give. He has no laws to enact or abolish. He has no questions about peace or war, finance, taxes, tariffs, post-office, or internal improvements, to decide or discuss. He is not asked where a road shall be laid, or how a bridge shall be built, altho in the one case he has to perform the labor, and in the other to supply the materials. His sovereign is born to him. The laws are made for him. In war, his part is not to declare it or to end it, but to fight and

be shot in it, and to pay for it. The tax-gatherer tells him how much he is to pay. The ecclesiastical authority plans a church which he must build; and his spiritual guide, who has been set over him by another, prepares a creed and a confession of faith all ready for his signature. He is directed alike how he must obey his king, and worship his God." JAMES L. MCCONAUGHY

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

HANOVER. N. H.

II

ENGLISH LAY CRITICS OF EDUCATION

The introduction of Mr. Fisher's Education Bill last year let loose a portentous flood of criticism on a subject that does not usually greatly disturb the equanimity of England. It is true that the Englishman has never had any hesitation in finding fault with his professional educators when he has had his attention drawn to them, but, generally speaking, he has not had enough interest in the matter to do even that, unless when education has been served up to him with the piquant sauce of denominationalism. Now, however, when England is being made to feel that education may have a very practical bearing on her position as a world power, the laymen are beginning to prick up their ears and to take notice. They come to the subject with that vigor of interest and freshness of view that marks the natural attitude ignorance adopts towards a subject that has attracted it. Aristotle does not hold a very high place in the esteem of that large class of Englishmen who like to call themselves "plain," but his reputation would go up with a bound if they chanced to realise what he meant when he maintained that politics is architectonic to education. The plain Englishman would smack his lips over the statement that the schoolmaster must take his orders from the statesman, for, after all, the statesman must in turn take his orders from the man who elects him to office, so that in the ultimate resort the orders come from the plain man himself.

Accordingly, the English layman has little hesitation in adopting the Aristotelian position. He has to use the material produced by the schools, and he has to pay for their upkeep, so he expresses himself freely about what goes on within them. English schoolmasters do not seriously question his right to call the tune, since they realise that he has to