Jacotot’s method emphasized first the practical side and then the rule, constant repetition, and self-activity on the part of the pupils. Controversy arose, however, over his two basic theses: (1) that everyone has the same intelligence, differences in learning success being only a case of differences in industry and stamina, and (2) that everything is in everything: “Tout est dans tout,” which suggests that any subject or book is analogous to any other.
The doctor and psychologist Édouard Séguin developed a pedagogy for pupils of below-average intelligence. Historically, scientific attempts to educate mentally retarded children had begun with the efforts of a French doctor, Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, during the latter part of the 18th century. In his classic book, The Wild Boy of Aveyron (1801), Itard related his five-year effort to train and educate a boy found, at about the age of 11, running naked and wild in the woods of Aveyron. Later, Séguin, a student of Itard, devised an educational method using physical and sensory activities to develop mental processes. Limbs and the senses were, in his view, a part of the whole personality, and their development was a part of the whole human education. His method was a specific adaptation of the idea that the development of intellectual and moral distinctions grows out of sensory experience. Spencer’s scientism
The English sociologist Herbert Spencer was perhaps the most important popularizer of science and philosophy in the 19th century. Presenting a theory of evolution prior to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Spencer argued that all of life, including education, should take its essential lessons from the findings of the sciences. In Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1860), he insisted that the answer to the question “What knowledge is of most worth?” is the knowledge that the study of science provides. While the educational methodology Spencer advocated was a version of the sense realism espoused by reformers from Ratke and Comenius down to Pestalozzi, Spencer himself was a social conservative. For him, the value of science lies not in its possibilities for making a better world but in the ways science teaches man to adjust to an environment that is not susceptible to human engineering. Spencer’s advocacy of the study of science was an inspiration to the American Edward Livingston Youmans and others who argued that a scientific education could provide a culture for modern times superior to that of classical education. Heinz-Jürgen Ipfling J.J. Chambliss Development of national systems of education
The great changes in Europe in the 19th century included, among other things, the further consolidation of national states, the spread of modern technology and industrialization, and increasing secularization. These changes had consequences for the design of school systems. National school systems had to be conceived and organized. Alongside the older schools—including elementary schools, Latin, or grammar, schools, secondary schools, and universities—there developed so-called modern schools that stressed the exact sciences and modern languages, reflecting the new technological and commercial age. Vocational schools also appeared in greater numbers. The influence of the church was increasingly repressed, and the influence of the state on the school system correspondingly grew stronger. The ideal of universal education—education for all—became more and more a reality. Germany
Martin Luther’s pronouncements on the educational responsibilities of the individual had no doubt helped create that healthy public opinion that rendered the principle of compulsory school attendance acceptable in Prussia at a much earlier date than elsewhere. State intervention in education was almost coincident with the rise of the Prussian state. In 1717 Frederick William I ordered all children to attend school, if schools were available to them. This was followed in 1736 by edicts for the establishment of schools in certain provinces, in 1763 by Frederick II the Great’s regulation asserting the principle of compulsory school attendance, and in 1794 by a codification of Prussian law recognizing the principle of state supremacy in education. Humboldt’s reforms
The schools, however, had established a traditional classical curriculum that ignored the changing needs of life and fields of knowledge. No effective reorganization of the educational system was carried out until after the disaster of the Battle of Jena (1806), during the Napoleonic Wars, which brought about the virtual collapse of Prussia. Fichte delivered his Addresses to the German Nation at this time, appealing to the spirit of patriotism over a selfish individualism. He advocated a nationalism to be cultivated and enhanced by controlling the education of the young. In the period of governmental reform which came about, one of the first acts of the prime minister Freiherr Karl vom Stein in 1807 was to abolish certain semi-ecclesiastical schools and to place education under the Ministry of the Interior, with Wilhelm von Humboldt at the head of a special section. Humboldt’s policy in secondary education was a compromise between the narrow philological pedantry of the old Latin schools and the large demands of the new humanism that he espoused. The measure introduced by Humboldt in 1810 for the state examination and certification of teachers checked the then-common practice of permitting unqualified theological students to teach in the schools and raised the teaching profession to a high level of dignity and efficiency, placing Prussia in the forefront of educational progress. It was also a result of the initiative of Humboldt that the methods of Pestalozzi were introduced into the teachers’ seminaries. To this period also belongs the revival, in 1812, of the Abitur (the school-leaving examination), which had fallen into abeyance. Developments after 1815
The period that succeeded the peace of 1815 was one of political reaction, and not until the 1830s were there further significant reforms. In 1834, for example, an important step was taken in regard to secondary education by making it necessary for candidates for the learned professions, as well as for the civil service and for university studies, to pass the leaving examination of the Gymnasium, the Classical secondary schools. Thus, through the leaving examination, the state held the key to the liberal careers and was thereby able to impose its own standards upon all secondary schools.
In connection with the so-called Kulturkampf, the struggle between the state and the Roman Catholic Church, the school law of 1872 reasserted the absolute right of the state alone to the supervision of the schools. Nevertheless, the Prussian system remained both for Catholics and for Protestants essentially denominational. On the elementary level, in particular, the mixed school was established only when the creeds were so intermingled that a confessional school was impracticable. In all cases, the teachers were appointed with reference to religious faith; religious instruction was given in school hours and was inspected by the clergy.
The official classification, or grading according to the type of curriculum, of secondary schools in Prussia (and throughout Germany) was very precise. The following were the three officially recognized types: (1) the Classical nine-year Gymnasium, with a curriculum that included Latin, Greek, and a modern language, (2) the semi-Classical nine-year Realgymnasium, with a more modern curriculum that included, in addition to Latin and modern languages, the natural sciences and mathematics, and (3) the modern six-year Realschule or nine-year Oberrealschule, with a curriculum of sciences and mathematics.