The French Revolution, and the dismemberment of Prussia at Tilsit, put a stop to orderly progress. Stein and his colleagues, however, started anew; students were sent to Switzerland to study pedagogical methods; provincial school-boards were established, and about 1850 all public-school teachers were declared to be civil servants; and later, in 1872, during Bismarck's campaign against the Jesuits, all private schools were made subject to state inspection. In Prussia to-day no man or woman may give instruction even as a governess or private tutor, without the certificate of the state.
This control of education and teaching by a central authority is an unmixed blessing. In Prussia, at any rate, the officials are hard-working, conscientious, and enthusiastic, and the system, whether one gives one's full allegiance to it or not, is admirably worked out. Above all, it completely does away with sham physicians, sham doctors of divinity, sham engineers, and mining and chemical experts, sham dentists and veterinary surgeons, who abound in our country, where shoddy schools do a business of selling degrees and certificates of proficiency in everything from exegesis to obstetrics. These fakir academies are not only a disgrace but a danger in America, and here, as in other matters, Germany has a right to smile grimly at certain of our hobbledehoy methods of government.
The elementary schools, or Volkschulen, are free, and attendance is compulsory from six to fourteen; in addition, the Fortbildungsschulen, or continuation schools, can also be made compulsory up to eighteen years of age. There are some 61,000 free public elementary schools with over 10,000,000 pupils, and over 600 private elementary schools with 42,000 pupils who pay fees.
Under a regulation of the Department of Trade and Industry, towns with more than twenty thousand inhabitants are empowered to make their own rules compelling commercial employees under eighteen to attend the continuation schools a certain number of hours monthly, and fining employers who interfere with such attendance. It has even been suggested that this law be extended to include girls.
In Berlin this has already been put into operation, and this year some 30,000 girls will be compelled to attend continuation schools, where they will be taught cooking, dress-making, laundry work, house-keeping economy, and for those who wish it, office work. It will require some training even to pronounce the name of this new institution, which requires something more than the number of letters in the alphabet to spell it, for it has this terrifying title: Mädchenpflicht-fortbildungsschule.