Science Teaching in German Schools

Abstract

THE habit of self-depreciation, or at any rate the latest manifestation of it, which is now so prominent a feature of our national life, can be traced to its beginning in a general dissatisfaction with our system of education. At a time when there was no misgiving as to the superiority of our navy, when our commercial supremacy was still unchallenged, and when no foreigner dared to be our rival in the world of sport, it was nevertheless felt that in the science of education we had much to learn from abroad. If our secondary schools, especially the great “public schools,” were allowed to have been successful in the formation of character, yet the intellectual equipment of those who passed through them was, and still is, held by many to be miserably inadequate. Germany, on the other hand, is regarded as the land, par excellence, where not only the schoolmaster knows and does his business, but where a parental Government has elaborated an almost ideal system of mental training. It is interesting, therefore, to hear that in one important province of school work-the teaching of natural science-there is another side to the picture.