than away from, the English distribution of school hours in primary schools. But, in all the German towns I visited, the morning session began at an hour which, to us, would seem unreasonably early. Generally speaking, the holidays for primary schools were longer than our own. They were divided into four periods, one at Christmas, one at Easter, one in the summer, and one at Michaelmas, amounting to a total of nine or ten weeks in the year. The holidays in the secondary schools approximated to those in the primary schools, and were distinctly less than in our own country. There are few occasional holidays, except, perhaps, for hot weather. In Leipsic, when the thermometer at 10 A.M. registers more than 25° Centigrade, the afternoon is a holiday. This occurred once only during my visit, which coincided with one of the few periods of hot weather in the summer of 1902. If a calculation were made as to the total school hours per year, the German schools are in excess of our own, so far at least as the older scholars are concerned. CHAPTER IV SCHOOL BUILDINGS As in our own country, considerable diversity exists between schools built at earlier and later periods. The general design, however, differs rather markedly from ours. The large central hall, with class-rooms opening out from it, is not a German construction. But the class-room system is invariable, and the rooms, which are separated by walls and not by partitions, are arranged along wide corridors. Every school has a large hall for drill and gymnastics situated in its playground; and in some schools a second hall is to be found within the building, and is usually situated so that what transpires therein neither affects, nor is affected by, the work in the class-rooms. Generally speaking, the German town schools are larger than ours; the girls and boys are in separate buildings, sometimes side by side. The rooms are rather low and not well ventilated, especially where double windows are used in schools facing streets with traffic. The pupils' desks are not raised on tiers as in London, and there are often seven, eight, and nine or more rows from front to back. In Leipsic the secondary schools have a large hall (Prüfungs Saal) with an organ built in, apart from the class-rooms, and in addition to the gymnastic hall. 19 Pictures This is true also of many schools in Berlin. were almost invariably absent, but a few busts on brackets adorned the walls, Luther, Melancthon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the King of Saxony were to be seen in one of these halls, which was lofty, handsome, and quiet. As a rule the bareness of German class-room walls strikes an English observer very unfavourably. The maps are rolled up and carefully stored, the pictures are in trays and cases, and are taken out when needed. The decorative aspect of pictures is not attended to at all; and when an Englishman mentions the array of pictures on the walls of his primary schools, the German answers: "You know you are so rich," and sometimes cleverly presses the point that what children are always seeing they take no notice of. I saw, however, in Leipsic, one or two very light blackboards with good outline maps of Germany on them, which were, as was the case with a few other maps, suspended on nails knocked into the wall; but this was rare. A Hamburg higher modern school contained a beautiful hall with an organ (the room was remarkable for the absence of tawdry ornaments and pictures), a room for drawing, a hall for singing, a library, a map room, a museum room, and two small chemical and physical laboratories. All new schools in Berlin now have a physics room, but this means really a stepped room (stepping not being the rule as with us), with a demonstration table of a not very elaborate kind. The secondary modern schools, the Realschulen, contain extremely full sets of specimens and apparatus for the teaching of chemistry, physics, and biology. I thought much of it quite needlessly elaborate, and the range of subjects far too wide. But this really opens up the whole question of science-teaching, its aims and possibilities, and I must be content here to give the fact and suggest, rather than elaborate, a criticism. In a higher modern school which I saw at Hamburg, there were small chemical and physical laboratories, and practical work was done by the boys. But such laboratories were not general, and the point requires special emphasis. For the scientific education in Germany, which is so much praised in comparison with our own, is not obtained in either the primary or secondary schools, but in technical colleges which receive pupils after they have successfully obtained a good general education. If we compare this for a moment with the one-sided development of our own higher elementary schools, in which boys whose general education is hardly begun are expected to work mainly at science from the age of eleven or twelve to fifteen, and with the preponderant science grant to secondary schools whether under the A or B scheme, we see at once the broad distinction. We specialise in science in place of other necessary elements of a general education. The Germans specialise in science after a good general education has been secured. In Berlin the secondary modern schools contain a science room. This is really a demonstration room with long narrow table and galleried seats. There were laboratories in the Realgymnasien and in the Oberrealschulen, but not for the pupils. I was particularly desirous of finding out what were the reasons against laboratories for pupils which really weighed with the teachers. I incline to think that a change of opinion is in progress on this matter. I certainly did not hear much argument against the principle of practical work, at least for secondary science schools such as the Realschulen are supposed to be, but the teachers seemed quite sure that it took much time, was a slow way of teaching science, and that their curriculum was already too heavy. With these arguments I cordially agree; but even a German curriculum is modifiable, and I think that a much more moderate syllabus attempted practically may become a leading conception in German pedagogy in the not very distant future. On the other hand, though our own practical science rooms have developed a certain knowledge of, and dexterity in, experiment, there is, at present, very little appreciation amongst our pupils of the purpose of the experiments, and very little power of correctly stating the conclusions derived from them. In one new suburban primary school in Hamburg I was specially struck by the splendid collection of apparatus for the teaching of a. Magnetism. d. Physiology. There were, among other things, beautiful cases of bees, and expensive preparations of musk-rat and |