UNDTERM RAD (UNDER THE WHEEL).

Evening Star, Issue 12884, 6 August 1906, Page 5

UNDTERM RAD (UNDER THE WHEEL).

[Yon Hermann Hesse, in the " Practical Teacher.'] With the boldness which is characteristic >f German criticism, the author of this novel sets himself to attack an evil of education in Germany which has not only survived the ineffectual criticism of medical men, but which has in later years become intensified. Herr Hesse's novel has attracted very p-eat attention in Germany. The leading reviews in the German Empire have criti:ised it in_ the weighty and exhaustive nanner which is their characteristic, and independent thinkers on educational matters have acknowledged that the evil it denounces has a real existence. It is the life story, culminating in tragedy, of a German schoolboy of exceptional parts, who is done to death by the mistaken zeal of fathers, teachers, and pastors. The story is simply told, without exaggeration or emphasis, and the lesson it enforces may be gathered as much from what the writer leaves unsaid a3 from what he says. Hans Giebenrath is the son of a small merchant in a Suabian tiwn, a man of narrow outlook, and a Philistine in the full sense of the term, which is easily understood but difficult to define. None of his family had ever been suspected of genius, and on the hypothesis of heredity its existence in his only son could be traced only So the fact of the mother, whom he lost in infancy, being a woman of refined and intellectual temperament. The boy gave early signs of intellectual ability, and his docility and conscientiousness made him an easy tool in the hands of ambitious teachers. His earliest vears were happv with his rabbits, his toys, his fishing-rod*, his fairy tales, and with his imagination, awakened and fired by old Liese's wonderful stories. But there comes a sudden change, and his childhood is rudelv interrupted. Henceforth he must develop not as Nature intended, but in the way prescribed by the State for gifted boys. The Stato offers a number of scholarships to enable talented children to enjoy the benefits of a college education. It i's suggested to the child and to his father that he ahould try to obtain one, and both fall in eagerly with the suggestion. Success for the child meant eventually a reputation as preacher or professor; for the father it meant the satisfaction of bein<> able to look up to his son with respect anS to talk of him with pride. But there was another category of persons interested in Hans's success. Never had a successful i-andidate for a State scholarship beep sent up from the town school, and the chance for obtaining credit for Hans's success must not be lost. Little Hans, without a murmur, parts with his rabbits; no longer has lie time to fish in the river or stroll in the woods. A period of exacting grind commences, and his life now is regulated by time-table, the details of which we give in Herr Hesse's words:— After school, which closed at four o'clock, followed the extra lesson in Greek with the rector. At six o'clock the Stadtpfajrer was good enough to give inm lessons in Latin and religion, and twice in the week after supper he went for an hour to the mathematical master for a lesson. ... To avoid any possibility of intellectual overwork, un-i so that the soul should not be forgotten whilst the mind was being i-xerci--erj, Hans had to go every morning, on hour before school commenced, to confirm uion class, where a refreshing breath ..f religious life was wafted into youthf.ii souls by the stimulating process of learning by heart questions and answers of the Catechism of Brenz. To this programme must be added nome lessons lasting till ten o'clock at -light, and on occasions up to midnight. The demands of the physical frame had .0 l.e satisfied with an occasional walk ,n the wood| Tho rector insisted on inis, ard expatiated on the advisability of takin;/ a book, and of experiencing how easy it is Lo learn in the open air. ultimate outcome of this overwork of a youthful brain seems not to have occurred to any of the persons most closelv interested. Only Flaig, a shoemaker, whose pietist tendencies made him an object of ridicule, denounced the cruelty of which young Hans was the unconscious victim. With but one exception, the teachers of Hans, right to the end of the chapter, are unconscious of the true cause of the failure of their high hopes and ambitions. . As it is the humble shoemaker whose sturdy common sense makes him realise the folly which is being perpetrated so it is the humblest of young Giebenrath's teachers, whose name, with true artistic touch, our author does not mention who realises there is something wrong in the whole system. Herr Hesse dwells with delicate irony on the way in which teachers longing for professional success binds them to the evils which they join to comIt had been a heartfelt pleasure te the rector to direct this worthy ambition, vntenri by fcimsdf, and to watch it develop. Say not that schoolmasters have np heart and *we shrivelled and soulless pedants J, 0 , when a teacher Bees how a cmlda talente, which he has long and unauccesjfull,- tried to kindle into Ufe, at last break forth, and he puts away his wooden sword his sling, his bow, and lus other childish playthings; how he corr.es to the front, how the chubby cheeks, under tho influence of the se; busness of work, take on a more delicate, earne t and almost aecetio appearance ; how the boy's face becomes older and more intellectual, Lis- glance keener and more confident, and his hand firmer, whiter, and steadier; his mind is penetrated with jov and pride. For it is his dutv, and the fcwk couunitted to liiai bjr bjiifir authjj-

nty, to curb dud root out; the unregulated faculties and desires implanted l.y Nature, and to substitute for them the moderate ideals which, are sanctioned bv the State. Under an entirely inelastic system of education, the teacher becomes simply a part of a machine, pf which the child is a mere subordinate part. He looks upon the child from a merely profession point of view, and lovo for and interest in the- complex human souls committed to him find no place. As his influence over the child is great, eo is his responsibility toward it, and this responsibility increases in proper* tion to.- the . weakness of .the will of his pupil. I); Is because Herr Hesse is afeailing the system and not the individuals Who carry it out that we owe him no grudge for his consistently ironic references to teachers. At the college to which Hans Giebenrath'e success entitled him to. go a student is accidentally drowned. The search party, who have recovered the body, are met at the entrance of the institution by the whole of the teaching staff. It may commonly be noticed that teachers always look on a dead pupil with far different eys tlvji on one who is still living. Despite the fact that they so repeatedly, and in the ignorance begotten by want of reflection, sin against life and against youth, ihoy are for a fleeting moment convinced of the importance of both, and of the impossibility of restoring them. But we arc anticipating somewhat. Haavs Giebenrath passes the examination weekat Stuttgart—a week of doubts and fears and of feverish excitement. The result is a joyful surprise to him. He is second in the competition, and in his youthful egotism he exclaims that he could just as easily have been first had he tried. The holidays intervene before the commencement of the college .session, and the boy's chain is loosed but cot for long. The stadtpfarrer suggests a study of the Greek New Testaments, a little more mathematics, and a commencement with Hebrew, and the dull grind of subjects, not all congenial, recommences. Premonitions of nervous breakdown had shown themselves before Hans went to college. Persistent headachts and difficulty of concentration showed there was something wrong. At first all goes well at college, a little world the description of which forms about the best part of the book. Here Hans is at first repelled and afterwards attracted by a fellow-student, Hermann Heilner, whose character is the very antithesis of his own. Heilner is something of a poet, impatient of control, and with a contempt for whatever is commonplace. Uo soon falls under the ban of the authorities, who cannot appreciate genius. Heilner is sent away, and from this time he disappears from the story. With Hans matters are going from bad to worse. His headache becomes more persistent, memory goes, and the over-strained faculty of attention at last breaks down altogether. He has to be sent home, to his father's horror and disappointment. He encounters no real sympathy. The head of the college is absorbed in tho anxiety he feels at the way in which the authorities may regard the loss of two students in so short a time. Nor did he get any sytm pa thy from tho teachers whose hopes he had disappointed. Tho old rector once or twice exchanged a few friendly words with him, and the Latin master and the stadtpfarrer nodded to him benevolently in passing, but Hans was no longer a receptaclo into which all manner of things could be stuffed, nor a field which could be planted with crops of various descriptions. There was nothing to gain now by spending any time on li iiu Rest restores somewhat the lad's frame, but the taste for intellectual work and the power of study are gone. He tries to resume the childhood of which he has been defrauded, but the spell is broken, arid the dejection which has been gradually invading him deepens. Then selt»murder presents itself to his mind as. the easiest wayout of his troubles. At last old Giebenrath calls on his son to choose between the occupations of clerk at the Rathhaus or being apprenticed to a mechanical trade. He chooses the latter, but the end soon comes, for he finds a rest in the cool waters of the brook on whose banks he had passed so many plea&Tnt hours. At the graveside the old shoemaker, Flaig, points out to tho sorrowing father the retreating figures of the rector and the Latin master, who have attended the funeral. "There," he says, "go a pair of men who have helped to bring him where he is." But even then the father, ignorant but well-meaning, does not understand. There is much in the book to make teachers think. It is the work of one who knows what he is writing about, who feels deeply the existence of an evil he deplores, and who writes brilliantly and eonvincingly.