SUPER-SPECIALISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3168, 2 December 1914, Page 82

SUPER-SPECIALISTS.

ASPECTS OF GERMAN EDUCATION. RESULTS OF OVERWORK. If the genius of modern Germany is of organisation it is at least allied to something which is not genius—namely, an infinite capacity for taking pains. Possibly the same combination is not to bo acclimatised elsewhere, for each nationality has doubtless its own genius. But the capacity for taking pains can bo cultivated elsewhere; and allied to tho peculiar genius of any other country it might bo expected to produce results as satisfactory as in Germany, though they would doubtless not bo the same results. Tho leaven might bo the same, but the cake would be different. German education is part of tho German system of taking pains. It is a standarisation of parts; its object is the smooth working of the whole machine, not the equalisation of opportunities for all individuals. A BIT OF MACHINERY. The whole subject is dealt with interestingly in tho London Daily News and Leader of a recent date. Tho writer goes on to state:—“The English genius is or has been looked upon as the genius of individual effort: ‘always and everywhere ono man’s work.’ It might be suggested therefore that English education, to subserve national interests in the competition of nations, sould be adapted for precisely that equalisation of opportunities which is not really the basis of the German scheme. In dividual genius is liable to crop up anywhere : in the farm band, as well as in the city clerk, in the machine minder as in tho son of a belted earl. In Germany the discovery and exploitation of individual genius is left to some considerable extent to the intelligent arrangements of big firms (the Allgomeino Eloktricitaets Gosellsohaft is a, noteworthy example), for the State system docs not favour the sudden outcrop of special genius in a special line, it is constructed and organised to fit each man for tho particular place in its machinery selected by or for him from the outset. It follows that if the suppression of individuality is not pursued directly as an object it tends to appear as a characteristic. The German educational system, therefore, docs not appear to tho foreign observer as strictly an equalisation of individual opportunity, doc that should mean equal opportunity to every individual to get his head above the ruck. In order to take * full advantage as an individual of the cheapening of the higher special branches of German education it might appear that the Gorman must cither take the specialised courses late or else commence to train himself for a special function in the State before ho has had time to find out whither his individual genius really tends. The virtues of tho German educational system are sufficiently obvious: its cheapness is admirable, its thoroughness (as special training, not as general education) is amazing and admirable, and its uniformity is either amazing or admirable, according as one docs or does not approve its political object.’’ CHILD SUICIDE PROBLEM. Tho vices most commonly attributed to it are over-pressure of young brains at an early stage, hothouse, cultivation, and the suppression of individuality. The ..ctual hours of work in a German school cannot be taken as a norm for purposes of comparison, because almost every German school child has to add to them a great amount of homo work. This additional home work begins with the beginning of school life, and continues to the end in progressive intensity. It is charged not infrequently that the result is an over-tax of the brain of tho growing child with such concomitant symptoms as that of child suicide. THe Prussian Statistical Year Book for the year 1912 states that, whilst there -were altogether 6504 male suicides in Prussia in the .year under review, 94 were boys of from 10 to 15, and two wore children under 10. The suicides of schoolboys and lads emerging from the school age are not included in these figures. “ I collected cuttings relating to suicides of schoolboys for about six months from last September, and was struck by one feature especially—namely, that in very many cases the lad was described as ‘ ono of the best scholars’ at his school. Fear of punish- , ment for minor offences is occasionally attributed (try to imagine an English village schoolboy committing suicide in fear of punishment for stealing apples!). Sometimes (as in two cases this year at Elberfield and others elsewhere) the "report frankly admits that tho lads ‘ had to face their final examination ’; sometimes (Berlin, Geestemunde, Bremerhaven, and elsewhere) overwork is publicly attributed ; once or twice I find that the final examination had actually been passed successfully, and in a few cases it is admitted that failure to pass the final or other intermediate examination was the cause. It should, perhaps, be added that the blame is frequently laid on the parents, whose over-anxiety for the child’s material prosperity later causes them to deal harshly with temporary school failures. Whether this charge can be substantiated I do not know. It would appear to follow that the suicides, if they are rightly attributed to overstrain of the brain in many cases, are not only, and perhaps riot often, determined by anxiety regarding the loss of the social prestige attached to the ‘ reserve-lieuten-ant’s ’ patent, but to sheer turning of tho brain by overwork. Whether this is a correct deduction or not is a matter of annual dispute in Germany itself. “ In any case, however, that final passing examination and the qualifications for the one year’s service in the army, with subsequent rank as lieutenant of the reserve, is not an essential feature of tho Gorman educational system, but an excrescence produced by the military system. Demands for its abolition aro frequent, both from the Liberal ranks, where its effects on the child’s mind are deplored, from Radicals, who correctly regard it as an offshoot of the militarist class system, and even from the militarists themselves, who argue that so many highlyeducated youths should not be deprived annually of the beneficent effects of two or three years’ military training!“ ,