GERMAN EDUCATION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6566, 15 September 1948, Page 3

GERMAN EDUCATION

BRITAIN IN ADVISORY CAPACITY “FILLING MENTAL CANYONS” Waiting from Berlin under date of 26th July, Mr Reece Smith, the new Kemsley Empire journalist, states:—Germans have been running their own education in the British occupied zone of their country since Ist January, 1947. On that date the British tossed them the responsibility of filling the mental canyons left by Hitler’s system. Like a father who has tossed his son in the deep end to learn to swim, Britain is standing about on the edge ready to advise, and prepared to jump in to the rescue, if need be. The educational adviser to the military Government, Mr R. Birley, told in an interview of British endeavours to give the Germans minds of their own. The first act on the British arrival was to turn out the Nazi—a quarter of the teaching staff. Some Germans now say too many were turned out; some say too few. So the number may have been about right. The British tried something positive by suggesting lines along which teaching should go. By the time it was judged opportune to hand education back to the German authorities, the British had all but a few thousand of the 3,000,000 children in their zone back to school. “ We were within an ace of having a completely uneducated generation, which would have been bad in ten to fifteen years’ time,” said Mr Birley. There was one boy in Hamburg who did not even know what the word school meant.” German children had been appallingly cut off from knowledge of the world. Instead of laying down general principles of education when they handed it over, the British chose to work through personal contacts, and about 200 education officers were deployed through the zone. Some were having difficulty in getting their new ideas over to local German teachers. “ Germany will not be saved by going back to before 1933,” went on Mir Birley, speaking of the need for new ideas.

The British were trying to persuade the German teachers to • choose the text-books for their own classes, but the teachers still wanted them chosen somewhere above, and the German educational officials, extremely bureaucratic and reactionary, thought this new proposition deplorable. “But we believe the teachers should learn to think for themselves,” Mr Birley observed. Universities he found to be reactionary but anti-Nazi. They wanted to get back to the pre-1914 world and retire from the intellectual struggle altogether. Professors were not interested in a sound intellectual basis for the revival of their country.

“ The Nazis based their whole philosonhy on intellectual rubbish, and the universities should feel ashamed they let the country get into a state where it accepted it at all. We feel we have to build up a revolutionary force inside the university.”

A step towards this had been the setting up of a University Commission. One leading member was a trade unionist, and this was the first time in Germany that trade unionism had had anything to do with the university, which it had hitherto regarded as hopelessly reactionary. The head of the University Commission was also head of a German cooperative movement, while the British member was Lord Lindsay, master of Baliol. The occupation authorities ostentatiously divorced themselves from this Commission, leaving it to work out its own German salvation. Four principles of legislation for primary and secondary education have been laid down, to be framed as the German administration thinks best.

First, secondary education must be free. Up to the present time secondary education, beginning at 10 years, has been extraordinarily divorced from reality, and regarded only as a preliminary to the equally unreal universities. Second, there must be no legislation which renders impossible the later extension of the elementary education period up to 14 or 16 years. The elementary period now ends at 10 years in the British zone, 14 years in Berlin, and 16 years in the Russian zone, where parents pay contributions. Third, the status of teachers and training colleges must be

raised. Fourth, private schools should not be abolished, bqth because it is bad in Germany to have all education _run by the State and because there is no wish to quarrel with the Church. A scholarship system will be necessary to get the best talent to the top. There is no fool-proof check that teachers are not indulging in propaganda, continued M'r Birley, “ but in Germany these days you do not get Nationalist propaganda over without the whole village knowing about it.” And when the whole village knows, the information is bound to reach the education officer. ,

The education system still did not reach the great problem left by Hitler—'young men now from 20 to 30 to whom “ Hitler gave the biggest bribe you can offer to youth: he asked them to sacrifice themselves.” The Russian approach to re-educa-tion ;.was quite different from the British. They believed their only hope was to work on the working ! people. This they did through politically reliable Germans, implementing clear directives from Moscow. “ I j don’t think the Russians have any regard for intellectual truth.” said Mr Birley. “ Theirs is not a soluI tion to the German mental state.”

i The Russians had changed the Geri man system very thoroughly, lowerI ing the standards of some of the universities in the process, by increased ■ admissions. They were wholly opj posed to cultural exchanges with I other countries.

The Americans, whose approach ; was much the same as the British but I more centralised, were having a hard I time with a very reactionary German government in Bavaria. ; The French very largely ran re--1 education themselves, instead of I through German teachers. They rei garded the middle and old-age groups |of Germans as hopeless, and were i concentrating on training young

teachers, some of whom were chosen at 14 years. French culture was emphasised.