The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany

Excerpt

If one were to point out the most distinctive feature of the educational system in the Fatherland to-day, it would perhaps be the highly specialized condition of the technical schools.

In approaching our problem we naturally ask ourselves the question as to how far the industrial progress of a country is influenced by technical education. In no time as in our own has so much stress been laid upon the commercial side of our existence. New trades, new industries are springing up; specialization is becoming more far-reaching and more firmly established than ever before; competition is becoming keener; the application of science to the arts is more varied.

In this latter field we find Germany in the very fore front, she having developed along these lines to a greater extent than have many of our nations. Illustrations of this application lie all about us,—in the bettered transportation facilities by railroad and by ocean vessel; in the more improved bridge and building construction; in the methods of water supply and drainage; in modes of heat, light, and ventilation; in electric vehicles, sound transmitters, labor-saving machinery; in finely adjusted instruments that bring far away worlds almost within reaching distance; in these and a thousand other ways is made manifest the result of the application of science to the arts. Germany is taking a prominent part in this warfare for industrial supremacy, and that she expects her technical schools to be largely instrumental in answering many of the problems of the present and the future cannot be doubted, especially when one is made aware of the diversity and extent of the schools of a technical character scattered over the Empire.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing how difficult a matter it is to make any one classification that will cover in an adequate manner the various types of existing institutions. Frequently a school is found which in some respects is distinctive. To place such a school in this or that category would of course do violence to the classification, while to form a new class only serves to further complicate and bewilder. Again, various of the institutions mentioned may offer such a differentiated schedule or be made up of so many parallel departments as to entitle them to admission into two or more of the classes given.

Another point of difficulty lies in the fact that the term “technical” would in Germany be somewhat more sweeping than with us in America. We do not class technical training with so-called manual training or handwork of the elementary schools. In our present study however, we shall find that while in the main we are dealing with the technical training of boys from fourteen to eighteen years of age,—comparable in a measure to our high or secondary school courses, we shall also include the industrial, vocational, or trade training of men and boys alike, as well as work in the more simplified forms of handicraft, as carried on in the lower or elementary school. Reference will also be made to the instruction of a higher order,—such for example as makes for engineers. These facts will be illuminated as the study proceeds.

In reading into these schools their real significance, several points must be kept constantly in mind....