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Learning for Its Own Sake: The German University as Nineteenth-Century Model
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
In the nineteenth century the Germany university was the most admired institution of higher education in the western world.1 Much of this admiration arose from the widespread assumption that Germany's universities exemplified the ideal of pure learning, the disinterested pursuit of truth, knowledge for its own sake. German contemporaries saw the university in these terms, contemporary observers elsewhere agreed, and modern historians have accepted this statement of purpose.
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1983
References
1 The idea for this study was suggested by the useful bibliographical essay by Gougher, Ronald L., “Comparison of English and American Views of the German University, 1840–1865: A Bibliography,” History of Education Quarterly, 9 (Winter 1969), 477–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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23 Quoted in Sweet, Paul R., Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, 2 vols. (Columbus, Ohio, 1978–1980), II, 60.Google Scholar Stein's writings are sprinkled with disapproving remarks about lawyers, journalists, and intellectuals in general.
24 The intrusions of Wilhelm II into cultural life are well known. He pushed the cause of the Realschule against the defenders of the classical gymnasium, determined who could and could not have their works of art shown in exhibitions, and consciously made political sympathies an important factor in academic appointment, as in the Martin Leo Arons case.
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29 It should not be overlooked that the attractions of this ancient world included a freely accepted male homosexuality, justifying inclinations and practices that certainly existed in nineteenth-century society, more or less well concealed. There can have been few more exclusively male societies than the German universities of the time. See in this connection Peter Green's interesting review of Jenkyns, Richard, The Victorians and Ancient Greece, in Times Literary Supplement, 20 February 1981, 207–8.Google Scholar
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42 The mid-century shift has doubtless been overemphasized; in his analysis of the Harvard faculty, “Transformation of American Academic Life,” Robert McCaughey traces a slow process of professionalization with no sharp break around the Civil War. Allmendinger, David F., Paupers and Scholars: The Transformation of Student Life in Nineteenth-Century New England (New York, 1975),Google Scholar argues that the small New England college was significantly different from the usual picture of it as traditional, residential, and outmoded in curriculum.
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52 Ringer, , Education and Society, 247ff.,Google Scholar sees American colleges as institutions for the middle class, and Main, , Social Structure, 240–69,Google Scholar writes that access to higher education depended on location, family occupation, and wealth. Allmendinger, Paupers and Scholars, gives evidence that there was an influx of poor boys at the New England colleges in the period before 1860.
53 Bryce, , American Commonwealth, 452,Google Scholar commented on the power of the American college president. Weber, Max, “The Power of the State and the Dignity of the Academic Calling in Imperial Germany: The Writings of Max Weber on University Problems,” Shils, Edward, ed. and trans., Minerva, 11 (10 1973), 599,Google Scholar wrote: “The United States have an Althoff at every university. The American university president is such a man.” Althoff was the overbearing Prussian official in the Ministry of Religion and Instruction late in the century. Also see Peterson, George F., The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, 1964);Google ScholarSchmidt, George P., The Old-Time College President (New York, 1930);Google ScholarMetzger, Walter P. and Hofstadter, Richard, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955).Google Scholar
54 As late as 1871, when James Burrell Angell was inaugurated as president of the University of Michigan, he told his audience that “it seems to have dawned but recently on men's minds that teaching in the College or University is a special profession” rather than a haven for men who had failed elsewhere. Exercises at Inauguration of President Angell and the Laying of the Cornerstone of University Hall (Ann Arbor, 1871), 14.Google Scholar
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61 Ross, Dorothy, “The Development of the Social Sciences,” in Organization of Knowledge, Oleson, and Voss, , eds., 107–38;Google Scholar Haskell. Emergence of Professional Social Science.
62 Hawkins, , Between Harvard and America, 53.Google Scholar The relationship between research and teaching has been a longstanding problem in American higher education. To anyone exposed over time to even modest amounts of academic rhetoric it will come as no surprise to learn that the question has usually been evaded by the bland and so far undemonstrated assumption that research and teaching not only do not conflict but are mutually reinforcing. See Hawkins, , Pioneer, 64–65, 217;Google ScholarRoyce, , “Present Ideals,” 376–88;Google ScholarJordan, David Starr, “Inaugural Address,” in Builders of American Universities: Inaugural Addresses, Weaver, David Andrew, ed., 2 vols. (Alton, 111., 1952), I, 356;Google ScholarYoemans, Henry Aaron, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, 1856–1943 (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
63 Hawkins, , Pioneer, 126:Google Scholar “Whether consciously or not, these men were building a new profession in America, that of university professor.”
64 One sign of professionalization is usually taken to be the increased distance between specialist and amateur. This can be seen very clearly in natural science. See Turner, , “Victorian Conflict”;Google ScholarMiller, , Dollars for Research;Google ScholarJohnson, , “Education and Professional Life Styles”;Google ScholarMendelsohn, , “Emergence of Science.”Google Scholar In the nature of the case the separation is not so radical in the arts, as is pointed out by Veysey, “Plural Organized Worlds.” Another mark of professionalization has been seen in the incorporation of an occupation's training within the university. Here, see Bullogh, Vern L., “Education and Professionalization: An Historical Example,” History of Education Quarterly, 10 (Summer 1970), 160–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The way in which the Ph.D. degree was increasingly identified with a specialized teaching certificate might repay study. See Yoemans, , Abbott Lawrence Lowell, 524.Google Scholar
65 Haskell, , Emergence of Professional Social Science;Google ScholarPersons, , Decline of American Gentility;Google ScholarSproat, John G., The “Best Men”: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York, 1968);Google ScholarHoogenbawm, Ari, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883 (Urbana, 111., 1961);Google ScholarWelter, Rush, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (New York, 1962).Google Scholar These studies bring out the antidemocratic implications of Brahmin thought. Hoogenbawm argues that reformers of the civil service, at least initially, were not so much repelled by corruption as frustrated by their own inability to win government posts.
66 Welter, , Popular Education, 194–99,Google Scholar sees Eliot's emphasis on the expert as untypical, but Hawkins, , Between Harvard and America, 167,Google Scholar believes the idea of the scholar expert was part of the times, as in the Wisconsin idea, which stressed the university's obligation to serve thecommunity in every way possible, and was a link to the social efficiency movement of the early twentieth century.
67 Cordasco, Francesco, The Shaping of American Graduate Education: Daniel Coit Gilman and the Protean Ph.D. (Totowa, N.J., 1973), 92.Google Scholar
68 Eliot, , Educational Reform, 412.Google Scholar
69 Shils, Edward, The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays (Chicago, 1972),Google Scholar contrasts nineteenth-century British intellectuals with American intellectuals, who Shils believes always felt alienated and cut off from the centers of power.
70 There was a large element of such humanism in Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's thinking, but not so much as is sometimes assumed. Wilhelm von Humboldt wanted self-fulfillment to be integral to the primary school, but his hopes never began to be realized and probably could not have been in the economic and social conditions of his time.
71 Eliot, , Educational Reform, 201, 279–80.Google Scholar
72 Madsen, David, The National University: Enduring Dream of the USA (Detroit, 1966), 115–16.Google Scholar
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