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The German Discovery of American Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Earl R. Beck
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Extract

The close relationship of school to life [in America] brings it about that students are bound to their schools with ties of great love and that not only [academic] knowledge (Wissen) but practical ability (Können) and the teaching of practical activities are strongly cultivated.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1965 , pp. 3 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © 1965, University of Pittsburgh Press 

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References

Notes

1. “Vom Bildungswesen in den Vereinigten Staaten,” Die Neueren Sprachen, XXXVII, 617–642 (December, 1929), 638–9.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., 638.Google Scholar

3. Sebald Schwarz, Lübeck, “Was ist für uns in Amerika zu lernen?” Deutsches Philologenblatt, XXXVI, 630–33 (October 17, 1928), 631. Schwarz has also described the four months visit of the twenty-five members of the Zentralinstitut für Erziehung und Unterricht (Central Institute for Education and Instruction) in which he took part, commenting on the financial sacrifice it imposed and deploring the absence of school administrators, in “Die Schulfahrt des Zentralinstituts nach Nordamerika,” Ibid., 556–7 (Sept. 12, 1928).Google Scholar

4. Amerika-Europa. Erfahrungen einer Reise (Frankfurt, 1926), 94.Google Scholar

5. See my article, “Friedrich Schönemann, German Americanist,” The Historian, XXVI, No. 3 (May, 1964), 381–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, II, 171.Google Scholar

7. Dorner, , loc. cit., 640; cf. Schwarz, loc. cit., 630.Google Scholar

8. Richter, Kurt, Reisebilder aus Amerika. Jugendwohlfahrt in den Vereinigten Staaten; Veröffentlichungen des Preussischen Ministeriums für Volkswohlfahrt aus den Gebiete der Jugendpflege, der Jugendbewegung und der Leibesubüngen, VI (Berlin, 1929), 68.Google Scholar

9. Morstein Marx, Fritz, “Jugend und Radikalismus in den Vereinigten Staaten,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, XCIII (1932), 98–106, 99.Google Scholar

10. See e.g., Beckmann, Emmy, “Schule und Erziehung der Vereinigten Staaten anknüpfend an den Kongress der Frauenweltbundes in Washington,” Deutsche Lehrerinnenzeitung, XLII, No. 19, 169–172 (Sept. 1, 1925).Google Scholar

11. Kellermann, Fritz, “Amerikakunde im Abendgymnasium,” Das Abend-Gymnasium. Zeitschrift für das deutsche Abendschulwesen und den Erwachsenen Unterricht, Year 1929, No. 4, 23–28 (November, 1929), 25.Google Scholar

12. Reisebilder, 45.Google Scholar

13. Dorner, , loc. cit., 625; Schwarz, loc. cit., 631.Google Scholar

14. The criticisms of pay and social standards for American teachers was quite general. Perhaps the most careful study of the question was by Reinhold Lehmann, “Hemmungen und Hoffnungen im Erziehungswesen derVereinigten Staaten,” Neue Bahnen. Illustrierte Monatshefte für Erziehung und Unterricht, XXXII, No. 5, 164–166 (May, 1921).Google Scholar

15. Penck, Albrecht, U. S.—Amerika. Gedanken und Erinnerungen eines Austauschprofessors (Stuttgart, 1917), 51; Dorner, loc. cit., 620; Georg Kühne, Von Mensch und Motor, Farm und Wolkenkratzer. Reiseskiz-zen eines deutschen Ingenieurs (Leipzig, 1926), 100.Google Scholar

16. “Der Geist des amerikanischen Bildungswesen,” Hochschule und Ausland, IX, 7–13 (January, 1931), 9.Google Scholar

17. Lehmann, Reinhold, “Schule und Öffentlichkeit in den Vereinigten Staaten,” Neue Bahnen, XXXII, No. 6, 189–193 (June, 1921), 193.Google Scholar

18. Lehmann, Reinhold, see n. 14.Google Scholar

19. Lütkens, Charlotte, Staat und Gesellschaft in Amerika. Zur Soziologie des amerikanischen Kapitalismus (Tübingen, 1929), 155, 195. Schönemann denied the propriety of the term “cultural feminism” although he did agree that there was “a certain pedagogical feminism,” Die Vereinigten Staaten, 194–195. A caustic description of role of women in education is found in Dr. Paul Rohrbach, “Vom amerikanischen Leben,” Kölnische Zeitung, Sept. 9, 1923.Google Scholar

20. See, e.g., Dorner, loc. cit., 624.Google Scholar

21. Die Vereinigten Staaten, II, 194.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., 198–200.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., 213–14.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 217; Penck, U. S.—Amerika, 50.Google Scholar

25. Richter, Reisebilder, 38; Walther Lietzmann (Göttingen), “Das amerikanische Schulwesen,” Frankfurter Zeitung, August 17, 1931.Google Scholar

26. Die Vereinigten Staaten, II, 202–4.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., Dorner, , loc. cit., 628, 638; see also Paul Oestreich, “Volksbildung in den Vereinigten Staaten,” Deutsches Philologenblatt, XXVII, 648–650 (December 24, 1919), 649.Google Scholar

28. Dorner, , loc. cit., 629–30; Lietzmann, see n. 25; Carl Brinkmann, Demokratie und Erziehung in Amerika (Berlin, c. 1927), 78–9.Google Scholar

29. Die Vereinigten Staaten, II, 224.Google Scholar

30. Loc. cit., 628.Google Scholar

31. See, e.g., Rohrbach, Paul, “Studenten und Universitäten in Amerika,” Kölnische Zeitung, September 16, 1923; for an example of the German views of American “sport” see the lampoons by Joachim Friedrich, Vossische Zeitung, December 19, 1922; June 15, 1923.Google Scholar

32. This is in jest—Harvard was recognized as “a world university.” However, the work of Kuno Francke was very strongly praised, see, e.g., Friedrich von der Leyen, “Amerikanische Eindrücke: Deutscher Unterricht und Deutschtum in den Vereinigten Staaten,” II, Kölnische Zeitung, December 10, 1929.Google Scholar

33. Penck, , U. S.—Amerika, 48; Meyer, Eduard, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Frankfurt, 1920), 175.Google Scholar

34. Dr. Stein, Ludwig, “Die Yale-Universitat. Gänge durch Amerikas Hochschulen,” Vossische Zeitung, April 9, 1924.Google Scholar

35. Term “prairie universities,” Moritz Bonn, J., The American Adventure: A Study of Bourgeois Civilization (New York, c. 1934), 191, but Schönemann said, “The new universities of the Midwest have made history in American education. From them has come the democratizing of all education,” Die Vereinigten Staaten, II, 227. Some, of course, like Prof. Georg Kühne, saw the lesser-known universities with appreciation, Von Mensch und Motor, 103 ff.Google Scholar

36. See, e.g., Penck, , U. S.—Amerika, 65; Joachim Friedrich, “Amerikas academische Freiheit,” Vossische Zeitung, Aug. 31, 1923.Google Scholar

37. “The president of a great [American] university,” wrote Eduard Meyer, “is one of the mightiest men on earth; he unites in one position the place of a German Minister of Culture or his adviser for university matters, of the Rector and of the Dean and along with this of a Minister of Finance,” Die Vereinigten Staaten, 183; cf. Schönemann, Die Vereinigten Staaten, II, 220; Penck, U. S.—Amerika, 59–70.Google Scholar

38. Brinkmann, , Demokratie und Erziehung in Amerika, 50–1; Penck, U. S.—Amerika, 56.Google Scholar

39. On psychology, Penck, , U. S.—Amerika, 54–55; Schönemann, Die Vereinigten Staaten, II, 422 ff.; on sociology, the very careful study of Andreas Walther, Soziologie und Sozialwissenschaft in Amerika und ihre Bedeutung für die Pädagogik (Leipzig, 1927).Google Scholar

40. Ibid., 27–48.Google Scholar

41. See, e.g., Schönemann, , “Meine amerikanische Studenten: Erlebnisse und Betrachtungen,” Tägliche Rundschau (Berlin), Jan. 7, 1921; Dorner, loc. cit., 633.Google Scholar

42. Penck, , U. S.—Amerika, 57–8.Google Scholar

43. Ibid.; Brinkmann, , Demokratie und Erziehung, 63–4, discusses the beginnings of the Junior College system trying to separate the unprepared first two years from the more mature upper division.Google Scholar

44. Anon, ., “Eindrücke vom geistigen Leben in den Vereinigten Staaten,” Börsenblatt der deutschen Buchhandel, Year 1928, 85–9 (January 24, 1928), 86.Google Scholar

45. Penck, , U. S.—Amerika, 77–8; cf. Rohrbach, see n. 31.Google Scholar

46. See Schönemann's article, n. 41.Google Scholar

47. Brinkmann, , Demokratie und Erziehung, 53–9.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., 56.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 41, 67–68; Schönemann, Die Vereinigten Staaten, II, 234–5.Google Scholar

50. Dorner, , loc. cit., 634.Google Scholar

51. Richter, , Reisebilder, 41–2.Google Scholar

52. “Der Geist des amerikanischen Bildungswesen,” Hochschule und Ausland, IX. 13 (January, 1931).Google Scholar

53. Demokratie und Erziehung, 21.Google Scholar

54. Dorner, , loc. cit., 638–9.Google Scholar

55. Oestreich, , see n. 27, noted the influence of American practice in Germany, 650. But see the comments on Oestreich in R. H. Samuel and R. Hinton Thomas, Education and Society in Modern Germany (London, 1949), 68–9. Jürgen Henningsen, Die Neue Richtung in der Weimarer Zeit (Stuttgart, c. 1960) deals with developments in the field of adult education which might be classified as influenced by the United States but does not so label them. The Einheitsschule movement probably proceeded on its own initiative rather than the support of the American example—see description by Theodore Huebener, The Schools of West Germany: a Study of German Elementary and Secondary Schools (New York, 1962), 17–8.Google Scholar

56. Huebener's book cited above is the best study of this subject. The author would like to acknowledge his indebtedness to the Research Council of the Florida State University for grants which made possible the collection of materials in this country and in Germany partially reflected in this article.Google Scholar