A sketch of the state of popular education in Holland, Prussia, Belgium, and France

Abstract

National Education Chapter 1

Introductory Observations - Dutch School System - Organisation - Normal School - M. Prinsen - Religious Instruction - M. Cousin.

Having, towards the close of the summer of the past year, obtained a leave of absence for a few months, I resolved to set out at once upon a tour which I had long since marked out for myself, and I did so the more cheerfully that I entertained the hope of mixing up something useful with the pleasure of the excursion. The question of popular education under government control, then, as now, not merely occupied, but agitated, the mind of the country, and in the various controversies upon it, the example of Holland and of Prussia was constantly referred to by both parties - by the one with a lively applause, and by the other with as vehement a reprobation; but, yet, there was no document in the hands of the people, authenticated by the name of any one known to them, upon which they might rely with any confidence, and which might serve them as some guide amidst the vague and contradictory assertions contained in the appeals addressed to them from so many quarters. It occurred to me I might supply, in some measure, that desideratum.

Let it not be supposed that I am about to give an account, or much less to enter up-on a vindication of the whole of the Dutch and Prussian systems of public instruction. There is here a broad and important distinction to be made, and which, if kept steadily in view, will prevent the conscientious inquirer from being perplexed by various mystifications. In Holland and Prussia, as well as in the other States of Germany and in France, the whole course of public teaching, from the village school up to the university, is in the hands of government... [Excerpt]