Review of the School Year at the Merano Gymnasium

P. Meran, 19 July. Let us be permitted a retrospective view of the work of the local Gymnasium during the past school year. In this, we must not take as our basis either our long-cherished wishes or the justified demands for school reform; rather, looking away from any ideal starting point, we place ourselves solely on the ground of facts. These are, on the one hand, the dilapidated conditions of the past with the immense obstacles against any improvement, and, on the other, a commenced series of excellent governmental decrees aimed at contemporary development; unfortunately, with the outbreak of the grievous entanglements of the Empire, the latter came to a sudden halt, and of the harbingers of the coming evolution, so joyfully welcomed, scarcely anything remained beyond a well-intentioned stimulus, a guiding thread for striving minds.

Under such circumstances, it filled us with genuine pleasure that the teaching staff of the local Gymnasium displayed a spirited endeavor to pursue the charted course and to carry out the task assigned to them according to their strength. Natural history, physics, geometry, the German language, as well as exercises in German style and recitation were included among the subjects taught. Private tutors were engaged for instruction in singing, and in the French and Italian languages; owing to the continuous ill-health of the teacher, Italian could admittedly be delivered only for a very brief time. In addition, provision was made for the previously prescribed subjects, partly through better textbooks, partly through more purposeful treatment. While it provides gratifying satisfaction that the honorable teaching staff endeavored, through the expansion of instruction, to take account of the new era and its requirements, we nevertheless cannot conceal that a primary lever for its advancement remained disregarded, namely the introduction of subject teachers.

It is indeed superfluous to demonstrate particularly the disadvantages of class teachers once again, as they are too manifold and conspicuous; only a few brief remarks may be permitted us. Even upon superficial consideration, it must become clear to anyone that among the greatest difficulties—indeed, given the present salaries, among the impossibilities—is finding men who possess a thorough education in all branches of knowledge; by contrast, it is fairly easy to win those who achieve excellence in some specific subject. It is also sufficiently known that many an able class teacher pursues some subject with predilection, and even if they do not openly set the remaining ones aside, they often overlook the pupil's neglect of them without even being aware of it, especially if the latter possessed the cleverness to flatter the teacher's predilection. Only too easily does the class teacher lapse into favoring individual favorites, not to mention other grievances; it should cause wonder only that, despite the lamentable consequences which this flawed arrangement entailed and inevitably had to entail, the Merano teaching staff, with its means to supply subject specialists, adhered precisely herein to the old pernicious method. To our greatest sorrow, the Ministry of Education seems destined to remain paralyzed for a long time yet and to offer no hope for new submissions; we therefore believe it all the more appropriate to recall for favorable compliance the organizational plan of the Gymnasia of last year. Paragraph 9 thereof states: “In order to prepare the transition from class teachers to subject teachers, the classes and subjects of instruction shall be distributed among themselves by the teaching staff in such a manner that each teacher receives the position in which he is able to work most ably for the subject corresponding to him and for the good of the entire school.”

As usual, some of the young sons of the Muses also raised complaints regarding the favoring of pets and the slighting of others. We did not have the opportunity to examine more closely the foundation or lack thereof of these grievances; we merely believe that teachers themselves are offered sufficient means to demonstrate their impartiality toward the pupils. We gladly acknowledge that the proper middle course between all too great leniency and strictness is difficult to find, but it will nevertheless remain the goal of every discerning teacher; thereby he will win his pupils over to the love of study and spare their parents the pain of having sacrificed time and money in vain for years through the voluntary or forced withdrawal of their sons from Gymnasial instruction. But the best and most fruitful thing that the new era granted to our educational institutions in Austria, and which the new school plan established as a norm, is assuredly academic freedom. Only through this does it become possible for the teacher to inspire pupils with enthusiasm for knowledge and to penetrate with delight into its depths. Thereby that miserable instruction reached its end which perpetually clung only to the letter, and, following the coercive method inherited from the previous century, turned all scholarship into a matter of memory and research into a rare exception. What is the use of a little Latin or Greek, of memorizing a few cities, countries, historical names, and dates, of learning a few arithmetic problems by rote, if the intellect remains empty in the process, if the pupil does not penetrate into the sublime beauty of classical form, into the historical worth of the classics, into the great ethical teaching of world history that is meant to cultivate his character? May all teachers of lower and higher educational institutions take this to heart, and recognize already in the granted freedom of teaching the government's direction to teach in a better spirit than that of the past decades and centuries!