matics, etc.], and one of
the utmost value: but what do we find in the public school--that is to
say, in the head-quarters of formal education? He who understands how
to apply what he has heard here will also know what to think of the
modern public school as a so-called educational institution. He will
discover, for instance, that the public school, according to its
fundamental principles, does not educate for the purposes of culture,
but for the purposes of scholarship; and, further, that of late it
seems to have adopted a course which indicates rather that it has even
discarded scholarship in favour of journalism as the object of its
exertions. This can be clearly seen from the way in which German is
taught.

"Instead of that purely practical method of instruction by which the
teacher accustoms his pupils to severe self-discipline in their own
language, we find everywhere the rudiments of a historico-scholastic
method of teaching the mother-tongue: that is to say, people deal with
it as if it were a dead language and as if the present and future were
under no obligations to it whatsoever. The historical method has
become so universal in our time, that even the living body of the
language is sacrificed for the sake of anatomical study. But this is
precisely where culture begins--namely, in understanding how to treat
the quick as something vital, and it is here too that the mission of
the cultured teacher begins: in suppressing the urgent claims of
'historical interests' wherever it is above all necessary to _do_
properly and not merely to _know_ properly. Our mother-tongue,
however, is a domain in which the pupil must learn how to _do_
properly, and to this practical end, alone, the teaching of German is
essential in our scholastic establishments. The historical method may
certainly be a considerably easier and more comfortable one for the
teacher; it also seems to be compatible with a much lower grade of
ability and, in general, with a smaller display of energy and will on
his part. But we shall find that this observation holds good in every
department of pedagogic life: the simpler and more comfortable method
always masquerades in the disguise of grand pretensions and stately
titles; the really practical side, the _doing_, which should belong to
culture and which, at bottom, is the more difficult side, meets only
with disfavour and contempt. That is why the honest man must make
himself and others quite clear concern