June Conference 1900

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The Prussian June Conference (also the school conference ) from June 4 to 8, 1900 in Berlin dealt with pedagogical problems relating to the Abitur and the types of grammar schools .

It was convened by the Prussian minister of education, Konrad von Studt , and carried out under the direction of Friedrich Althoff , in order to discuss the unresolved issues of grammar school types and university admission after the unsatisfactory solution at the December conference in 1890 . Again, the focus was on the contrast between humanistic and realistic education. The conservative philologists had brought a "Braunschweig Declaration" with 15,000 signatures.

In addition to educators, well-known scholars such as Theodor Mommsen and Adolf von Harnack were invited. In the opening speech, the minister opened up the alternative: either to create a uniform grammar school with more real-world knowledge at the expense of traditional language teaching or to give the three types of grammar schools that still exist ( humanistic grammar school , real grammar school , upper grammar school ) the same authorization to study at a university for all subjects. The majority of the congress participants supported the latter. An old-language Abitur remained a prerequisite for theology . It should be possible to catch up on old language skills at the universities.

The leading classical philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff admitted in a speech that the aesthetic primacy of ancient literature, in which the German classics would still have believed, can no longer be maintained in the modern world. "Antiquity as a unity and ideal is gone; science itself has destroyed this belief."

Kaiser Wilhelm II. , A supporter of educational realism, signed the decree on November 26, 1900 as King of Prussia on his yacht in Kiel. The "Kiel Decree" did not mean the end of humanistic education, but it did introduce its quantitative decline in the proportion of pupils in higher schools. The other states in the German Empire soon followed suit, with minor deviations such as Bavaria, which also required a humanistic Abitur for law.

Quotes

In 1900 the philosopher and educator Wilhelm Dilthey justified his reluctance to take part in the natural sciences in high school:

“The scientific spirit… has most effectively supported the abstract principles which were so influential in the French Revolution. Abstract mathematical thinking, applied to areas of social life, will always make the growing sex receptive to the empty ideals of a state governed by the principles of equality ... France produced socialism. I now ask you what can counteract the progression of this spirit, its penetration into our officialdom, in the teaching of a secondary school. The historical school came into being in the opposition to the propaganda of the revolution ... So we fight for the monarchy by bringing the development of historical consciousness to the fore as the preschool of lawyers and civil servants. ”(Schulreform, 1900; quoted from Herwig Blankertz : History of Pedagogy. Wetzlar 1982, ISBN 3-88178-055-6 , p. 169)

literature

  • Manfred Fuhrmann : Latin and Europe. The history of scholarly instruction in Germany from Charlemagne to Wilhelm II. (The foundations of our education that have become alien). 2nd Edition. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-8321-7948-8 , pp. 214-216.
  • Wolfgang J. Mommsen : Civil culture and artistic avant-garde. Culture and politics in the German Empire 1870 to 1918 (= Ullstein 33168 Propylaen study edition ). Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1994, ISBN 3-548-33168-8 , pp. 65f.