Königsberg school plan

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Collegium Fridericianum or Friedrichs Kollegium in Königsberg

The Königsberg school plan was drafted as an internal memorandum , as was the temporal and factual related Lithuanian school plan in the autumn of 1809 by Wilhelm von Humboldt shortly after his appointment as section head for culture and teaching in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. It contains his model of a tiered general education system and should help renew the state within the framework of the Prussian reforms . After King Friedrich Wilhelm III. Prussia was supposed to make up for its physical losses with intellectual achievements. The two short writings deal with problems that Humboldt noticed as an official school visitator. He criticizes the inadequate condition of the schools in East Prussia and carries out the ideas of new humanism .

Humboldt's theory of education

In his oeuvre, Humboldt developed an educational theory of the individual: for him, education is the unobstructable path of the individual to himself, the connection of the ego with the world, the “highest and most proportionate formation of his forces into a whole”, to general humanity . Language has a special position among all possible world contents, since it is at the same time the human medium of general understanding and individual expression and creation. Whoever grasps the form of language arrives at the center of the human. Humboldt therefore gives the study of languages, especially the old ones, an educational priority for the development of humanity. Humboldt rejects a pedagogy that its meaning in simple utility for a future professional ( vocational training ) or of particular civil education looks. Therefore Humboldt rejects realistic training in Central and secondary schools , civil schools from an early stage or vocationally oriented schools. The school is consequently open to everyone. Humboldt, however, was realistic enough to see the utopian nature of this conception in his time, and was aware that material limits prevented everyone from going to school. A uniform school in which the children of his noble class and those of the common people would sit next to each other was beyond his imagination.

General human education

Humboldt advocates a school education that offers every child the opportunity to develop their humanity. He rejects premature shaping for professional and social life tasks:

“But all schools, which not a single class, but the whole nation or the state takes on for them, only have to aim at general human education. Whatever the necessity of life or of any one of its trades requires must be separated and acquired after the general instruction has been completed. If the two are mixed, then the education becomes impure and one does not get complete people nor complete citizens of individual classes. ”(The Lithuanian school plan)

His idea of ​​a carpenter who would later learn Greek sounds very utopian, but what is important for Humboldt is the approach of an equal human and emotional education for everyone, which he hopes will result in better sociality:

“Because the meanest day laborer and the most finely trained must originally be attuned in his mind if the one is not to become raw under human dignity and the other under human strength is not to be sentimental, chimerical and cranky ... To have learned Greek in this way too Neither be of any use to the carpenter than to make tables for the scholar. ”(The Lithuanian school plan).

No structured school system

Therefore, there can only be one type of secondary school, the grammar school, but no secondary schools (today Hauptschule and Realschulen ) which, with a view to the future occupation, distract from the task of performing a formal exercise of mental powers. All content-related knowledge should be postponed to later vocational training in special schools:

“But also with this ... intention that the middle schools should be intended for those who renounce higher education, I deny them. Since ... the determination of a child often remains undecided for a very long time, they have the disadvantage that confusion can easily occur, the future scholar stays too long in secondary schools, the future craftsman too long in scholarly schools and this leads to deformities. But in this way one always mixes in a pitiful way the general exercise of the main powers of the spirit, which must always be demanded from school lessons, and the collection of the knowledge that will be necessary in the future, which prepares for real life, since, on the other hand, the general principle should be: the exercise of powers ... completely ... to carry out all knowledge, however, which they convey little or too one-sidedly ... to exclude from school lessons and to keep the special schools in front of life. "

Humboldt sees the social reality, however, the duration and quality of the schools will continue to depend on the budget. Changing this was at best a distant utopia.

“In this way I don't see a shortage that a middle school would have to remedy. The very poor schooled their children in the cheapest or free elementary schools, the less poor in the better or least expensive ones. Those who could apply more, attended the learned schools, stayed up to higher grades or dropped out beforehand ... "(The Königsberg school plan)

The school levels and course content

In the Königsberg school plan, Humboldt differentiates between three successive levels of schooling, which are only based on age and the purpose of education:

In a report to the king, Humboldt stated the following as the task of the elementary school:

“This also determines the subjects of the lesson: the student is strengthened and developed through physical exercises, eyes and ears accustomed to correctness and freedom through drawing and music, the head through the numerical relationships of which arithmetic is a part Proportions of proportions, with the elements of mathematics appearing, through a correct knowledge of the mother tongue, which is particularly important in ensuring that the child has a definite clear concept for every word, head and heart finally formed through religious instruction and the development of natural moral feelings. Reading and writing are then a natural addition partly to language and partly to drawing lessons ... "(Report of the Section of Culture and Education)

The subject of the grammar school was to be the "classical" one that was suitable to support the educational process. This is what Humboldt achieved:

  • the " gymnastic lessons" (i.e. physical education)
  • the " aesthetic lessons" (i.e. music, art)
  • the " didactic lessons" (i.e. science propaedeutic ): mathematics, history with a little natural history , languages ​​(German, Greek, Latin)

In doing so, Humboldt developed the currently very current formulation of learning to learn , while the material remains only an aid on the way to science:

“The purpose of teaching at school is to practice skills and acquire knowledge without which scientific insight and skill is impossible. Both should be prepared by him, the young person should be enabled to collect the material ... partly already now, partly to be able to collect it in the future and to develop the intellectual-mechanical strength. He is thus occupied in two ways, once with learning itself, then with learning how to learn ... The student is mature when he has learned so much from others that he is now able to learn for himself '... "(The Königsberg school plan)

Over half of the teaching time was devoted to studying the ancient languages. However , Humboldt's collaborator Süvern did not create the curriculum until 1816 .

Teacher training

Specially trained teachers should also teach in elementary schools, which is why Humboldt commissioned Carl August Zeller with the establishment of a normal institute in Königsberg (East Prussia) . The teachers at the grammar school should no longer be taught theologians, etc., but rather educators trained in special teacher seminars based on the model of Friedrich August Wolf or Friedrich Gedike . The new Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin was supposed to do this with classical philology as its educational core. In the university, too, there should be less vocational training than the completion of formal education. Only then should special knowledge for the various professions be imparted.

Late release

In 1910 , the conservative educator Eduard Spranger edited and commented on the previously unpublished writings of Humboldt under the titles of Königsberg School Plan and Lithuanian School Plan . Only they formed the basis of the concept of the Humboldt Gymnasium in the sense of neo-humanism . At least the close associates of Humboldt were aware of the ideas contained therein.

effect

Even Humboldt's employees could not support all of the ideas, they sounded so utopian. Humboldt's early departure from his state function led to some compromises in implementation. The existing school system, which was often financed by municipal patronage , was not fundamentally changed, but only carefully reformed. As the usual scientific language, Latin remained more important than Greek, which was favored by Humboldt. The middle and middle schools retained their position. The elementary school remained strictly separated from the private pre-schools for the grammar schools. Although the human High School won a high reputation for the educated elite , but had access to university is about the matriculation examination (now also colloquially High School called, but officially since the KMK -agreement in 1972 General university , this is regularly following the successful Baccalaureate specially granted) to the Prussian school conferences ( December conference 1890 , June conference 1900 ) with other high school types. Above all, the disdain for practical vocational and technical education is a legacy of Humboldt, to which modern pedagogy opposed alternatives.

swell

  1. ↑ WvHumboldt: Collected Writings, Berlin 1920, Vol XIII, pp 276/277.
  2. ↑ WvHumboldt: Collected Writings, Berlin 1920, Vol XIII, p 277/78.
  3. ↑ WvHumboldt: Collected Writings, Berlin 1920, Vol XIII, S. 266th
  4. ↑ WvHumboldt: Collected Writings, Berlin 1903, Vol X, S. 211th
  5. ↑ WvHumboldt: Collected Writings, Berlin 1920, Vol XIII, S. 268th

literature

  • Wilhelm von Humboldt : About the reforms to be carried out with the Königsberg school system, in: Albert Leitzmann (ed.), Wilhelm von Humboldt's works (Wilhelm von Humboldt's collected writings, vol. 13), Berlin 1920, pp. 259-276.
  • Wilhelm von Humboldt: Inimitable thoughts about the plan for the establishment of the Litthauischen Stadtschulwesen, in: Albert Leitzmann (Ed.), Wilhelm von Humboldts Werke (Wilhelm von Humboldts Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 13), Berlin 1920, pp. 276–283.
  • Eduard Spranger : Wilhelm von Humboldt and the reform of the educational system , Reuther a. Reichard, Berlin 1910.
  • Herwig Blankertz : The history of education, from the Enlightenment to the present , Wetzlar 1992, ISBN 3-88178-055-6 .
  • Manfred Fuhrmann : Latin and Europe. The alien foundations of our education , Du Mont, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-7701-5605-6 .