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was largely attended; Count von Pergen urged with persistent zeal the assumption by the State of the care and control of both public and private instruction, the exclusion of the religious orders from the schools, the sole use of the German language in instruction, improved text-books, and more advanced female instruction; and Hägelin, who had been the most energetic member of the Boards of Education, effected some changes in the supervision and support of schools and in the course of study. The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1773 permitted the transfer of the funds of the order to educational endowments, facilitated the change of some of the too numerous 66 Latin schools" into public schools, and added new importance to the question of the assumption by the government of the whole subject of education. In the following year a State Board of Education was formed with power to act independently of every other authority and, at the desire of the Empress, Felbiger himself was called to Vienna to undertake the reorganization of the whole system. He soon effected the preparation of suitable school-books, devised a thorough course of normal instruction, and projected the first general school ordinance, that of Dec., 1774, many of the provisions of which are still in force.

By this ordinance it was required that wherever there was a parish church there should also be a trivial school, for instruction in religion, Biblical history, morality, reading, writing, and arithmetic, at the expense of the communities and manorial lords. In each circle there should be a High school" sustained by the school fund, having 3-4 teachers and giving instruction in the elements of Latin, geography and history, written composition, arithmetic, and geometry. It recommended distinct female schools under female teachers and giving instruction in feminine employments. In the provincial capitals there should be "model schools," with a more extended course which should also embrace normal instruction. Like instruction should be given at all the larger high schools. Religious teaching was left to the clergy, and therefore the study of catechetics and methods of instruction was made a requisite for admission to the pastoral office. Of those already engaged in teaching some measure of normal training was required and new candidates, as well as private teachers, were to be subjected to a previous examination. The rights of appointment to schools were left unchanged. Fixed salaries were established for the model and high school teachers, and the more poorly paid country teachers were recommended to the aid of the lords and communities and were permitted to engage in other suitable employments. Text-books and methods of discipline and instruction were prescribed, in which Felbiger's peculiar tabular and simultaneous methods were prominent. School attendance continued from the sixth to the twelfth or thirteenth year, and was to be enforced with some strictness-in the country upon the younger children especially in summer and upon the older in winter-and Sundayschools should be held for all over the age of twelve, not pupils in the

higher schools, at which attendance was required of apprentices until the close of their terms of service, and of others until their eighteenth or twentieth year. The immediate superintendence of the model and high schools was given to the principal teachers, and of the trivial schools to the pastors, while the financial and other business matters were in. charge of a lay superintendent, appointed by the magistrate or lord. There was to be also a "circle superintendent," usually the dean, having the general supervision of the high and trivial schools of his district, receiving their reports and submitting them, with his own, to the chief official of the circle. Provision was also made for a provincial "School Board," which, among other duties, should have care of the school fund and of the general administration of the school ordinance. Finally, there was in Vienna the "General Board of Directors for Model Schools," which was the advising organ of the State Board of Education and to which the provincial boards reported for approval the proposed course of action in their several provinces.

School boards were soon formed and model schools opened in all the German and Slavonian provinces, and provision was made for school funds and improved text-books, the personal interest of the Empress encouraging a general spirit of self-sacrifice. To avoid prejudice, no taxes were permitted for school objects beyond a duty upon bequests and amusements, an increase of tuition fees was forbidden, corporations and the clergy were called upon for contributions, and the surplus revenues of ecclesiastical benefices and the property of the dissolved religious orders were freely drawn upon to supply the deficiencies of the school funds. The abolition of many gymnasiums supplied the buildings, means, and teachers for high schools, and convents were in some cases persuaded to their support, so that in 1776 there were already twenty schools of this character in Upper and Lower Austria, the Tyrol, and Carinthia. Well organized female schools existed in the convents of the Ursuline and other nuns, and one at Hall with lay teachers. The first Jewish school was opened at Görz in the same year.

In the establishment of trivial schools, the Empress took the lead in her own patrimonial territories and her example was followed by many of the ecclesiastical princes and large landed proprietors. Kindermann was especially active and successful in Bohemia, as chief superintendent, and was the first to effect a union of the common and industrial school systems. Under Felbiger's care an entirely new series of text-books was published in 1775, followed by a series of manuals for the use of the teachers. The catechisms were translated into the Italian, Bohemian, and Slavonian languages, and the text-books for the trivial schools into the Czech dialect. The annexation of Galicia in 1772 was followed by the establishment of a model school at Lemberg in 1775 and the formation of a school board in 1776, and the school ordinance was adapted by Felbiger to the civil and religious relations of the new kingdom with great skill and impartiality. Thus in the last ten years of the Empress'

reign, a system of popular instruction was created and made a part of the State system of education, and introduced into all the German and Slavonian provinces of her Empire. In the last three years there were examined at the Vienna Normal School 923 public and 934 private teachers; in 1780 there were 8,776 pupils in the public schools of Vienna, and 65,989 in the Bohemian schools, while throughout the Empire more than half the schools had been improved and the total number of scholars amounted to 200,000.

Joseph II. applied himself with energy to carrying out the political reforms initiated by the Empress Maria Theresa. Reversing the traditional policy of most of his predecessors, he granted full religious liberty to Protestants, discontinued the censorship of the press, abolished 900 convents, and destroyed the political power of the clergy. Soon after his accession to the throne in 1780, Felbiger was removed and Baron von Swieten was made president of the State Educational Board, and J. A. Gall, chief superintendent of the normal schools. Gall originated nearly all the reforms that were introduced during the reign of Joseph, the influence of Swieten being principally confined to securing the requisite legislation. The most important of these measures were those relating to compulsory attendance and school patronage. In addition to the ordinance of Maria Theresa that no child could be taken into service or enter a trade without a certificate of school attendance, an enrollment of all school children was now provided for, their non attendance was made punishable by fine, and with the Jews the prescribed instruction was made an indispensable prerequisite to a valid marriage. As the resources that had hitherto been made use of for increasing the school funds failed in many cases to suffice for the establishment of schools where they were needed, the Emperor decreed in 1787 that wherever the endowment and support of a school had not been already provided for, the "patronage" and consequent duty to establish and maintain a school in accordance with the school ordinances should immediately and permanently attach to the parish patron, to whom the right of presentation of the pastorate belonged. Between the school patron, the manorial lord, and the community, there was established a so-called “concurrence," and their respective rights and duties were strictly defined. By this means schools could now be located wherever there were 90-100 children within the circuit of half a league, and an under-teacher was allowed for every fifty children additional. All teachers were relieved from obligation to military service, and a minimum salary was fixed, any deficiency in which was to be supplied from the school fund. The "ciphering kreutzer" (additional charge for tuition in arithmetic) was forhidden to-be exacted and poor children must be exempted from all tuition fees.

The Toleration Charter of 1781 introduced an entirely new feature, viz., non-Catholic schools, granting to Protestants and to members of the Greek Church the right to erect a church and school for every 500 per

sons and to engage a properly trained native born teacher-with the limitation soon afterwards made that where Catholic schools already existed the establishment of new schools was unnecessary. Wherever a synagogue existed, also, a Jewish school was permitted and afterwards required, and the right was granted of admission to the normal schools. In other cases the children were obliged to attend the Catholic schools, relieved only from the prayers and religious instruction, and to avoid occasion of disturbance and ill-will, separate benches were to be set apart for their use. The interest taken by the Jews of Bohemia in the improvement of schools was acknowledged by the Emperor by appropriating certain taxes levied upon them to their educational benefit.

The energetic efforts of the Emperor, aided by the zealous cooperation of Gall, Kindermann, Mehoffer, and others, soon effected an extraordinary increase in the number and attendance of the schools. In Bohemia within ten years the number of scholars had quadrupled, and in Moravia and Silesia it had increased tenfold. But the instruction was still far from satisfactory. Gall had, indeed, improved to some extent the methods of Felbiger, and modified them by his own so-called Socratic system; but the far better systems that had recently arisen among the German pedagogists were wholly unknown; he had altered the textbooks, and done away with many of the monotonous simultaneous exercises, yet the instruction of the schools still remained too uniform and mechanical, owing to the iron strictness of the rules by which it was governed. No methods of teaching were permitted but those taught in the normal schools, the text-books, even to the style of penmanship, and the order of lessons were rigidly prescribed. The regulation that required the use of the German language in the city schools and wherever possible elsewhere, was also found of very difficult execution, causing the common schools to be generally known as "German schools," and giving rise to much of the aversion to Germanism that prevailed among the Slavonians, though in fact no race shows so little capacity of resistance in its intercourse with other races, coalesces with them so easily, and is therefore so far from seeking their denationalization as the German.

It was required with equal stringency that no teacher should be employed without a previous examination, and on the part of candidates for the pastoral office a year of special instruction was necessary in pastoral divinity, pedagogics, catechetics, methods, and rural economy, and no pupil could be admitted to the novitiate of an order without a normal school certificate. Singing in the common schools was to be made the subject of especial care, and instruction in industrial occupations was urgently recommended. Bohemia took the lead in this direction, under Kindermann's influence, and the raising of silk, horticulture and orcharding, and the rearing of bees received much attention. Efforts were continued to remove corporal punishment entirely from the schools, and Spendou, who succeeded Gall in 1789, devoted himself especially to this

object. Plans were provided and rules laid down for the construction of school buildings, and finally "Circle School Boards" were created, composed of the deans of the circle and experienced teachers, who were commissioned to visit all the schools, learn their condition, attend the examinations, and make report in accordance with specified forms. These reports, commenced in 1788, were for a long time the basis of all general knowledge respecting the common schools of the empire.

Much still remained to be done at the time of the Emperor's death in 1790. His successor, Leopold II., appointed Baron von Martini in Swieten's place as president of the "Board for the Regulation of Instruction," which had been substituted for the previous State Board of Education. Martini's attention was principally directed to the improvement of the higher schools, but the chief enactment having reference to the common schools gave to the teachers a peculiar position in the adminis tration of the schools and recognized the value of their knowledge and experience. By this ordinance the teachers of each normal school, either alone or with the gymnasial teachers of the same place, were united into a "Teachers' Association," which should have immediate direction of the schools within their limits, advise respecting the plan of instruction, the introduction of text-books, the maintenance of discipline, and the nomination of teachers, and contribute to the promotion of education by the publication of a scientific journal. The Association at the provincial capital elected from the retired members of the profession, or from their own number, a delegate to the "Educational Session," which had the supervision and control of all that related to study and instruction in the common schools throughout the province. The Session was subordinate to the provincial government, by which a "School Referee" was appointed for the decision of all such questions as did not require an appeal to the Privy Council of the empire.

But neither Teachers' Association nor Educational Session proved practically efficient in their operation, and the political movements that now began to disturb all Europe soon had their natural influence upon the development of popular culture in Austria. The Emperor Francis, who succeeded Leopold in 1792, consulted with his Chancellor, Count Rottenhann, upon the subject of the numerous current complaints against the existing school system. Rottenhann was opposed to conferring any form or measure of self government upon the teachers and would reserve to the State exclusively the decision of all educational questions, believing that the same line of policy should be pursued in the use and control of its intellectual resources as in the employment of any other of its possessions. He believed the true object of the trivial school to be "to make thoroughly good, tractable, and industrious men of the laboring classes of the people," and that much of the hostility manifested by the lower civil authorities, pastors, and even communities, would be allayed by restricting its scope. The teacherships could easily be filled by simple laboring men; tuition fees should be abolished; and instruc

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