INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL CONGRESS

AT BRUSSELS IN AUGUST, 1880.

THE BELGIAN EDUCATIONAL LEAGUE, a national association of the progressive teachers and school men of Belgium, which has held monthly meetings for papers and discussion on the organization, administration, instruction, and discipline of schools of every grade, public, private, and ecclesiastical, in Belgium, has made arrangements to hold a General Assembly of Teachers and Educators in Brussels, from August 22d to the 29th inclusive-under the honorary presidency of the Minister of Public Instruction.

The Executive Committee, appointed by the League, is composed of men of eminent practical ability, of which H. Augustus Couvreur is President, and M. Charles Buls, Secretary-General.

The original call, issued more than a year ago, was signed by many prominent educators from all the states of Europe, and the recent Circular of the General Committee bears the names of some three hundred individuals connected with the Ministry of Public Instruction, the universities, the normal schools, and other institutions and the Public Press in their several countries.

The programme of proceedings issued by the General Committee contains over ninety subjects, on which special papers or discussions are invited, and in the main provided for. These subjects are assigned to six sections, viz.: (1) Primary Instruction, including Creches', Kindergarten, infant schools, etc.; (2) Secondary Instruction; (3) Superior Instruction; (4) Special Schools, professional, technical, agricultural, commercial, normal; (5) Adult Education; (6) School Hygiene. Each section has a secretary, and will hold sectional meetings, and certain topics belonging to each section will be presented in written papers, and for discussion in the general meeting of the whole congress.

The congress is composed of regular and associate members. All may take part in the deliberations who register their names, thereby agreeing to the general regulations. Regular members will pay a fee of twenty francs, and will be entitled to a copy of the printed transactions, and to three ladies' tickets to the meetings of the congress. Certificated male and female teachers, and professors of secondary schools may become regular members by paying a fee of ten francs.

Educational Societies and corporations can send delegates.

Speakers and contributors of papers can use any language they preferand if not in French, the substance of the speeches and papers will be. translated by officers of the congress.

A bureau of information for procuring lodgings will be organized, and all communications intended for the Congress can be addressed to M. Ch. Buls, Secretary-General, Brussels, Belgium.

For circular giving the topics to be discussed and other information, address Commissioner John Eaton, Bureau of Education, Department of the Interior, Washington, who will forward any correspondence of those who wish to become members for the purpose of attendance, or to receive the reports. HENRY BARNARD,

Member of General Committee.

SUMMARY OF PROCEEDINGS.*

The International Congress of Education met August 22, in the Hall of the Athénée Royal, the great Modern School of Brussels. The chair was taken at 11.30 a.m., by M. VanHumbeéck, Minister of Public Instruction.

M. Couvreur, the President of the General Committee, after welcoming the visitors, said:"This is not an official Congress. It originated with a resolution of the League of Instruction, but its members are in no way bound to the principles of the League. The Belgian Government, in the same spirit, has given its sanction and patronage to the Committee of Organization, and the Minister of Public Instruction has accepted the office of Honorary President. The delegates of foreign governments, and the members of the Congress generally, are bound by no political, religious, or educational creed, but are all met for the purpose of free discussion, with the one end of arriving at the truth. The efforts of the Committee of Organization have been already crowned with success. I need only point to the numerous assembly before me, the representatives that nearly every government has sent, and the remarkable volume of reports that has been put into your hands. If it produced nothing else, it would have done a useful work. To what is this success due? In a great measure, no doubt, to the influence of the League, the activity of the Organiz ing Committee, and the concurrence of the Belgian and foreign governments. But all these are but the effects of a more general cause,-the public interest which, during the last few years, has been awakened among all civilized nations, in the intellectual and moral development of humanity. The growth of this sentiment has been gradual; but now that the current has set in this direction, it bears all along with it, parties, sects, laymen, and clerics, even those who embark on the ship of Education only in hope of stopping the navigation. The chief characteristic of this age, and its greatest glory, will be the popularization of education. This benefit we owe to the advance of democracy. In a state of society when each man is called upon to master for himself questions of religion, politics, and economy, which before occupied only statesmen and philosophers, public security and material prosperity, nay, the very existence of a nation, depend on the general culture and intelligence of its citizens. . .

...

We want knowledge and experience to avoid quicksands and steer the straightest course. To resolve the problems of education, there is but one sound method, that which we are beginning to apply in our schools, the method of observation. This is our motif in asking this Congress to act as a commission of inquiry, to amass facts and discuss problems, but not to pass resolu tions. This is not to diminish its importance, but to assign it a rôle analogous to that of the press. A Congress brings to the light of common day ideas that have lain buried in musty tomes, or the proceedings of learned societies. It ventilates, it popularizes, it elucidates and simplifies knowledge; it controls, and so ends by gaining public opinion, and then is recognized and embodied in legislation. Thus without votes, which increase the responsibility without increasing the usefulness, a Congress is one of the most effective forms of selfgovernment, the forerunner and counselor of legislation.

M. Vanhumbeéck, the Minister of Public Instruction, after referring to the fêtes, of which the Congress formed part, said that the ideal of primary education was to make each acquainted with the powers he possessed by nature; to form the judgment by stimulating the observation. It must rid itself of pedantic verbalism; it must encourage, at the same time, exactitude and activ* Abridged from English Journal of Education for October, 1880.

ity; and, above all, must implant the notion of duty. Of higher education, he said, that observation and experimentation would in future have a larger place. The student, by not merely verifying past discoveries, but remaking them for himself, would acquire the spirit of research. He was far from depreciating memory, but it must be acknowledged that ancient methods aimed exclusively at the cultivation of this faculty, and neglected the judgment and stunted the imagination which they pretend to develop. . . . Different nationalities are here met to compare notes and take counsel together. In old days each nation thought that its greatness depended on weakening other nations. Now all civilized nations combine to discuss the best methods of advancing the intellect. ual, material, and moral progress of mankind. The millennium of universal brotherhood is still far distant, but we have left behind the days of universal mistrust and hereditary hostilities. . .

Monday, August 23.

The Congress was divided into six sections:-1. Primary Education, in two divisions, A. B., treating general and special questions. 2. Secondary Education. 3. Higher Education. 4. Technical and Special Education. 5. Education of Adults. 6. School Hygiene. The questions proposed occupy five columns of the Bulletin du Congrès, and a full report would fill several numbers of the Journal. We can only glance at the chief points of interest, and notice the more remarkable speeches. The most popular section was the first in which the Kindergarten, its value and extension, were largely discussed.

The principal conclusions arrived at by section B., were:-1. That lectures should be instituted not only for intended, but actual teachers; and that every elementary teacher should be required to show a knowledge of Froebel's system. 2 There should be transition classes between the Kindergarten and the primary school. 3. No class in a Kindergarten should exceed fifty.

M. Salicis, Répétiteur at the École Polytechnique of Paris, spoke in favor of industrial schools, in which primary education, as now understood, should be combined with the teaching of some manual art. He said, that at present • Jacques Bonhomme ́ sent his child to school only on compulsion, because he felt that the education he received had little or no bearing on his future life and calling Children who are destined to be laborers or bricklayers or carpenters, are taught as if they were intended for notaries, and all the prizes go to the best calligraphist or the best grammarian. Faisons des hommes is the watchword of the modern school of education, but primary education only makes half men; it trains the mind, but neglects the hand; it teaches the alphabet, but does not impart the rudiments of manual dexterity. By help of a subvention, he has founded at Paris "a school of apprenticeship" (la rue Tournefort) in which these ideas have been carried out, and M. Gréard, the Government Inspector, reports that the intellectual education of the children has gained rather than suffered by the addition of manual training.

M. Sluys, the Director of the École Modèle of Brussels, held that the end of the legislator is not to secure the acquisition of determinate knowledge, such as reading. The lower classes do not read, even when they know how to read. The laborer or workman, living in a world void of ideas, is not likely to interest himself in a book which he will not understand, because his faculties of observation and reflection have lain fallow. Primary schools, founded on purely utilitarian principles, are certain to break down, because it is impossible to assimilate knowledge given before the mind is ripe for them. What is wanted is to arouse and educe the faculties the child already possesses, to preserve the

natural harmony between intellectual and physical powers, to teach him by degrees the rudiments of the sciences which he will learn later on, and. at the same time, not to neglect his moral culture. This is what Froebel's system does for infants, and the Model School is an application of Froebel's principles to primary education. "Scientific teaching in a primary school should be given in the lower classes by direct intuition; in the middle classes by the analytic method; and in the upper classes by the synthetic method."

Tuesday Morning.

In section 1, the chief subject discussed was mixed [boys' and girls'] schools. The general feeling of the section seemed in favor of mixed schools up to the age of nine or ten, and of women as teachers for such schools. Above that age, it was held that the difference of manners on the Continent-the comparative seclusion of girls-would be fatal to the adoption of the American system M. VanderKindere, Professor of the University of Brussels, said,-" The ideal of education is to impart to each man the accumulated knowledge of the past. This is an impossible ideal, but each age has tried in its own way to approximate to it. The ideal of the renaissance was a thorough knowledge of the classics. The middle ages originated nothing in education. Of modern times, the two characteristics are the development of science and international intercourse. These two facts should be represented in modern education. We must study science and modern languages. This has been more or less admitted, and our schoolmasters have tried to sew the new studies on to the old rags of antiquity, but the result has been a miserable failure. We have tried to serve two masters, and satisfied neither. What we want is a renovated pro gramme. The weakest must go to the wall, and in this case there can be no doubt that the weakest is classics. We hear much of the advantages of a study of Latin, and it is constantly being dinned into our ears, that without Latin no one can be said to be really educated. That this may have been so once, I do not deny, but then the study was thorough, and I say that it was the method and not the language that educated our forefathers. What does an ordinary boy who leaves school, hardly able to hammer out an easy bit of Cicero by help of a dictionary, know of antiquity? Now-a-days we know a little of everything; in other words, we know nothing." The outcome of these considerations is, that we must give to sciences and modern languages a larger share in our secondary education, and the time for this must be gained by beginning Latin much later, and (though I regret the necessity) by excluding Greek.

M. Stecher, Professor at the University of Liége, agreed on the whole with the last speaker, but considered that the question between the Humanists and the Utilitarians was still an open one, and pedagogy had not said its last word. The problem was to establish a progressive and uninterrupted course of study; to prepare boys at the same time for practical life and for the Universities; to keep on stimulating the appetite for new studies, and yet to give a boy, who does not intend to finish the curriculum, a stock of knowledge that shall be complete as far as it goes, and of service in his business or occupation. To reconcile as far as possible these two contending interests, the system of bifurcation has been invented, and we have Real-schulen side by side with the Gymnasien But this is only a compromise. The unity of studies is sacrificed, and it is impossible with a young boy to tell for which branch he is best fitted. To give up classics is a crude solution. Minds may also be enervated by science, as well as by classics.

Wednesday, August 25.

The first section was occupied with the question of Liberty of Teaching, i. e., how far Education should be controlled by the State? The question has not the same interest for us that it has on the Continent, where, as a rule, every teacher is under official control.

M Brock gave an interesting account of the system of elementary education in Norway, which most nearly approximates to England. Primary education is obligatory and gratuitous. In each commune there is a School-Board, which appoints certificated masters; but, side by side with the Government schools, there are private schools. In Norway any one is free to teach, but the State reserves for itself the right of inspection. If the inspector reports that in any private school the pupils do not come up to the fixed standard, the school is disqualified, and the pupils are forced to attend a Government school.

In the afternoon session of the General Assembly, the question proposed was: "Should higher education be confined to the acquiring of professional aptitudes. (1) Should not University studies aim at disseminating among the upper classes the essential element of all the sciences, and thus encourage the general education of the nation? (2) Is it desirable, in the cause of science, to organize higher studies, apart from the regular curriculum of the University; and how should they be organized?"

Dr. de Roubaix, Professor at the University of Brussels, said: "I shall confine my remarks chiefly to the Universities of Belgium. It is plain that the main object of a University is to diffuse knowledge and popularize science. It follows that its chief business is, not research, but an exposition of the whole range of existing knowledge. The programme of our Belgian Universities fairly realizes this ideal. It is true, that we are often charged with being too practical, and neglecting pure science, and I candidly allow that there is some truth in the charge. The remedy, however, in our case, is not to annex to our Universities higher courses for honor men (instituts de perfectionnement) such as they have in Germany. They would cost too much; we have no rich endowment, and the nation is not enough alive to their importance to pay for them. We ought to concentrate our resources on a single central institution for scientific research; this would attract the best intellects, and would not impoverish the Universities, but constitute a bank, on which they could draw for professors. Dr. Crocq, of the same University, after a disquisition on the main distinction between the utilitarian and scientific faculties, and the types of men in whom they respectively predominate, inferred that the University must be so constituted as to include both-in plain English, there must be pass and class men. Before the French invasion, Louvain had, like the German Universities, its licentiates and doctors; all this was upset by the French in 1814. At the beginning of the century there was no higher education in Belgium, and the erection of the three Universities of Ghent, Liége, and Louvain was an immense service that the Dutch government rendered to this country. Notwithstanding, one of the grievances formulated against the Dutch government in 1830, was the number of the Universities, and yet, in 1835, a fourth-that of Brusselswas founded. Of these four, three recognize no other dogma than that of science. Louvain alone is denominational, and the speaker would not wish it otherwise, for science can only gain by the vigor of its opponents.

Dr. Crocq next explained the German University system, which he admirea, but "sans fétishism." It was excellent for real students of science, but not for