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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 85

Secondary Instruction at Chemnitz

Secondary Instruction at Chemnitz.

There is no polytechnic or technical high school where shop work is required as a preliminary condition of admission, but the Royal Foremen School at Chemnitz, of the secondary order, affords a good example of how this plan may be pursued. As this school forms part of an elaborate system for the complete technical training of the boys of a town which is wholly devoted to manufacturing, and as this system includes all the points in such training below the polytechnic, it will serve our purpose to state the outlines of this system.1

Chemnitz is a Saxon town of 90,000 inhabitants who are principally employed in the following establishments, viz: forty-six machine shops for machine building, 10 loom works, 3 hosiery frame factories, and 82 cotton, woollen, and silk mills. The manufacture of hosiery and gloves is the leading industry. The only locomotive works in Saxony, Hartmaun's, is in Chemnitz, and employs about 2,000 men. The town is sometimes called the Manchester of Germany.

General education is assiduously cultivated and is of the most thorough sort; in fact, it is the strong foundation upon which technical schools securely rest. What a good common school education in Germany means is so well understood as to require no further comment. In 1878 the amount expended in municipal schools—that is," common schools"—was $161,045; the number of teachers, 243; and the number of pupils, boys and girls, 11,400.

In addition to this, continuation schools are maintained in the evening, three hours each, for those who, through misfortune of any kind, have failed to secure the essential advantages of the public instruction. There were 993 of these Fortbildung scholars in Chemnitz in 1878.

Section B in the appendix gives statistical information concerning Saxon education.

Technical education in Chemnitz is conducted partly by the state and partly by corporations. The state has a group of schools, which are all in the new buildings on the Schiller Platz, completed in 1877. Here are 130 rooms with an aggregate area of 95,000 square feet, 652 students in attendance, and 52 instructors. The annual expense of maintenance in 1883 was 846,200, or $70.86 per student. The buildings cost $439,715. The same buildings and accommodations in Worcester, Mass., a city of about the same size and sort, would cost at least $700,000.

The state technical schools are the Higher Technical School, with 153 students; the Royal Building School, with 170 students; the Royal Foremen School, with 230 students; the Royal Drawing School, with 111 students; or a total, less 12 twice reckoned, of 652 students.

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Section D in the appendix shows the course of study in the Higher Technical School, which is now classed as a polytechnic. Most of the pupils stay till they have a certificate. They enter at 16 or 17 and leave at 21. Their military duty has to be then performed, after which, at the age of 22 or 23, they enter active life.

In connection with this school it is convenient, though a little out of place, to describe the method of preparing men for the building trades.

Pupils in the architectural course have an opportunity during the third year of attending the following classes in the Foremen School, viz: instruction in building mills for corn, sawing, powder, &c.; spinning and weaving; paper making; tool building; brewery mechanics; water works; fire extinguishing apparatus. They may also attend the modelling classes in the Royal Drawing School. The object of the architectural division is to educate men for ordinary builders. This object is kept clearly in view and gives special value to this school as a good place for artisans, because the Architects' Academy at Dresden provides a purely academic course, and the Chemnitz school must not clash with it.

The course at Dresden is of six years, and a young man is 25 or 20 years old before he can graduate there; add the year of military service and he becomes 26 or 27 before he begins his practical life. But when he is through he is competent to be an architect of monumental works and of buildings of artistic excellence. A student may pass, if he wishes, from Chemnitz to the second year at Dresden.

At the Royal Building School, which has a two-year course, those who can only learn the essentials of building receive a very good training and become expert and intelligent carpenters.

The Royal Foremen School proposes to give to future machinists, millers, dyers, tanners, &c, as well as to young men who intend to be foremen and managers in weaving and spinning mills, machine building establishments, &c., the opportunity of obtaining the theoretical knowledge required in their future careers. The instruction is comprised in three continuous courses" each of half a year; and in this short time the pupils can acquire, of course, only what is absolutely necessary in their respective occupations. The instruction is given in two main divisions, the mechanical and the chemical. The students must have reached the age of 10 years on entering, and acquired the ability to read, write, and use the fundamental rules of arithmetic readily. And a very important, and indeed the controlling, condition of admission is that a student must have worked at least two years at his calling before entering. The practical working of the plan is this: a boy leaves the public school at 14; goes to some machine building establishment, for instance; attends in the evening a Fortbildungsschule (Continuation School); shows good parts; and at 10 finds himself in the Foremen School.

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The following table shows the hours per week devoted to studies in each division of the Foremen School:

[A: Mechanical division. Michaelmas to Easter. B: Chemical division. Michaelmas to Easter. C: Mechanical division. Easter to Michaelmas. Half year.

First course. Second course. Third course. A&C B A&C B A&C B Arithmetic 7 6 Geometry 5 4 Physics 4 8 4 2 2 Geometrical drawing Freehand drawing German language 4 4 2 4 4 4 2 4 4 2 2 2 General chemistry 12 Mathematics and mechanics Machinery in general 8 2 4 6 Mechanical technology 4 4 Machine drawing 8 8 Surveying 4 Technical chemistry Laboratory work, chemistry Mineralogy 6 12 4 6 20 Bookkeeping 2 2 Architectural drawing 4

In addition, all students in the second and third courses may attend the special classes of the Technical High School.

The Royal Drawing School is an evening adjunct to the Chemnitz system, for teaching art in its various branches; and is attended by pupils drawn from all classes in the city.

To obtain a complete view of the extraordinary educational capital of Chemnitz, it is necessary to notice the Higher Weaving School (which occupies a building which costs $20,000 and is equipped with machinery for teaching every kind of machine weaving), the Agricultural School, the School for Hand Weavers, the Tailors' School, and the Trade Fort-bildungs School, all maintained largely at private or corporation expense. There are also several special schools for girls. In short, for completeness in its provision for thorough preliminary training for every form of industry by which the inhabitants live, no town in Europe can surpass Chemnitz.

1 See "Technical Education in a Saxon Town." H. M. Felkin, London. C. Kegan &. Co., 1 Paternoster Square. Also report of commissioners.