Education in Weimar Republic (4) Flashcards
What did people agree over regarding Education Reforms?
People generally agreed that reform was needed in Weimar - even the opposition from the Church and parents weren’t as influential.
Disagreement over education reforms
- Questioning how far reforms should be.
- Lack of commitment from the govt regarding funding because of reparations and hyperinflation because of the Wall Street Crash + fear it would upset political balance due to PR system - could lead to uprisings and riots.
What was education like before the war?
- Some Lander provided kindergarten care for an hour in the morning for children aged 3-5.
- Most were confessional schools.
- Compulsory from 6-14 and it maintained the status quo (social mobility was difficult) as children from professional families entering professions
- Upper-class children went to fee-paying schools and working-class children went to Volkesschule (large sizes which taught basic math/english and to ‘respect your betters’.
- Most working class children needed to work after age 14, if not before, and any further education was expensive.
Aims of the Provisional Government if 1919 had for education:
A fairer education system, mixed, non-confessional, no religious education
- Established a compulsory Grundschule for all children aged 6-10, ran by the Lander but meeting the needs of parents locally.
- Stopped clerical inspections of schools and said parents could remove their children from religious education.
Obstacles of the new fairer education system, mixed, non-confessional, no religious education
- Some people, living in towns and cities, agreed but others in the rural and south disagreed.
- Significant political issue as most Germans felt strongly about: some wanted religion as it taught basic morality.
- The education articles was a compromise - the popular Centre Party fought to keep confessional schools and religion in the curriculum.
Evaluation on the successfulness of the new ‘fairer’ education system
- Somewhat successful as education did improve for the children, allowing them to have an equal right to education despite income.
- However, there are many disputes and challenges from parents, teachers and the government on extent of reform AND they disagreed whether different social groups should be taught together.
Aims of the Provisional Government if 1919 had for education:
A federal education law that gave the Lander guidelines to work to and while meeting local family needs.
- Until this, set up non-confessional state schools with confessional schools able to run as a private school.
- Without a national law, Lander provided a wide variety of education.
- Govt tried to introduce a federal school law in 1921 and in 1925, but the Reichstag could not agree.
- 1927 - new bill proposed that confessional, common and secular schools be set up on an equal footing as long as they were requested by the parents of at least 40 children.
- Children in common schools would have religious education in their own faith.
Obstacles of a federal education law
- Most regions supported the 1927 bill, e.g the Reich Parent’s League. Others, the Volkskirche Association for Evangelical Freedom, vigorously opposed it.
- Some were relieved at the level of education reform, but others wanted religion to be a matter of the religious bodies, not schools.
- Bill was sent back to be revised by a committee, it couldn’t agree and it never came back to the Reichstag.
Number of schools data by 1931
The education system stayed diverse, as set up by the Lander.
- 29,020 Protestant schools
- 15,256 Catholic schools
- 97 Jewish schools
- 8,921 common schools
- 292 secular schools
Evaluation of a federal education law
To an extent successful because there was support for education reforms by majority of the Germans. However, there remained opposition by the religious bodies about whether religious education should be taught.
What were the issues of the current post-10 Education
- Expensive.
- Decided their career at age 10, attending different schools for: an apprenticeship, business or technical training, or university.
- Possible to study in a variety of private schools with different systems.
- 1928 survey of the fathers of university students found that 45% were civil servants (21.2% were uni-educated) and only 2.3% were working class.
Obstacles for the Government being able to reform post-10 education
- Constitution’s principle of freedom of choice meant universities carried on as before, so the rest of the school structure had to fit in with them.
- Universities had their own ‘corporations’, which formed nationwide associations. The ‘duelling corporations’ were popular with wealthy landowner’s sons. Non-duelling corporations were seen as socially inferior.
- 1928 = 56% were members of a corporation, some excluded people by race or social class e.g,the German-Aryan Chambers.
- Membership was important because support, or the lack of it, from those who had been in the same corporation affected a person’s career.
Evaluation of reform to post-10 education
- Heavily limited - little impact.
