Education

Caste After the Fourth Grade

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ABC DEFGHIJKL

A slight young man,who looked aboutnineteen, got up toask a question. Itwas the first ques-

tion of the evening,and it threw theand it threw the

older men on theplatform into confusion. For the firsttime, in my summer trip around Ger­ many , I sensed a stirring of moralhealth, a faint hope for the future.

Here is the setting: One week lastsummer at Munich , a Jugendforumwas held in the State Parliament ofBavaria. The unusual thing about thisforum was that the young people wererunning it. The Ministerpräsident, theLandtagspräsident, the Abgeordnete ,the Oberbürgermeister , and the rest ofthe movers and shakers were there asinvited guests. A former Americannewspaperman working for MilitaryGovernment, H. C. Patrick, the organ-izer of these" discussion evenings," hadinsisted on this arrangement, novelthough it was for the German AlteHerren, who were in the habit of sit-ting in the seats of authority while theyoung people listened, trembled, andobeyed.

A girl named Ilse Muller had thechair on the high dais where the Presi-dent of the Landtag usually sits; shewas flanked by two boys. In the semi-circle facing them were row upon rowof students from the University of Mu­ nich and the Munich Technische Hoch-schule, their ages ranging from seven-teen to twenty- five. They were there toquiz the legislators about the operationof the government.

It didn't quite work at first. Insteadof grilling, Fräulein Muller started offon an apologetic note. The young peo-ple, she said, were there to learn demo-cratic habits of thought- not to discusshigh politics and stick their noses intomatters that were none of their bus-iness. She called upon the President of

the Landtag , a likeable fellow calledHorlacher, who attacked dictatorship,explained the nature of parliamentarydemocracy and civil liberties, andwound up with a plea against militar-ism, receiving warm applause. He wasfollowed by the four committee chair-men of the Landtag , each of whom wassupposed to speak for five minutes, andeach of whom spoke for fifteen or twen-ty. They were self- important, dumpylittle men who began with," My dearyoung friends," made a point of talkingdown to their audience, and explainedeverything in mechanical and legalisticterms. Perhaps, I reflected, all we hadsucceeded in doing in Germany was toreplace unspeakable beasts with insuf-ferable bores.

I was not altogether right. As soon asthe speeches were over, questions be-gan crackling from all over the youngaudience. The first, from the slightyoung man, was about the peculationsof a member of the Landtag who hadstuffed his pockets with public funds,much to the distress of the party inpower. The mention of this incidentthrew the ministers and legislators intoa paroxysm of apology. Each of themgot up and made elaborate disassocia-tions and explanations- but they werevisibly shaken by the line that the quizwas taking.

After a number of scattered, earnestquestions, a blond boy, who identifiedhimself as a Technische Hochschulestudent, made a little speech. The com-mittee chairmen had talked of thebudget, finance, taxes, the similaritiesand differences between a state econ-nomy and a household economy. Allthe technical schools, he said, werethe technical schools, he said, werebadly in need of funds for research,teaching, and laboratories. Why hadthe Bavarian government cut thesefunds further? Was it because the dom-inant party, the Christian Social Union,to which the Ministers belonged, fearedthe effect of science and technology on

the traditional authority of the Church,and had siphoned the funds off else-where? The question was met with al-most thunderous applause.

There was an uproar among thedumpy little men. Each rose again,waved his hands, explained, deplored.The man whom everyone in the audi-ence had on his mind- Alois Hund­ hammer , the Minister of Education ,who holds the heavy hand of theocracyover Bavarian intellectual life- hadthoughtfully stayed away from themeeting.

Later, a tow- headed boy with ananxious face, egged on by a little groupsitting around him, got to his feet.He said that youth lacked directionand purpose, that everyone was doingtoo much talking, that they needed tobe shown what to do. After a momentor two, I realized that this was thelanguage of Nazi indoctrination. Thatwas how the audience took it. Therewas at first a thin scattering of ap-plause, and then massive shouts of" Hitlerjugend , Hitlerjugend !" werehurled against him from every cornerof the room.

Most of these boys and girls weretrying to break through the crust oftheir Hitler training. With a painfulhonesty, and not without courage, someof them were groping for democracy'smeaning.

Their groping was clumsy because,according to all that I could find outin the American Zone, most youngGermans are still products of a feudal,stratified educational system- one thatpredated Hitler by a century andhelped make the Weimar democracya springboard for authoritarianism andoppression.

Consider how the system tradition-ally operated. All German childrenwent to the public elementary schools( Volkschule) until they finished thefourth class, which they generally did

The Reporter, October 11, 1949

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