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Education during the Second World War. As a reward for the sacrifices made during the First World War the British government in 1918 announced that it intended to raise the school leaving age from fourteen to fifteen. However, this measure was constantly being postponed. Eventually the government promised that the new system would begin in ...
- Evacuation
Sections. Primary Sources; Student Activities; References;...
- Conscription
The longer the war continued, the lower the percentage...
- National Service Act
Main Article Primary Sources (1) Ernest Bevin, the Minister...
- John Anderson
Biography of John Anderson. After returning to Britain in...
- Whitehall Cinema
On 9th July 1943, ten German aircraft crossed the Sussex...
- Margaret Cole
Primary Sources Margaret Cole. Margaret Postgate, the...
- The Home Front
Read the essential details about the Home Front, including...
- Evacuation
7. School. The war disrupted the education of many children. The mass evacuation of 1939 upset the school system for months and over 2,000 school buildings were requisitioned for war use. One in five schools was damaged by bombing, and air raids frequently stopped lessons for hours, leading to a decline in attendance.
- Overview
- Changes after World War II
- The Third Republic
After Adolf Hitler’s accession to power in 1933, the Nazis set out to reconstruct German society. To do that, the totalitarian government attempted to exert complete control over the populace. Every institution was infused with National Socialist ideology and infiltrated by Nazi personnel in chief positions. Schools were no exception. Even before coming to power, Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925–27; “My Struggle”) had hinted at his plans for broad educational exploitation. The Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda exercised control over virtually every form of expression—radio, theatre, cinema, the fine arts, the press, churches, and schools. The control of the schools began in March 1933 with the issuing of the first educational decree, which held that “German culture must be treated thoroughly.”
The Nazi government attempted to control the minds of the young and thus, among other means, intruded Nazi beliefs into the school curriculum. A major part of biology became “race science,” and health education and physical training did not escape the racial stress. Geography became geopolitics, the study of the fatherland being fundamental. Physical training was made compulsory for all, as was youth labour service. Much of the fundamental curriculum was not disturbed, however.
Immediately after World War II, the occupying powers (Britain, France, and the United States in the western zones and the Soviet Union in the east) instituted education programs designed to clean out Nazi influence and to reflect their respective educational values. These efforts were soon absorbed into independent German educational reconstruction. The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) of May 1949 granted autonomy in educational matters to the Land (state) governments. Although efforts to strengthen the federal government’s presence waxed and waned, Land governments remained independent and divided along political lines on educational reforms.
The two main political issues dividing the states had always been confessional schooling and the tripartite division of secondary schooling, with conservative states like Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg on one side and socially progressive states like Hessen and West Berlin on the other. After a 20-year period of reform discussion on these issues, marked by influential state or national proposals, the balance shifted in the mid-1970s to the conservatives—albeit with a great deal of internal liberalization. That is, confessional schools and confessional instruction in schools remained, but the latter was increasingly in ecumenical or ethical versions. This change, like others, was supported by the presence of a large number of non-German children representing various cultural beliefs and behaviours. On the issue of dividing secondary schools, in spite of continued strong intellectual and political support from some quarters, the movement toward comprehensive schools had, at least for the time being, died out. Even where comprehensive schools (Gesamtschulen) existed, they usually incorporated separate secondary paths. Nevertheless, the effective extension of common schooling through an “orientation stage” between elementary and secondary schooling, the attempt to develop each level so that it better served more youth—even if differentially—and the functional integration of school branches through curriculum reform and transfer possibilities all pointed to a comprehensiveness within the system.
Education was compulsory from age 6 to 18. In general, pupils spent four years in the elementary school (Grundschule), six years in one of the lower secondary branches, and two years in one of the upper secondary branches. The first two years of the lower secondary school constituted the “orientation stage.” Long governed by entrance examination, the choice of secondary school was now made by the parents. However, performance at the orientation stage—especially in the subjects of German, mathematics, and foreign language (English)—influenced decisions.
In the late 20th century about 25 percent of secondary-school-age children entered the Gymnasium, which, with different academic emphases, remained the successor to its Classical ancestor. Roughly 40 percent attended the nonselective Hauptschule (“main school”), which offered basic subjects to grade 9 or 10 and was followed by apprenticeship with part-time vocational school or by full-time vocational school. Approximately 25 percent attended the Realschule (formerly Mittelschule), which offered academic and prevocational options. It led to vocational school or technical school, which in turn led to commercial, technical, or administrative occupations. The vocational-technical sector was always given careful government and industry attention, and the network included a wide range of methods and content alternatives, with levels up to a university equivalent. All these institutions encompassed general education, theory of the trade or industrial field, and work practice. The schools could be reentered from work and could provide an alternative path to the university.
One of the means of coordinating differences among Land systems was through the Conference of the Cultural Ministers of the states, and one of the important resolutions of this body, in 1973, was for reform of the upper secondary stage. Attention was given to equalizing opportunities at this stage. This affected the Gymnasium by shifting much of the traditional load to the upper level. Although the first stage was still academically demanding, the foreign-language requirement was much more flexible, and many students left for work at the end of the 10th school year. The upper level was required to reach the Abitur, qualifying the student for university entrance. Although the range of subjects was extended, courses were diversified, and final achievement was indicated by a cumulative point system. The upper level of the Gymnasium was characterized by breadth of knowledge at a high intellectual standard, including cultural essentials as well as an academic concentration, and thus still captured the German educational ideal.
Whether due to periodic change, German tradition, or inadequate understanding of the reform process, the educational system had irresistibly returned to basic principles. The incorporation of new alternatives and individual opportunities yielded an open rather than a fundamentally changed system. This may have been the best way for education to meet the major political themes of 20th-century Germany: individual rights as the criterion of policy determination and the European community as the broader context of national development.
The establishment of the Third Republic (1870) brought about the complete renovation of the French schools, in the process of which education became a national enterprise. In 1882 primary education was made compulsory for all children between the ages of 6 and 13. In 1886 members of the clergy were forbidden to teach in the public schools, and in 1904 the teaching congregations were suppressed. France had thus established a national free, compulsory, and secularized system of elementary schooling. (Although secularization was a necessary government strategy, it was also necessary to permit private Catholic schools, and these continued to enroll a significant number of French children.)
In spite of the attempt to unify education through national purpose and centralized means, two parallel systems existed: that of the public elementary schools and higher primary schools and that of the selective, overwhelmingly intellectual secondary lycées and their preparatory schools. The lycées emphasized Classical studies through the study of Greek and Latin. It was not until 1902 that this exclusive emphasis was challenged by a reform promoting the study of modern languages and science and not until the period between World Wars I and II that education was seen to have a vocational function, other than grossly in a social-class sense, and thus to require democratization.
Oct 12, 2022 · 1. The new academic year in Ukraine began in the conditions of a full-scale Russian invasion. Due to the war, hundreds of schools were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of students were forced to leave dangerous areas. Some of the schools now work remotely, the rest continue teaching as usual but under the threat of shelling.
24 Peter Macdonnell, Journal, November 7, 1939, quoted in Gibson, 180. This short essay focuses on education within schools and universities during the Second World War in order to explore the relationship between war and learning. In elementary schools, high schools, and universities, the war affected enrolment, the availability of teachers ...
This incident, as well as the "Dokwerker" strike in Amsterdam of February 1941 (the first ever done during WW2 and the only one of it's kind in the West) and other incidents made it happen that school life was severely interrupted by the end of school year 1940-41 and that schools would close down for increasingly longer periods of time until they were definitively shut down in school year ...
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Dec 8, 2011 · ABSTRACT. This was the first book which globally surveyed the impact of the Second World War on schooling. It offers fascinating comparisons of the impact of total war, both in terms of physical disruption and its effects on the ideology of schooling. By analysing the effects on the education systems of each of the participant nations the ...
