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Educational phenomena and child development fascinate many disciplines for which they offer a tremendous field of experimentation and application. More than a hundred years ago, when educational sciences adopted the main institutional emblems of an academic discipline (chairs, diploma, laboratories, scientific network etc.), they obviously vacillated between the dream of becoming a unified science (as pedology testifies), and the claim of a rewarding pluridisciplinarity that could synergise all disciplines concerned with the child and with education. This paper asserts that the issue of pluridisciplinarity is constitutive for the development of sciences of education whose object is ever coveted by other disciplines. The first section adopts the point of view of a social history and, on the basis of voluminous archives, it describes the main lines of the shaping of this pluridisciplinary field in Geneva, representative of that which also occurs elsewhere. In the second part, it presents a more theoretical reflection on the tensions and pitfalls of what we call the "process of disciplinarisation" of educational sciences, outlining the characteristics of this constitutively pluridisciplinary field. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper suggests explanations for the enduring nature of the tripartite system of secondary education in Germany and the failure to develop the comprehensive school (Gesamtschule) over a long period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks into the Moravian boarding schools in Neuwied/Rhine, Germany. Discussion of the schools' services offered to students; Role of religious instruction in Moravian education; Introduction of gymnastics to the school curriculum.

This article presents information on adult education in German universities. In Germany ,the development of the university into a State institution was an historical necessity. They did not spring up spontaneously but were founded by the governments. Later, however, in the same work when they entered upon the paths of scientific research under the leadership of a long line of celebrated men, the universities gradually ceased to be mere State institutions for the training of officials and grew further and further away from bureaucratic control. On the whole, academic liberty was never greater, least of all in the days of the medieval corporations of scholars when the pressures to which the thought of the time was subjected by the church was still further increased by the jealousy of the corporative bodies. Most other authorities also seemed to consider that on the whole, the German universities, despite their official links with the State, have exercised a very considerable degree of independence.

The article provides information on the literature related to the history of German education. German education, like any object of study, must assume a shape in order to convey a meaning. This must be ample enough to contain some information about the entire content of the subject and yet be so designed as to provide special accommodation for those aspects of it which are of particular concern to contemporary students. The literary material for study has been arranged in four categories: introductory reading in English and German educational classics; centres of documentation in Germany and England and some useful reference works; books about German education before 1945; and Books about German education after 1945. Some of the books listed are "The Origins of Modern Germany," by G. Barraclough; "German History, Some New German Views," edited by H. Kohn; German Education: Past and Present," by F. Paulsen; "The Educational Philosophy of National Socialism," by G.F. Kneller; and "Zur Geschichte der Berufsschularbeit," by H. Helbert.

This article focuses on the contributions of philosopher and educator Michael Sadler in the field of German studies, considering some of his literary works and biographical sources. As an enterprising undergraduate, Sadler went to Heidelberg, Germany, to learn German while teaching classics in an English boys' school. In I 884 he made the acquaintance of Joseph Wright, then assistant master on the staff of Neuenheim College in Heidelberg. In the decade before the outbreak of the first world war it is difficult not to become swamped by the multiplicity of references that Sadler made to German experience on all manner of occasions. Three pieces of work only are selected for mention, as being outstanding studies: in 1908, "Continuation Schools in England and Elsewhere" was published; in 1910 a trenchant historical analysis comparing German and English educational development in the nineteenth century was included in the volume of "Germany in the Nineteenth Century"; and in May 1912 Sadler lectured on "England's Debt to German Education in Frankfurt-am-Main," a strikingly informed address of which a reprint exists. During the 1930s Sadler did a good deal of book reviewing and there are some notable commentaries on writings like Leonard Woolf's "The Intelligent Man's Way to Prevent War" and Vernon Bartlett's "Nazi Germany Explained."