The Politics of Fin-de-Siècle Physics Pedagogy in Europe [1]
by Kathryn M. Olesko
Georgetown University
Just as our postmodern era has generated questions concerning the composition of
curricula and the relevance of the disciplines, so did the modern age circa 1900. Among
European nations, Germany witnessed the sharpest challenges to the secondary school
curriculum. England had no fixed state system of secondary education, and hence no fixed
curricula. British educational responses to the increasing pressures of modernity were sporadic
and amorphous. France had enjoyed relative leadership in secondary school physics education
between the revolutions of 1789 and 1830, but her supremacy waned with her economic profile
as the century wore on. Germany's secondary school system, especially the elite Gymnasium, or
classical secondary school, had since the 1830s secured a stable and respected educational,
social, and political mission within German society.
Since the 1830s in Prussia, the 1850s in Bavaria, and around the same decades in the other
smaller German states, physics was the jewel in the crown of science instruction, the capstone of
several years of study in the natural sciences. Strongly bound to mathematics classes since the
1830s, to simple exercises in precision measurement since the 1850s, and to simple laboratory
exercises (where they could be offered) after 1870, physics courses represented the epitome of
instruction in the natural sciences. Staffed by teachers trained in both physics and mathematics at
the university--all of whom were certified by the state and capable of independent original work,
some of whom had actually earned a doctorate--these courses drew their intellectual inspiration
from novel university courses in physics which only recently had given pedagogical shape to the
discipline of physics. Although the state exercised a high degree of control over certification and
the curriculum, teachers nonetheless had ample opportunity for professional creativity,
autonomy, and identity in their workaday world through congresses, associational life, summer
school and vacation refresher courses, and several journals dedicated to curricular and
professional issues in secondary school physics instruction.
Yet precisely that freedom made physics teachers and physics courses vulnerable to political,
economic, and social trends, although not to the degree found in the United States, for instance,
where physics courses seemed to absorb cultural concerns more readily. So when Kaiser
Wilhelm II spoke before the Prussian Ministry of Religion, Education, and Medicine on 4
December 1890 and complained that secondary schools had failed to adjust to an industrialized
Germany (and hence were questionable ballasts in maintaining Germany's world position), had
with impunity contributed to the overworking of students, and had obstructed the development of
a German national spirit by overvaluing Greek and Roman culture, he tarnished the polished
glimmer of a curriculum long held in high regard by the economic and cultural elite of German
society. Yet it was not only the Kaiser's remarks that had instigated a reconsideration of the
secondary school curriculum, including the role of physics in it, between 1890 and the First
World War.
Although the problem of modernity, and especially individual identity within it, had been an
issue since the philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel took it up earlier in the century, strains in
German society, politics, economics and culture had grown exponentially since national
unification in 1871. A classical secondary school curriculum steeped in Greek and Latin
appeared antiquated in a highly industrialized state. Urbanization had highlighted the importance
of practical knowledge of health, fitness, and hygiene. The growth of socialism and the working
class threatened traditional cultural markers of social definition among the middle and upper
classes. Economic growth generated criticisms of consumerism and materialism, while
unexpected economic depression in the 1870s raised questions about the stability of capitalism
and persistence of progress. And finally national unification (coupled with competitive
imperialism) made more politically pressing the construction of an identity based on indigenous
traits rather than imported ones, including those imported from ancient Greece and Rome.
Of relatively small concern to physics teachers in the fin-de-siècle were the remarkably rich
discoveries between Maxwell and Einstein. German secondary school teachers were
uncharacteristically suspicious of teaching recent research results despite the overwhelmingly
theoretical and mathematical orientation of their courses. Although their students were older and
more mature--physics courses were for 17 to 19 year olds in the upper classes of the
Gymnasium--and had been trained in mathematics up through a first course in calculus, physics
teachers believed that theory and reality (or perhaps better put: image and fact) in recent
discoveries were insufficiently distinguished for students to understand the difference between
them. Consequently not only were recent discoveries concerning the atom ignored, but also the
work of Maxwell, Hertz, Boltzmann and others--even at the simplest level of expression--was
deemed too uncertain and perhaps too abstract for Gymnasium students. The decision not to rush
to include these subjects in the physics curriculum was tied to time and circumstance; for it was
of a piece with the more general political challenges of the late nineteenth century.
Between 1890 and 1914 curricular discussions in physics dealt with the politics of modernity,
specifically with the mediating role of science and technology in transforming life. "Politics"
here means politics in the traditional, classical sense, as the proper order of human relationships,
as Plato had addressed the issue in the Republic. This sense of politics is embodied in the
question, "how do we want to live?", both as professionals and members of society. For physics
teachers this question embodied, in turn, three others: (1) How should industry and the economy
affect life? (2) How should risk and uncertainty be viewed? and (3) What kinds of values should
guide actions in daily life? The first concerned the role of technological considerations in physics
pedagogy; the second, the role of quantification; and the third, the degree to which ethical
considerations relevant to daily life could and should be a part of physics teaching. At congresses
and in journals, physics teachers addressed these issues.
How should industry and the economy affect life?
Traditionally technological considerations had been absent from secondary school
physics instruction. The school system in Germany had been set up to create and maintain social
distinctions, and technology was not identified strongly with the middle and upper classes.
Schools other than the classical Gymnasium, "modern" schools designed to teach practical
subjects and take care of the technical needs of the economy, catered to a different audience. But
that audience had trebled between 1885 and 1895 to nearly 7,000 students. Furthermore,
Germany's rapid and successful industrialization, the mass production of consumer items which
had created a strong consumer culture, the growth of materialism, the national imperative to
maintain an international competitive edge in the market place, the construction of the naval
fleet, and finally the infiltration into daily life of machinery made it impossible around 1890 to
maintain a hard and fast distinction between who should and should not be learning about
technology. The press of these concerns did not, however, lead to the direct introduction of
technological subjects into the curriculum, but rather to issues that compelled the student to think
about how to cope with technology, and to do so in a way that preserved a cultural outlook
already in place, one which preserved the status quo.
A key issue here was how to understand the concept of work, which was both a physical and a
socioeconomic concept. The concept of work was immediately relevant to the life of the student
due to the overburdening crisis, but it also had been a contentious political concern since
discussions on the value of labor, especially proletariat labor, in the 1840s. With the reality of the
working class and its political power no longer a hypothetical matter in the 1890s, physics
teachers believed that a respectful attitude toward work--the overburdening crisis
notwithstanding--was needed to maintain social harmony between the classes. So to the extent
that work and the material technologies that illustrated it were taught, they served partly to
change social attitudes and behavior. Physics instruction, intended to instill guidelines for proper
social behavior, thus had an ethical dimension.
Technologies were also introduced into physics instruction as a means to cope with novelty
while preserving traditional values. One important traditional value was the preservation of an
appreciation for theory, and so for the ideal. So steam engines were used to convey theoretical
ideas about energy, while the telephone could teach principles of electromagnetic induction. This
emphasis on the theoretical was an expression of the superiority of the spiritual over the material.
Physics teachers could thus claim that physics was not materialistic and so it did not contribute to
the rampant materialism of the day. In emphasizing the cognitive and mental advantages of
physics, instructors could then both treat contemporary technological issues but also preserve
older idealistic values. The result was not a wholesale transformation of the curriculum, but one
which integrated and accommodated novelty.
How should risk and uncertainty be viewed?
Until the school reforms of the fin-de-siècle, a mathematically oriented physics was
strong. Physics teachers generally had strong training in mathematics. So much was mathematics
held up as a model of certainty that experiment was often neglected, producing what was dubbed
a "chalk physics." One teacher explained: "It was so easy to develop a formula from a
mathematical physics textbook without experiment. The experiment was described and fantasy
did the rest." This avoidance of experiments did not, however, extend to a ban on precision
measurements, which were generally highly valued at the end of the century but were not
presented as an example of positivistic thinking. Instead, with precision measurement teachers
were able to introduce the notion of uncertainty through crude methods of error analysis and to
convey, as best as could be done on this basis, that truth in physics was not absolute, but only
approximate. Still, the mathematical ideal reigned.
Around the turn of the century, though, even that kind of epistemological accommodation was
not enough. The anti-rational sentiment that was part of the critique of modernity, made popular
especially by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as an anti-intellectualism that shunned
mathematical thinking and the growing realization that Enlightenment reason and progress had
not fulfilled their promise made certainty, even approximate certainty, very difficult to believe in.
Moreover, probability was much more pervasive in the everyday. Economic cycles were
unpredictable; pensions, insurance, and interest were all part of life's planning; and the lotto
made chance known to everyone. How then was one to cope with risk and uncertainty?
Here physics teachers met the limits of their own ability to accommodate their subjects to the
reality and the dangers of a world whose inner operating principles and assumptions were rapidly
changing. One solution--that physics teachers not be trained so deeply in mathematics--was
institutionally impossible for the time being due to the structure of state teaching examinations as
well as to the character of university training in physics. A second proposal--to introduce the
elements of probability calculus and statistics into the upper levels of the secondary school
curriculum--seemed more likely. But the new state curriculum of 1892 included the teaching of
quadratic equations with unknowns, logarithmic tables, and some calculus, but no probability or
anything that would aid in the quantitative assessment of chance, despite arguments that such
subjects were needed to prevent the population from buying so many lottery tickets. Germany
was not then, nor was it for a long time, a culture of risk and chance. A final proposal was aimed
more to satisfy those who found too much mathematics in the curriculum than those who wanted
risk understood, and that proposal was to replace precision measurement with experiment.
Precision measurement at the secondary school level was never done well, so the result never
matched reality due to the simplifying assumptions that had to be made. Critics viewed precision
merely as "a series of decimal places" that may be accurate only to the second place. Critics
furthermore believed that in present circumstances "the notion of mathematical accuracy must
undergo a thorough reevaluation".
The 1892 state curriculum thus placed experiment centrally in the physics curriculum. Framers of
that reform document emphasized the inductive thinking cultivated by experiment, rather than
the deductive thinking fostered by mathematics as a concession to the psychology of how a child
actually learned. Was precision lost entirely? A curriculum that had, at so many levels, stressed
precision had not, in fact, been totally transformed. The quantitative precision of the past might
have been excised, but in its place came a qualitative, visual precision. Experiment now required
a different form of precision, precision in verbal expression, as well as a visual precision in
observation (involving not merely the eye but other higher cognitive powers) and in drawing, in
which now not only children but also mathematicians must be trained. Consistent with this
transformation in the curricular role of precision was one that affected mathematics; for the
forms of mathematics that were most acceptable were those that were visualizable. Preferred
mathematical subjects for advanced secondary school students were thus astronomical geometry,
geometric projection theory, and geodesy--all subjects with strong graphical components. So
even though risk assessment in daily life might have remained problematic, the 1892 reforms
were nonetheless effective in initiating a change in how physics could be used in daily life. In the
transition from precision measurement to experiment, the purpose of physics instruction became
less to train the mind than the senses. Precise observation and drawing cultivated a certain type
of visual acuity, and so helped to create a culture more visually oriented. Truth was now
qualitatively approximate and precise.
What kinds of values should guide actions in daily life?
In its concerns for technology and risk, curricular reforms in physics broached questions
of the politics of daily life, especially the social question of how to view the self and others in the
midst of rapid industrialization. Take the concept of work, for instance. In addition to inculcating
a respect for work, the study of work could be used, some believed, to convince students to reject
the ideas of Karl Marx (he did not understand the concept of work properly), and so to reject the
political manifestation of his ideas, socialism or social democracy. The result: through the proper
study of the concept of work (in a physics course), one could help to preserve private property, a
cornerstone of the state. Physics courses could thus function as bulwarks protecting both the
population from undesirable political and social tendencies and the state from threatening
instabilities.
Over the course of the nineteenth century various subjects were considered ethically important in
the curriculum. For most of the century, the study of Greek and Latin were thought to provide
models for life. But in the wake of the Kaiser's December 1890 speech, the tide shifted in favor
of history, especially German history, whose strategic curricular position was secured finally in
the 1892 curricular reform. Physics instructors used the opportunity for reform to speak in favor
of the ethical value of their own subject. In their view, physics instruction contributed to an
"inner education" (innerliche Bildung), a phrase that made a direct connection to discourse of the
early nineteenth century, as well as to the social status quo. The rigor of physics was, in their
view, "to a high degree ethical" because it contributed to a "sharp self-control" wherein the
sharpness of thinking led one to the "right decision", and hence to the proper moral life.
Moreover, physics instruction taught the "authority of law" which diffused "the pressure of
opinion". So what one learned about controversy, debate, and intellectual closure in physics
helped one to assess the truth value of pronouncements of opinion in civil society and the public
sphere and made one less susceptible to passing political fashion.
*****
The politics of fin-de-siècle physics pedagogy was a politics of vision. In addressing the issues
that they did, curricular reforms in physics contributed to a vision of the material and social
worlds. Physics teachers before the First World War sought not only to educate the mind, but
also the senses. To select a sense, imbue it with epistemological superiority over other senses,
and then to shape a vision and control its transmission were all exercises of power. Teachers
hoped to design physics instruction so that it would manage how a student "saw" or "viewed" the
physical and social worlds: how to organize them; how to interpret them in a whole system, in a
world view; how to discriminate what was relevant and what was not; how to decide what has to
be seen accurately, and what could be viewed with a cursory glance. It is significant to note that
during this period, the branch of physics regarded as having the highest agreement between
theory and experiment (or measurement) was not mechanics, but rather optics. As far as the
purpose of physics instruction was concerned, means and ends were thus in perfect harmony. The
hierarchy of the senses matched the hierarchy of topics in physics. It is also interesting to note
that the emphasis on vision as a managing or a coping strategy was also present in other
disciplines. This was true especially in the descriptive natural sciences such as biology and
zoology where accurate visualization and organization in a coherent schema were crucial to
understanding the interlocking of the natural environment with economic life. Through
instruction in the natural sciences, vision thus became the key sense for interpreting social and
material reality at the end of the century.
The important questions to ask of these curricular reforms are: Who controlled the content and
structure of the defining vision of reality? How successful were they in disseminating it? All
science instruction negotiates, manages, structures issues in daily life. Eugenics, for instance,
entered daily life by way of hygiene in biology classes in the late nineteenth century. No science
was more successful in restructuring interpersonal relations than eugenics. Physics was also used
to structure daily life insofar as reformers used its curriculum to configure how the material and
social worlds should be viewed. Yet the success of physics teachers between 1890 and 1914 was
only partial. They failed to grasp the full depth and intensity of the issues confronting them.
Their solutions were overwhelmingly accommodationist in that they preserved large parts of
traditional frameworks. Their success aside, their public pronouncements between 1890 and
1914 reveal how and to what degree their discipline was interwoven with political, economic,
and social issues, and in turn how they cast the role of physics in terms of contemporary needs.
Their results were not permanent. In 1914 and again in 1933 the politics of physics pedagogy
would change again when, to varying degrees, technology and the natural sciences would
become instruments of the state and society in different ways.
__________________
[1] This lecture is drawn from work-in-progress on physics pedagogy in Germany during the
nineteenth century. This section on the politics of physics pedagogy is based primarily on
congresses and journals of secondary school teachers of physics (and also other natural sciences),
especially the Zeitschrift für mathematischen und naturwissenschaften Unterricht and the
Unterrichtsblätter für Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften between 1890 and 1914. On the
politics of American physics pedagogy during the same period, see: Kathryn M. Olesko,
"German Models, American Ways: The 'New Movement' Among American Physics Teachers,
1905-1909," in German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917, ed. Henry Geitz,
Jürgen Heideking, & Jurgen Herbst (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 129-153.
