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338
IV. EDUCATION AND MENTAL CULTURE.
In former days public education was intended first and foremost for
the training of priests and State officials, and in general for the
educational needs of the higher classes. The question of the organization of the
"learned school" was then the leading educational problem. According
as the democratic spirit has permeated society, and the influence of the
lower ranges of the community on the administration of the affairs
of the country has increased, the attention devoted b3* the State to
education has extended even beyond the wide field of general national
education. To afford the great majority of the Swedish people better
facilities for participating in the benefits of intellectual culture is simply
a link in the general social movement for uplifting the people to a higher
plane, economically, morally, and intellectually. Much has been already
accomplished in this regard, and the general level of education in Sweden
may be claimed to be a very high level. To continue along the course
thus embarked on, while duly providing for the interests of higher
education, seems likely to be the distinguishing feature of educational policy
in the days to come.
In olden days, when children grow up under the parents’ eyes and
shared their labours, an ample share in their up-bringing was committed
to the home. Owing to the new social conditions that followed in the
train of the industrial revolution, the importance of the home as an
educational factor has declined, and the demands made on the educational
work of the schools has correspondingly increased. To refashion and
expand the school system so that the school shall be able to cope with
these new demands, will doubtless be one of the most important
educational problems in times to come.
Education in earlier times was chiefty a matter of learning by rote
and of book-conning, and was imbued as a whole with an abstract and
arid formal character.. The realism that has penetrated into so many
other spheres of culture has also revolutionized education, which now
aims far more than before at self-activity, at direct observation, and
concrete practical application of theoretical knowledge. This
transformation is characteristic of all education in Sweden, of general
education as well as of special training, of education in the lowest stages
as well as in the highest. It may be assumed that the reform movements
in education will aim at continued development along the same lines, and
that it is in this way that the manifold demands for a prcwtical education
will be satisfied, as far as it is feasible, and as far as it is right, that those
demands should be satisfied.
Twice in the history of education has Sweden made contributions of
worldwide importance to educational reform; one of them the Ling system
of gymnastics, the other Salomon’s method of pedagogic sloyd, both of
which attest the great interest that Sweden has displayed in physical
education.
Higher intellectual culture is fostered and cherished by the Swedish
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