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School Reform in Baden: Edict Issued by Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden (May 13, 1803)

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14.) The Lycei are to consist of five grades and an exempted order, and both the latter order and each of the grades are designated to have a period of two years’ regular stay of the pupils. The grammar schools must certainly feature the same organization, only that the exempted order is left out, whereas the pupils usually need to stay in the highest grade for three years. The pedagogical schools must advance their students so far that they are capable of entering the highest grade of a grammar school as a beginner, just as the Latin schools must advance their pupils so far that they can enter the highest grade of a pedagogical school as beginners or the second highest grade of a grammar school. Under this arrangement, certainly those students of the Latin schools or pedagogical schools, who, for instance, through particular talent on the one hand or particular industry of the teacher on the other advance so far that they are qualified to enter the grammar schools one grade higher, shall not be barred from such higher entry; however, no pupil from such lower institutions of the secondary schools can immediately enroll in university by bypassing the grammar schools or Lycei. Such students must instead have spent three or at least two years at a Lyceum or two and in the best case, one year at grammar school, having put that time to good use.

15.) The curricula in these institutions must definitely be designed uniformly so that in themselves, the Lycei in their segment of grades become increasingly similar with the grammar schools, further the pedagogical schools among themselves, and the Latin schools among themselves, and that throughout, the more restricted of these institutions connects up properly to the higher type. The consequence should be that with respect to a change of the children from one educational institution to another, which occurs not so infrequently due to a transfer of the parents, these pupils can always enter, without any learning gap or delay, another institution at their proportionate level. Therefore, the three ecclesiastical commissions have to maintain mutual agreement concerning the curricula to be selected and followed, immediately submitting their advisory reservations, unanimous or conflicting, to Us for final settlement. In this context, We charge the local Lutheran church council with the initiative of that mutual agreement, since that local institution already features the most substantial manifestation. [ . . . ]

17.) At grammar schools, the foundation of the Greek language and at the Lycei the foundation of the Hebrew language must necessarily be among the subjects of instruction, the former of which has to be used by anyone dedicating time to universities, the latter by the future theologians.

18.) In terms of scientific classes, no greater amount shall be given at the Lycei than general world history, natural history, logic, general grounding in metaphysics, only to the extent that it serves as application and exercise of logic, pure mathematics, grounding in applied mathematics and of physics, as well as an encyclopedic overview of the extent of the individual faculty studies; anything further must be left to academic instruction.

Now with respect to this academic instruction itself, thus

III.) The University of Heidelberg is declared, confirmed, and newly endowed by Us to be the state’s institute of higher learning: to this end

19.) We have now endowed and bestowed that same institution to such an extent that the annual sum of 40,000 guilders [ . . . ] over and above all of its expenses is designated as disposable expenditures of Our general purse and shall be anchored specifically by way of insurance in the revenues of Our Palatinate. We do so since the university has only few sources of income left while having accumulated such substantial debts against these revenues due to the cessation of income from the area on the left bank of the Rhine that the remaining revenues are thereby absorbed and We deem it most expedient to use them for repayment of these debts. [ . . . ].

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