This year, as we enter the last third of the twentieth century, it is possible to discern new educational patterns emerging in Western Europe. This phenomenon is particularly marked in the closing years of academic secondary education-the college-bound stream in the U.S.A., the sixth form in England, and their various Continental equivalents-which have been traditionally concerned with the nurturing of an elite. This paper deals with the trends and tendencies in this vital segment of any educational system. Comparisons are drawn mainly with what is happening in England. If it is view from the bridge it is because England, more than any other country, links the cultural heritage of the Old World with the innovating force of the New. What kind of educational institutions should cater to the academically gifted young person aged between 15 and 19; what curriculum he should follow; and, upon completion of schooling proper, what further institutions he should enter, and upon what conditions: these are some questions that since the mid-fifties have been increasingly raised and now, a decade or so later, answers are beginning to be formulated. The comparative immobility of English thinking is contrasted with the dynamism of France and Sweden, and, to a much lesser extent, Western Germany.' Not that any solution can be definitive, for the speed of technological change precludes any such rigidity. This is particularly true as regards the structure of the types of institution designed to receive the academically gifted adolescent at age 15 or 16. An exception is West Germany, which remains elitist in its educational models. In the early nineteenth century the propaedeutical functions of the old facultas artium, hitherto within the ambit of the university, had been transferred to the upper grades-the Oberstufe--of the Gymnasium, to which they are still firmly attached in a seven-, or more usually, a nine-year course. This system persisted after the war, because it represented a link with a pre-Nazi tradition that had withstood the test of time. The Nazis, with their stress on the Deutsche Oberschule, had degraded the Humboldtian Gymnasium to the lowly status of a special form-Sonderform-of the secondary school. The clinging to an old tradition was also a reaction both against the effort of the Occupying Powers to impose a universal comprehensive highschool pattern, and against the Einheitschule that became the norm in East Germany. In countries, however, where comprehensive education has been introduced the academic secondary school has been truncated at the top. The motives for such a radical change in structure have been mixed. The new lycee in France, with a three-year course from 15 to 18, follows ideally on the polyvalent college of secondary education. The reform reaches back to the LangevinWallon Plan,2 which took its stand on social justice, affirming that the ideal was only realizable if pupils were under continuous guidance and all educational doors were kept open for as long as possible. The transformed Swedish gymnasiet, fully operative as from 1966, has also a three-year course, from 16 to 19, likewise following on a comprehensive school, but one of nine years' duration.3 In a social democracy such as Sweden the democratic impulsion to reform has also not been absent, but it has been reinforced by psychological findings that theoretical and practical aptitudes are not antimonies but rather dichotomies; a definitive bifurcation between them does not occur in the individual until middle adolescence. In England, as comprehensive secondary education gradually becomes accepted, the principle of the twoor threeyear sixth form college is gaining ground,
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Jun 1, 1968
Edward Frankel 
Open Access