THE   STATE   OF  THE   SCHOOLS  BEFORE   PETER   THE   GREAT.
The absence of specialization in education was, moreover, no defect. It was always and everywhere the same: first developed educational institutions with a general course, and afterwards such as prepared for one or another of the professions. In the West also in the 17th century, professional schools did not yet exist. The Russian school of that time cannot be blamed for this, but on account of the onesided tendency of the instruction. Mathematics and natural science were not yet acknowledged to have any educational importance. Arithmetic, to which a very modest place was given in the course, was regarded mainly from the practical point of view. This «wisdom of ciphers and accounts)) was recommended for study, because by its aid «every buyer or seller may right conveniently find the number of every articles Of the method of object lessons, of the acquaintance with the nature of things from the things themselves, and not from books, of the necessity of natural development, — nothing at all was yet known by us at that time, when the works of the founder of the science of education Jan Amos Komensky were already translated not only into 12 European languages but even into some of the languages of Asia.
The effect of such onesidedness in the system of education was necessarily reflected in practice. In the West also, as we have had occasion to mention, special schools did not yet exist in the  17th century.
But the German schools of that time, although they were far from attaining the ideal set up by educational science,  yet opened  a comparatively wide field
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