Нumboldt school reform as a standard of social strategy (experience of retrospective project analysis)

Abstract

The author analyzes the history of the «Great Prussian reforms»by Stein-Heidenberg in 1807– 1814 in general and the large-scale reform of secondary and higher education (the Humboldt reform) in particular, from the standpoint of modern practice of strategizing and project activity. As a research task, the author sees the identification of systemic features of Prussian reforms as social projects and the search for invariants that allow them to be compared with modern social projects. A brief overview of the history of the Stein-Heidenberg reforms and the Humboldt reforms allows the author to identify certain systemic features and define these reforms as social projects in the modern sense of the term. The author does a caveat that this approach is to a large extent comparativistic, since a lot of objects of different quality that existed at different times and under different historical circumstances are compared. That is why attention is primarily drawn to the comparison of the circumstances in which reforms are carried out and the degree of their implementation as circumstances change. The author considers the medium- and long-term results of Humboldt»s reforms and concludes that, despite the changing circumstances and the fairly rapid solution of a number of tasks for which the reforms were initiated, changes in the education system and society as a whole continued for a long time. This indicates their inherent internal logic and, consequently, their internal integrity and consistency. The author briefly discusses the reasons for the unsuccessful experience of applying the Prussian education system in other countries and concludes that it is possible and even necessary to systematically apply a significant part of such experience, especially in its design part, due to the significant qualitative coincidence of circumstances and the problem field.