Tutorials at the Wilhelmstein
An eighteenth-century experiment in open-ended professional education
The following excerpt from “The Education of the Enlightened Soldier” describes the tutorial system of a truly remarkable school, a military academy that provided its cadets with a taste for self-directed learning.
“When not performing their purely military duties, the students at Wilhelmstein followed an academic curriculum that made extensive use of what would now be called the “tutorial method.” Each of the tutors — who were chosen from among the “cleverest” of the officers of the Artillery and Engineer Corps — would guide the students in their charge through a program of assignments. These, depending on the subject, might take the form of essays to write, maps or diagrams to draw, translations to make, mathematical problems to solve, or theorems to prove. To explain new assignments, review work submitted, and evaluate progress, the tutors met with their students on a regular basis. Ideally, a student would attend these meetings in the company of a fellow student who was working through the same series of assignments at the same time. However, as the student body was small and composed of young men who had begun their studies at many different times, and with varying degrees of preparation, there were many occasions when tutors met with individual students.
Solitary study occupied four of the six days of the standard academic week at Wilhelmstein. In particular, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays were set aside for meetings with tutors and the completion of projects assigned by tutors. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, students gathered in the library of the fortress, where they divided their time between group classes and self-directed study. According to Count William’s initial conception of the academic calendar, the group classes were to take place in the morning, leaving the afternoons free for the perusal of books, instruments, manuscripts, maps, and models. However, surviving descriptions of particular periods of instruction indicate that some group classes were held in the afternoon.
The topics for tutorials and group classes, as well as the materials made avail- able for self-directed study, belonged chiefly to the realm of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Even the study of living languages, which would today fall into the category of the humanities, consisted largely (though not exclusively) of making translations from works in French and English on such subjects as ballistics, shipbuilding, mathematics, and siegecraft. Moreover, while Count William charged tutors to view the curriculum he prescribed as nothing more than a starting point for a broader exploration of the subjects in question, he also forbade the devotion of time to the teaching of such mainstays of Enlightenment education as philosophy, metaphysics, and rhetoric.”
Self-directed study and occasional discussions with "tutors" seems like a model that could be beneficially applied to lifelong learning.