A long-ago educational ‘reopening ’ to be inspired by

Schools have been open for a few weeks now, and we’re seeing the mixed results of our experiment in pandemic-style education. Public and private schools and colleges have had successes and failures. Many (if not most) schools will be continually modifying their pandemic plans as we scramble through the school year. The jury ’s still out and will be for a long time. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Except…

When Nazi Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, much of Europe lay in physical and organizational ruin, including school systems. Germany was occupied by the U.S., the U.K., France, and the U.S.S.R. In the U.s.-occupied zone of southern Germany, about 2 million school children had seen the close of their 194445 school year shattered. Their prospect of attending school in the fall of 1945 seemed a foolish dream. They saw broken and scattered families; most teachers fired (since they were Nazis); most schoolbooks gone (since they were full of Nazi propaganda); and destroyed and damaged school buildings.

Yet on Oct. 1, 1945 — less than five months later — two million German children in the U.S. zone began another school year, with new, non-nazi teachers and schoolbooks, new and repaired school buildings, and an

entirely new curriculum.

In a superhuman effort, the education division of the U.S. Office of Military Government had completely erased the German educational system, rebuilt it from scratch and had it ready to go on Day One.

A crash program to find or train new, non-nazi teachers was launched. With few jobs left anywhere, many Germans were more than willing to become teachers, and American teachers hastily trained them in the “new” concepts of democracy and racial equality.

The Americans destroyed all Nazi textbooks. American and non-nazi German teachers rolled up their sleeves and began writing new ones (in German, of course), while the Education Division made plans for printing and distribution.

Thousands of wrecked school buildings were rebuilt or repaired, as swastikas, images of Hitler and other Nazi emblems were removed. Many schoolchildren worked while their classrooms were built around them.

Teaching plans had to undo the Nazi principles and ideals that had been drummed into schoolchildren for a dozen years. The ideas that had to be overcome included the belief that war was the most noble profession and that most nationalities, races, and religions were inferior to those of Germany.

While all this was going on, the Education Division was purging Hitler’s “Mein Kampf ” and all other Nazi books and pamphlets, as well as magazines, plays, films, newspapers, and music. Bookstores and libraries, now with vast areas of empty shelves, were slowly refilled by whatever could be scrounged from attics and dumps. The very book titles burned by the Nazis in the 1930s began appearing in Germany once again.

When the new school year began, much was not ready, but the American occupiers were in full swing rebuilding, rethinking, and reteaching. German schoolchildren began working with strange new books and teachers. Some grumbled, but the new ideas slowly took hold.

Seventy-five years later, the German educational system is one of the world’s finest.

U.S. Army Lt. Julian Bach, Jr., who spent six months in Germany after the war, later wrote that “to have accomplished most of this between V-E Day and Oct. 1 is a record of which Americans should be proud.”

Perhaps our super-busy educators can take some inspiration from these events of 75 years ago. At least they don’t have to translate everything into German.