EDUCATIONAL RIVALRIES 409
of the German economic and social systems were “characterized by the
increasing signifi cance of science, research, education, and vocational
training.”^67 The “mastery of the scientifi c-technical revolution” (STR)
was seen as the key to modernization in the GDR.^68 The West German
counterpart to this STR was the “second industrial revolution.” It was
associated with the expectation that economic growth could be planned
with the help of science, which meant that it was possible to ensure that
this process was socially balanced. The challenges of a knowledge-based
society on both sides of the Wall had fed into the conviction that further
expansion of the educational system was necessary, and that it needed to
be brought up to date with the current times.
The SED had already appointed a commission in 1963 that had iden-
tifi ed a number of weaknesses in the educational system, especially with
respect to knowledge of mathematics and natural science.^69 Since school-
ing was a state, not a federal, matter in West Germany, it is diffi cult to
compare curricula of the diff erent states with the centralized curricula of
the East German POS that were introduced in 1959. Generally, East Ger-
man elementary school children (grades 1 to 4) spent more time learning
math than their West German counterparts in the 1980s. In the GDR, they
spent 821 hours studying math, compared to 753 hours in Bavaria and
618 hours in North Rhine Westphalia. Furthermore, they were generally
further along in terms of curricula than West German schoolchildren. For
example, division and multiplication were already being taught in fi rst
grade in the POS.^70
Under Honecker, the notion of the STR lost much of its signifi cance.
The SED regime shifted its focus to the primary goal of “building up a
stock of workers according to plan,”^71 and especially to training well-qual-
ifi ed, highly skilled workers. At the same time, in the early 1970s, the
main goal of many West German educational reformers was to improve
the correlation between schooling and science at all levels. According to
the “structural plan” put out by the German Educational Council in 1970,
which was one of the key documents in the debates over education re-
form, the “conditions of life in modern society demand that teaching and
learning processes become more scientifi c.”^72 It was often said in West
German debates on education at the time that the scientifi c determina-
tion of society (Wissenschaftsbestimmtheit) necessitated “science-based
learning” in schools. Others, however, objected to this dominance of sci-
ence and pleaded for a stronger emphasis on practical experience in the
classroom.^73
The Verwissenschaftlichung of education was one of the main goals
behind the reform of the upper grade levels of the Gymnasium in 1976.^74
But this was also one aspect in which the trajectories of the West and East