46 Kant: A Biographyposition for an unusually long period.^74 Kant learned from Boehm the
basics of "reading, writing, and arithmetic" together with the other chil¬
dren of his neighborhood, but he did not attend this school for long. In the
summer of 1732, at the age of eight, he began to take classes at the Col¬
legium Fridericianum. The story, probably true, is that it was Schulz who first
noticed Kant's great promise and persuaded his parents to send their son
to the Collegium in preparation for a later education in theology. Though
Schulz was not yet director of the school, he already had close connections
to it. Furthermore, he was always interested in recruiting able students.
So, if he noticed that Kant was a gifted child, he would have wanted him
to enter the proper course - that is, the career of a minister in the service
of the church - as soon as possible.^75
The Collegium was, as we have seen already, a Pietistic institution. Con¬
ceived after the Franckeschen Anstalten in Halle, it had two goals. On the
one hand, it wanted to save its charges from "spiritual corruption," and
thus aimed at "implanting righteous Christianity in their hearts while they
were young." On the other hand, it also aimed to improve the "worldly
well-being" of the students by educating them in the humanities as well.^76
The school educated children of both nobility and commoners. Indeed,
its students were being prepared for high office in civil life and the church.
For a commoner like Emanuel, being accepted as a student meant an op¬
portunity for social advancement.
Most of the students lived in the institution itself, but some were al¬
lowed to stay with their parents. Kant belonged to the latter group, even
though he had to walk a long way to school and back.^77 His days were
highly regimented and filled almost exclusively with schoolwork. School
began at 7:00 A.M., and it ended at 4:00 P.M., with a period for lunch be¬
tween 11:00 and 1:00. Classes were held six days a week from Monday to
Saturday. Holidays were very few. There were only a few days off at Easter,
Pentecost, and Christmas, as well as one day after the yearly public exam¬
ination.^78 So Emanuel was gone from home for most of the day, six days a
week, and his homework kept him busy long after he came home. Even on
Sundays he would not have had much time for himself, as he had to attend
church and afterward catechetical exercises. This closely supervised regi¬
men lasted until he was admitted into the University of Königsberg at the
age of seventeen.
Classes were organized differently than they were at most other insti¬
tutions during that period in the sense that the students were placed into