Which brings me to my first question about the role of language education in modern ITTL elite education, particularly that for English, French, German, Latin, and Ancient Greek—what is the nature of it, really? How much of it is functional, you learn it with the intent of becoming conversant in those languages because it will serve you well in your daily life, vice for the cultural value of the languages? I can see arguments for both from your description in my original quoted post. But unlike in a world like today's where the only language anyone learns to get anywhere is English (and which ironically means everyone will read "Great Books" only in translation anyhow), would I be correct in guessing far fewer people learn languages for the joy of reading Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, Ovid, or Thucydides?
It really depends a lot on the career path that is intended. Of course, reading proficiency in five languages is not at all uncommon today in academics. I have four, five if you count Plattdeutsch. It's a matter of priorities.
Realistically, though, teaching five languages at high level will always be reserved to a small number of pupils - usually the gifted and the very wealthy. Which ones they are depends on what you mean to do with them. But having multiple languages is a more important sign of education and status than it is IOTL. Let's say we are looking at German schools ITTL c. 2000, you would have a breakdown that looks like this:
Volksschule/Hauptschule (vocational and artisanal): English and one more language, usually Spanish or French.
Realschule/Realgymnasium (technical and commercial): English, French, one more language as an elective, often Spanish or Latin.
Gymnasium (academic): English, Latin, French or Spanish, often another modern language as an elective
humanistisches Gymnasium (humanities/clerical): Latin, classical Greek, English, French, another language as an elective, often Hebrew or another classical language
Ritterakademie/other private school (elite): English, French, one more modern language, Latin, classical Greek
The levels aimed for also differ radically. A Volksschule or Realschule aims for basic communication capacity, the ability to deal with forms, signs, maybe business correspondence. Gymnasium instils reading capacity, with composition in the core languages. The traditional humanistisches Gymnasium focusaes very strongly in reading capacity at a high level. Traditional elite boarding schools focus on communicative capacity with native speaker instructors and travel as part of the education and always have. This is the true status marker, and no state school, not even the venerable akademische Gymnasien, can match the expense.
On the other point I touch on in the summary, I am also curious where Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Martin Heidegger end up ITTL. There are probably some other notable personalities I've missed but those are the big ones.
I'm not sure. Heidegger will certainly be a very big cheese in the Konservative Revolution, likely against his will (it's not Nazi Germany, he will be able to speak his mind in reasonable safety, and for all his faults he was a smart man with unflattering opinions about absurd pretense). Hans Jonas looks like a good candidate for an academic career. His whole responsibility ethics fits the tail end of Neo-Kantianism of the day. Strauss is really hard to gauge. He could be a darling of the bourgeois right, or fall out of favour fast and completely. His thinking fits their ideas great, but he strikes me as too rigorous a philosopher top feel at home among them. Hannah Arendt has every chance to become a highly respected niche intellectual ITTL, but I can't quite see her in that role. She could well become a public intellectual / commenator. The German publishing world allows for that role.
I also have one other more banal question about the above quote—five languages I think when you get down to it is quite a big courseload for secondary school students! In gymnasia and academies pre-First World War as I understand it, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and native language consumed the bulk of the teaching time, and nearly all other subjects were covered cursorily. With modernized education that I presume is going to devote much larger amounts of class time to the sciences, and the addition of German and English to the standard elite curriculum, where do schools find the time to teach it all? I am particularly interested in this question for ITTL Germany. In modern Germany as I understand it, gymnasium students learn a standard of two foreign languages including English, and the net result is that outside of schools with a classical focus, Latin and Greek are sacrificed.
In modern German Gymnasium, the standard is usually three languages, but the third starts so late any real proficiency is uncommon. Still, ITTL will put greater resources towards language education. It's more important, given the need to read French, English, and German in politics, academia, and higher levels of business. And elite schools always invested very heavily in it (consider the impressive language skills of just about any politician and senior officer in the 1850-1920 timeframe).
The main difference will lie in the proficiency aimed for.