SWITZERLAND.

By PETER H. PEARSON,

Division of Foreign Educational System, Bureau of Education.

GENERAL CONDITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS.

Switzerland has an area of only a little over 15,900 square miles, a population of about three and one-half millions, but 25 distinct political units-Cantons each virtually autonomous in the control of its schools. There is no Federal educational board to issue plans, decrees, letters, or special instruction tending to unify the system. Under this freedom of development the schools have assumed their character in accordance with the language, religion, race, industries, and historical traditions that prevail in the several Cantons. The resulting variety in organization and methods makes it impossible to give a general account of the schools equally applicable to all parts of the country; hence, features that may be regarded as fairly typical will be sketched from reports coming from specific localities, as Bern, Basel, or Zürich.

The Federal regulations that the Cantons have in common provide for obligatory attendance, free tuition, and, to some extent, free instruction material during a period designated by each Canton, optional attendance at instruction in religion, participation in required gymnastics, uniform entrance examination for students of medicine. The Federal Union also contributes to the support of all primary schools; it prohibits the employment of children of school age in the factories; and, finally, it imposes a uniform educational test on the recruits that each year enroll for service.

The annual recruit examinations have a decided educational significance. On a fixed day of the year, after the young man reaches his nineteenth birthday, he is required to report to the office of his home Canton, where he is examined by a board of health, a board on gymnastics and physicial training, and an educational board. In gymnastics the examination consists of lifting, running, and jumping. In reading the requirement is correct enunciation and emphasis, with satisfactory reproduction of a selection as regards content; in composition a theme is required, correct, or almost so, in arrangement and details of form; in arithmetic the four elements, with integral numbers and fractions, the metric system, proportion, per

centage, and interest, are included; the test comprises also the history, geography, and constitution of Switzerland. The outcome of this examination will determine whether the man is to be accepted for immediate service in a military unit or whether he is to be assigned for special service, including attendance at a school, to remedy the inadequacies revealed in the examination. The final result is published by the statistical bureau automatically assigning to each Canton the rank held by its schools, with the consequent suggestion for competitive endeavor.

Though it has been objected that the procedure is not a satisfactory touchstone whereby to ascertain the comparative standing of the Cantons, for communal ambition may be tempted to establish circumscribed courses narrowly adapted with a view to the tests, yet some positive advantages are undeniable. It brings all young men together on the same plane of personal worth and human equality, disregarding the distinctions by which they had become segregated-shopkeeper and assistant, teacher and pupil, minister and layman, capitalist and peasant. Again, each commune has thereby been spurred on to see that its compulsory attendance laws were strictly enforced, and also that voluntary as well as obligatory continuation schools were established. The examinations are, moreover, conducted under circumstances adapted strongly to impress each young man with the sense of personal responsibility. To acquit himself well intellectually at the time he enrolls under the colors and takes the oath of service is in itself a distinction; to fail and to be placed under instruction for delinquents is here closely connected with failure in duty to one's country.

In regard to the diversity among the schools, it is apparent mainly in the outer form and organization. The obligatory period varies between six and eight years, but Cantons with the shorter period have generally a form of compensation in obligatory continuation schools of from two to three years. The latter, again, differ with respect to courses given and the general trend of their work. In some communes they supplement the instruction of the folkschools by carrying the subjects of these to fuller completion; in others, new subjects are taken up with the purpose of preparing pupils for the trades. Even within the same Canton local individuality asserts itself by departure from the cantonal type program. For example, an hour-and-subject schedule was adopted in Zürich in 1912 to continue in force seven years, but some communes in the Canton adopted different schedules which were supposed to be in closer accord with their own civic needs and with the psychology of their pupils. The hours of the day and the free afternoons-generally two each week—and also the vacation periods were variously distributed. This departure from the official

type, accepting the official program as suggestive rather than prescriptive, is a distinctive mark of the progressive trend throughout the country.

The age of admission and the length of term fixed for the infant schools differ considerably, the German Cantons receiving children at a later age than the French. The period comprised in the primary school varies a good deal, ranging from six to nine years; the period of the higher grade schools (Secundarschulen) varies from two to five years. In consequence these continue from the fourth, fifth, or sixth year of the primary. The concluding years of the latter run parallel with the beginning years of the former, giving rise to a duplication which, as in Basel, it is attempted to obviate by consolidating the two into one school unit. The communes exercise great freedom in deciding how the preparatory work shall be done, how to supplement the work of the folkschool, whether by schools continuing in trades and specialties or by those straight in the line of progress toward the gymnasium and the university.

The middle schools comprise a number of institutions variously named as gymnasia, colleges, teachers' training schools, girls' high schools, technical schools, agricultural schools. They do not fix any one year as the time of conjunction with the higher grade schools. The one characteristic they have in common is that they prepare their pupils for the university and hence usually retain them until the time for admission, i. e., to the age of 18 or 19. An instance of their diversity is seen in the gymnasium at Basel, which has an eightyear course, receiving pupils at the age of 10 and permitting them to enter directly from the primary, without attendance at a higher grade school. At Berne the course is eight and one-half years; at Zürich pupils enter at the age of 12 and continue for six and onehalf years; the technical school at Zürich has a course of four and one-half years, receiving pupils`at 14 or 15 and continuing from the second or third year of the higher-grade school.1

The flexibility in the scheme of articulation between school types of different degrees of advancement is due to the fact that the schools articulate from the bottom up. The local needs of separate cantons, with diverse industries and educational aims, have given rise to schools varying in aims and length of periods, and with these the advanced institutions make such connection as they can.

Closely concerned with this interrelation is the problem of the uniform school (Einheitschule), which here has a significance different from that of other countries. Like those in most other countries of Europe, the Swiss educators recognize the importance of adjusting the general school plans so as to avoid divisions due to 1 From Special Report to the Ecclesiastical and Educational Department of Norway.

social cleavage, but they also call attention to other factors of the uniform school which in the general discussion are often obscured. Two conditions in the life of a child, both complicated by the social status of its parents, call for adaptation of the general school plans: (1) The demand which requires a definite course of training for a chosen calling-commercial, trade, industrial, or professional; (2) the selection of a calling according to the child's endowments. The Swiss believe that the child's endowments should first be ascertained and then its calling chosen, but in the deliberations among European educators the latter consideration mainly has been heeded. In dealing with the social aspects of the problem the political advancement of the country helps to eliminate such handicap as may depend upon the status of a pupil in society.

Even a cursory view of the school system reveals a close interaction between the schools and society. Society has demanded that every individual be given the amplest opportunity; that the schools encourage individual initiative, that they teach cooperative effort, that they deal with the industries, and, in general, that they show how each individual pupil can be fitted for the best service. How the schools have responded can be seen in what Switzerland has achieved.

PRACTICAL TREND OF THE SCHOOL WORK.

Touching the welfare of pupils, communal endeavor in Switzerland has created means for taking care of their health from earliest infancy, for seeing to it that they have the proper nourishment and clothing, for founding institutions adapted to the needs of pupils specially endowed or specially hampered. Again, this country has put into legislative form advanced ideas of a social and political character, like federal ownership of railways, socialized control of city improvements, banks, and industries, and, most significant of all, a constitutional proviso that Government enactments shall be referred to the voters for adoption or rejection. Aside from the contributions of these measures to the happiness and sterling character of the people, certain material ones more easily measurable may be mentioned. It appears to be a fact that:

Switzerland, with no harbors, no coal, no iron, no copper, with high wages for manual labor, with agriculture inadequate to home needs, has succeeded in becoming, per capita, the next most industrialized nation of Europe, surpassing both England and Germany.'

In attempting to indicate at least a part of the share the schools have in the intellectual as well as material advancement of Switzerland, it appears that teachers have spontaneously put into practice the ancient maxim, "We study not for the schools, but for life," and that they

1 Special communication from Dr. Herbert Haveland Field, Zürich, Switzerland.

are impressed with the importance of adapting their work to life conditions. When the health or the future of their pupils so demands, they have been able to move beyond the régime of books, lessons, and traditional programs and to guide their pupils in such other activities as are more closely concerned with their welfare. They are aware that the years of a child's plasticity is the time to discover and to insist on remedial treatment of such physical or psychical defects as may adhere to it from birth, and they appear conscientiously to include this among their duties.

The general system of the schools exemplifies the principle that education is a gradual process, with imperceptible beginnings and without abrupt finality. The service, therefore, that the school renders upon the first admission of a child is not of an instructional character; it assumes this character only after a transition period usually taken up by the child's own self-imposed activities. The nursery school takes care of the child, first of all, as assistance to a crowded home or a home in the distress of poverty, permitting the mother, who is probably a wage earner, to leave her child in safe hands while she is at work during the day. When a child is presented for admission a thorough medical examination is made, and if treatment is required it is given.

Among the institutions for the care of young children, the crèche, which is nearly always private, receives children of almost any age up to 3 years, at which time they may enter the infant school. The infant school has two divisions, namely, from 2 years of age to 6, and from 6 to 7, the latter division preparing them to enter the primary school. From the first the child finds himself in a congenial environment in the school garden with its play equipment; there is no restraint as to regularity of hours, nothing giving rise to the feeling that in the interest of the school the young pupil is cut off for a certain time from home and parents. When the instructional stage is reached, there are kindly teachers to take him in hand, to see that he learns the correct pronunciation of words and that he acquires good personal habits. So far as expedient the child is left to himself in his first efforts to think, to observe, to understand, and to judge; he is permitted to drift into school tasks without the notion of compulsion; hence he does not come to feel that he is controlled by a rigorous taskmaster.

The first form of instruction assumes the nature of entertaining stories with talks of a practical tinge that furnish whatever nucleus there is in the early teaching. The opportunity for advancement is preserved in the recurrent periods of promotion, usually at the end of the year, though in case of the pupil's sickness they may come at the close of the first semester following the year in which the promotion would naturally have occurred.