SWISS SCHOOLS
Coming to the end of the limits set for this volume, the writer finds
that many aspects of Swiss life have been perforce neglected. No space
could be found, for example, to deal with the educational system,
which both in its primary and secondary forms and in its devotion to
technical instruction has aroused the admiration of experts in many
countries. This Swiss educational system is at once generous and
practical, with compulsory attendance enforced and gratuitous
instruction, books, and materials provided. Teaching begins in the
national schools, called the Primarschule, which are attended by
children of all ranks and at which attendance is compulsory from the
age of nine until the completion of the fifteenth year, unless
children pass from these to higher schools. The classes are mixed and
contain from 40 to 44 children, who are taught by both men and women
teachers. The school course ensures the boys and girls a general
elementary education, including a knowledge of French--so essential in
a country with three national languages--which is taken during the
last two years at school. Considerable time is also devoted to
physical exercise, carpentry, needlework, and cookery. The plan of
studies in the secondary schools, which scholars may enter after four
years in the primary schools, and where they remain until the age of
fifteen, is much more extensive, and includes a more profound study of
French (five years' course) and an advanced course of the sciences,
geometry, and drawing. The instruction is gratuitous, and the passing
of a preliminary examination the only condition of entry. From the
secondary schools scholars have the option of ultimately entering the
Gymnasium or the industrial and commercial schools.
The secondary school is succeeded by the higher schools. The
_Municipal Gymnasium_ (grammar school) accepts all boys and girls
above the age of ten who pass the entrance examination. In the
_Progymnasium_, which corresponds to the secondary school in its
course of studies, instruction is gratuitous up to the age of fifteen;
after that the annual fees amount to sixty francs. There are great
Universities in the chief cities, which are much favoured by foreign
pupils.
It is a sign of the practical side of the Swiss character that very
special attention should be given to technical schools: the Swiss
technical schools are said to be the most thorough in the world, and
they will teach anything, from waiting to watch-making. Another sign
of the practical is the Swiss custom to keep the schools in mountain
villages open only during the long Alpine winter--from the beginning
of October till the following Easter. All through the summer, lads and
boys tend sheep or cows in the fields, help their fathers to make hay,
roam in the woods, and get their fill of air and sunshine. The
schoolmasters have gone to their own villages, where they mow and
gather in the crops like the other peasants to whose households they
belong. This is good from the point of view of health, and also from
that of domestic economy.
Leaving their schools strong in body because of the organised system
of gymnastic training; strong in national pride because of the
attention which has been paid by their teachers in impressing the
glorious story of the past; with well-balanced, sane, practical minds
the Swiss are ready to face the tasks of life with a fearless
confidence. Their pride does not teach them to despise labour, even in
forms which may appear contemptible. Their sense of thrift, which
almost verges on a sense of greed, does not make them inhospitable.
They show their virtues in the sphere of the commonplace, as servants,
traders, petty masters. But they are heroic in the sphere of
commonplace; and no one, looking back on their history, can dare to
doubt that if great occasion arose in the future they would respond to
it as courageously as in the past, and hold their hills against any
attempt at conquest.
In every respect they seem to preserve their historic national
character. Since the earliest of the Middle Ages, Switzerland was
accustomed to find asylum for the saint fleeing from a monarch's
anger, the reformer dreading the persecution of a church, the thinker
seeking a safe corner from which he could invite mankind to consider
some daring hypothesis. There was a complaint in the European
newspapers only this year (1913) that:
Geneva has for a long time past been a centre for eccentric and
ill-regulated individuals of every description, a certain
proportion being in addition idle and generally undesirable
characters. Her University is, of course, the main cause of a
condition of things far from pleasing to the responsible
authorities. It has long attracted, and still continues to
attract, students from all parts of the world--crop-haired
Russians, wild-looking Bulgarians, Greeks, Levantines, and
Egyptians.
The chief cause of dissatisfaction at the moment, it seems, was that
Geneva University had become the headquarters of the so-called
Permanent Committee of the Young Egyptian Party:
These young Egyptians (often not really Egyptians at all, but
Levantines) loom largely in the public eye. Throughout the
present summer, for instance, more than a fortnight or three
weeks have never elapsed without their meeting in Geneva,
ostensibly to pass some resolution or to appeal to England to
keep her engagements regarding the eventual evacuation of
Egypt, or, it might be, to draft some letter of protest to be
sent to Sir Edward Grey. These resolutions are invariably
transmitted without delay to the foreign Press agencies
established in Geneva, and by them telegraphed right and left
throughout Europe. It frequently happens, of course, that the
more serious and better-informed newspapers treat these
resolutions for what they are worth, but far more frequently,
especially by German newspapers or journals, which for some
reason or other are not friendly disposed to Great Britain, or
are wholly ignorant of British administration in Egypt, they
are published _in extenso_, as if they were the decisions
arrived at by the British Association, the French Academy, or
some other society of long-established reputation and
recognised standing. It must be admitted that the "Young
Egyptians" in Geneva are very clever in hoodwinking a large
number of foreign editors, and in causing themselves to be
taken far more seriously than they deserve.
But it is not likely that the "Young Egyptians" will find their stay
in Geneva interfered with by the Swiss authorities. The tradition of
the "right of asylum" is too strong; and provided that the line is
drawn at actual criminality, no Power will successfully ask for their
expulsion from Switzerland. Yet the presence of these futile
conspirators must be of annoyance to the Swiss Government, which
wishes to live at peace with all the world, and finds sometimes a
threat of interference with its tourist traffic in foreign resentment
at Swiss-sheltered disloyalists. But in this matter historic sentiment
defeats the practical. The Swiss are determined to be hospitable, even
to their own loss. And Europe generally is inclined to sympathise
with, and respect, this little mountain people set in the midst of
great Powers, from whose disputes they rigorously hold aloof, seeking
to maintain their liberty by a sturdily pacific policy, but keeping in
reserve for national defence a great military organisation.
[Illustration: BERNE.]