Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0355/03553.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 59KB | 890 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03553}
$Pretitle{442}
$Title{Switzerland
4. The Organisation of Living Conditions: Education, the Economy, Politics}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rene Levy}
$Affiliation{Arts Coucil of Switzerland}
$Subject{switzerland
education
political
social
cantons
important
state
time
century
swiss}
$Date{1986}
$Log{Making Bread*0355301.scf
}
Country:     Switzerland
Book:        The Social Structure of Switzerland Outline of a Society
Author:      Rene Levy
Affiliation: Arts Coucil of Switzerland
Date:        1986

4. The Organisation of Living Conditions: Education, the Economy, Politics

[See Making Bread: Courtesy Embassy of Switzerland, Washington DC.]

a) The Various Sectors of Society

     The description of how the various tangible and intangible assets which
determine the standard of living are distributed has repeatedly demonstrated
the fact that these "goods" are produced and distributed within society. The
institutions from which they come represent that part of the social structure
which has the most direct effect on the living conditions of the individual
members of society. Having dealt with living conditions and related
inequalities we shall now examine in detail in this chapter and the next the
social elements giving rise to these conditions.

     Social assets are produced and distributed to a large extent within
specialised social frameworks, which can be grouped together as sectors
characterised by the sort of "goods" they produce and thus by a certain
uniformity. Out of these sectors we shall examine education, the economy and
politics because they would appear to be especially important from the
following points of view: 1) the importance of what they produce and
distribute with respect to the daily life of the individual, and 2) their
influence on the whole of society. Thus we shall not deal with other sectors,
such as the army or religion, or only mention them in passing, such as mass
media. We shall only consider certain aspects of the three sectors we have
selected, namely those aspects which involve their influence on the situation
of the people who live in Switzerland.

     From this point of view the distribution of social assets is more
important than their production, although both aspects are closely linked. In
this sense distribution signifies a continual (active) process, whereas in the
previous chapter the passive condition which is the result of the active
process was meant. It has already been stated that social assets are mainly
produced within an organised framework, e.g. in schools, hospitals, factories.
This does not apply to the same extent to distribution. Certain social goods
are principally distributed on the open market and are therefore in theory
available to everyone. But in practice access to this market very much depends
on available income and thus on social status. A typical example of a
necessity which is distributed on the open market in Switzerland is
accommodation. Houses and flats are built by commercial organisations but for
the most part sold or rented on the open market. In 1970 only 28% of all
families owned their own home (compared to 37% in 1950); the majority of the
population lives in rented property. Other assets, however, are mainly
available to members of a certain social sector and the higher one has managed
to climb in that sector the more one can take advantage of what is available.
Education is an example of such an asset. Education is only available to a
limited extent on the free market. For the most part it is "obtained" by
belonging to an educational institution for a certain time and following a
certain course according to that institution's rules.

     The way in which assets which are valued in a society are produced and
distributed within it is an important characteristic of its structure and this
factor will affect the continuation or change of that society. Let us now
examine these three sectors - education, the economy and politics - and their
historical development.

b) Education

     A continual education system, available to all sections of society, was
introduced in Switzerland only after the beginning of the 19th century.
Earlier there had been hardly any official regulations and education had been
provided by the church. For a long time the main subject taught was religion,
and such things as reading, writing and arithmetic were only taught at a few
urban institutions which were attended by the sons of the wealthier families.
A consequence of the Enlightenment was the philanthropist education movement,
which reached Switzerland partly via Germany. The ideas propounded by this
movement gradually led to concrete results at the beginning of last century,
when Switzerland, in the wake of the French Revolution, laid the foundation
stone for a standardised school system. The famous educationalist, Pestalozzi,
was one of the members of this movement.

     It was at this time that most cantons introduced general compulsory
schooling. Geneva was the only canton which had taken this step earlier (in
1536, during the Reformation), in fact long before it joined the Swiss
confederation. The education system continued to undergo changes during the
Swiss Restoration (1815-1830). The schools were secularised, i.e. removed from
the influence of the church; teaching became a profession and many private
schools were founded, in turn stimulating the state policy of education. The
Swiss universities were also founded in the 19th century; only the University
of Basle dates from the late Middle Ages (1460). The universities were often
based in fact on Faculties of Theology, especially in the French-speaking part
of Switzerland. After the new constitution came into force in 1848, according
to which education was the responsibility of the cantonal authorities, each
canton introduced its own laws in this respect. Under the revised constitution
of 1874 the cantons had even more sovereignty in matters of schooling. An
important new characteristic which developed at this time of fundamental
change in education policy was the aim of schooling, which was to "educate the
children of all classes of society, according to common principles, to become
spiritually active, socially productive and morally religious people", as the
canton of Zurich's Education Act of 1859 puts it. According to the ideology of
the rising middle classes all children would receive the same education and
their progress thereafter would no longer depend on social status but solely
on individual achievement. Schools were considered to be sources of ethical
education, where moral and political values were emphasised as much as
knowledge and achievement. Furthermore education was to be all-embracing, an
education of the body as well as the mind.

     One of the most noticeable characteristics of the Swiss school system is
the extent to which the cantons are independent in matters of education
policy. Although the responsibility of education has been handed over to the
state, this was at a cantonal and not a national level. The federal
authorities have in fact had a limited degree of influence on standardising
education throughout the country, but only in an indirect way, for example by
introducing a state examination in medicine and national recognition of the
matura (the equivalent of A-levels). The result of all this is that there are
as many different school systems in Switzerland as there are cantons. At each
level a large variety of material is used for the same subjects, there are
enormous differences in the examinations set and the grading systems, and the
academic year does not even begin during the same season in all parts of the
country. There are, however, some trends which are common to education
throughout the country.

     Since the middle of the 19th century much more emphasis has been given to
quantitative and qualitative expansion. Let us just mention two of the many
consequences of this expansion policy: before the turn of the century, the new
conscripts