Gregory A. Fossedal, Direct Democracy in Switzerland, 2002.
Part 4
IssuesWalking down the streets of Bern, the Swiss capital, one sees a country teeming with education. For every grocery store there appears to be perhaps three bookstores. These are generally stocked with serious volumes: reference books and computer software galore; history; and a plethora of how-to-do-it, solve-it-yourself volumes, from home repair to honing your shooting skills. A member of Parliament, Dr. Onken, recognizes me and waves hello; Onken operates a correspondence learning institute in Southeast Switzerland. Newspaper stands are as ubiquitous as in Manhattan, and have more newspapers. At a kiosk near the train station, the usual ads for rock-and-roll bands and small theater productions are sprinkled liberally with cards and flyers of French and Italian tutors, financial management services, and computer courses.
11
EducationOne thing to notice about the examples above is that there is no mention of a strictly "regular" school for children aged five through say eighteen -- the K-12 years in the United States. There are many of these, too, of course. But one of the striking aspects of the Swiss passion for education is that it is not locked up in "the classroom." It ambles about the society freely, like the bustling pedestrians on the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich or the cobbled streets along the river in Luzern.
This hunger for learning sprawls out across the society and into every activity in Switzerland, in a way that is hard to quantify or summarize, except by providing some examples that truly seem to be common. At a Swiss factory that builds large weaving and sewing machines in Aargau canton, we encounter a worker on his break. He is sitting by his machine reading a book about electrical engineering, which he is studying at the technical school. Visiting a housewife and member of the cantonal parliament in St. Gallen, my colleague begins the conversation in German -- but our hostess replies in fragmented English. Her children, she explains, are keen to learn English, and she wants to practice so she can help and learn along with them.
Swiss students consistently perform close to the top in international standardized tests of math, science, and reading, as Fig. 11.1 suggests.
Indeed, if there were tests for fluency in a second or third language, the Swiss would almost certainly rank first in that category year after year, and their scores on math and other tests, if corrected to reflect the fact that many are taking the tests in a second language, would be close to the levels of more or less monolingual Korea and Japan. People are perhaps more satisfied with the schools than in any country in the world -- Sweden, Australia, and Germany, in my experience, would offer significant competition; the United States, Canada, and Britain would not. The Swiss "seem to have great confidence in the country's schools," Robert Schneebeli notes. "Whenever a problem arises, people think it should be made a subject at school."
At the same time, there are interesting features in the system that might even cause one to think they take formal schooling lightly. We speak here of "the system" as an amalgamation of generalizations about the systems of the cantons. Immigrant children are not put into separate bilingual tracks but learn in the local language of instruction, supplemented by special work. Students generally start compulsory schooling at age six or seven and are finished after nine years, a fact that was of great concern to my traveling guide and companion -- who resides much of the year in the United States, but remains a Swiss patriot. "How are Swiss children going to compete," he kept pressing educators and others, "getting started at this age? The children in the United States start school at five, and they can already ready (My colleague lives in Princeton, N.J.)
High school graduates receive no diploma as such. Three out of four go on to vocational school, which is more rigorous than such schools in the U.S. or Britain, but is still "only a vocational school." Some 8.8 percent graduate from a university, one of the lowest rates among all members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The state-run universities are impressive, but there are none of the great private institutions one finds in most Western countries. Private education in general is practically nonexistent, covering approximately 3 percent of the K-12 students.
Many of these statistics reflect simple statistical anomalies. For example, the Swiss technical schools are not necessarily less rigorous, and perhaps more, than an American "university" but are not defined as such. On the other hand, critical skills normally imparted at a French, American, or British college might not be even at the Zurich Technical Institute, where students grumbled when they were required to take one or two humanities electives. The Swiss system, like Japan's, is inferior at the liberal arts -- though not, in the Swiss case, at languages.
Table 11.1 compares various policy aspects of Swiss schools for primary and secondary children (K-12) to several other developed countries.
Swiss parents and educators believe their education system to be highly decentralized compared to other systems. It is, in fact, decentralized -- but perhaps not much more so than many other countries.
The basic policy for education in the public schools is set at the cantonal level. Officials in Ziirich set guidelines for the Zurich canton; the cantonal government in Aarau does the same for Aargau canton; and so on. The average size of a canton is approximately 300,000 persons, making this unit of government comparable to a city with the population one-half the size of Oakland, California or Washington, D.C. The median would be larger.
Cantonal policies are then implemented at the local level, as in the U.S., Sweden, Germany, and many other OECD countries. But the Swiss administrative units are not markedly smaller or more local than in the countries mentioned. There is a much greater degree of decentralization of administration than in, say, France, Australia, or Denmark. But these countries have school choice or voucher schemes which in effect decentralizes education down to the individual family: The parents decide which school their child goes to, and government assistance follows their child according to their decision.
None of this means that the Swiss are wrong to think their school system is decentralized. It may be, however, that their system is not as radically decentralized, compared to others, as they sometimes think.
The strongest element of Swiss federalism in education is something they lack: A federal department, above and atop the general administrative apparatus described, to plead for or even impose certain policies on its communities and cantons (or states). In the United States, for example, the federal Department of Education provides only about 10 percent of the funding for public education in the U.S. It enacts, however, more than half the volume of regulations imposed on a typical school, and of all the forms and reports local schools are required to fill out, an estimated 80 percent are federal.
In Switzerland, we visited the closest thing to a Department of Education, the intercantonal education directorate in Bern. The modest office next to a public library takes up one floor; it is smaller than the offices of one official, the Secretary of Education, in the United States (counting the secretary's conference room and staff assistants). Of course, the United States population is approximately fifty times that of Switzerland, but even so, its staff of about 2,000 persons dwarfs the office we visited: fifteen persons, of whom ten are full time, or the equivalent of perhaps a dozen staff. The city of New York alone employs administrative staff many times the Swiss "federal department." A former U.S. Secretary of Education has called this morass of experts and rule makers, who endlessly analyze one another's theories and studies, the "education blob."
In Switzerland, by contrast, "the blob" almost does not exist. If we compare the amount of money a country spends on teachers with the amount it spends on nonteaching personnel -- administrators, guidance counselors, and others -- we arrive at a rough index for the size of this class as a feature in any given country's school system. The measure is inexact, but suggestive. Figure 11.2 shows how various countries rank based on this index. The larger the bar, the more money that country is spending on administration and other personnel compared to actual teachers. Only Belgium ranks very far below the Swiss, and its system includes significantly more private schools than the Swiss do. (Private schools tend to have a high ratio of teacher pay to administrative pay, partly because they have to compete without subsidies in many countries, partly because they often do not have to obey as many rules and regulations as the public schools.)
The more distinctive feature of this system is the selection of teachers directly by the parents and the communes -- with little intermediation either from above or from the side (such as a board of experts accountable to the parents, but only at periodic general intervals). In cantons and communities that still have direct democracy, this means at a town meeting. Even in those with less direct means, teachers are hired at meetings generally open to all the parents -- sometimes by all who care to show up and are qualified voters, sometimes by large commissions that are easy to obtain election to and that seldom vary from any strong sentiment in the community anyway. Teachers are hired for contracts of three, four, or five years as a general rule. No board of experts intervenes; no mandates or regulations from Bern or, generally, even the cantons say who can be hired and who cannot, within the technically qualified pool of applicants. As these are set by the cantons, the "teacher certification" process is less burdensome than in most other countries. The programs for teacher training generally require 10 years of schooling for admission -- a little less than a high school diploma in U.S. terms. There follows three to five years of further schooling; Swiss teachers generally enter the marketplace between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five.
As with many other public positions in Switzerland, the vast majority of teachers who seek reappointment after that time receive it for another three-to five-year contract. It would be wrong, however, to think that this means the system is no different from one in which teachers are tenured, and a similarly tiny minority are fired. The fact that teachers must seek reappointment helps, to put it bluntly, to keep them on their toes. Very seldom will the Swiss capriciously remove someone who is doing even a marginally creditable job; the Swiss people, like all good managers, like to keep people where they are if possible. Yet, the need to respond to the customer is just a little sharper. At the same time, the election of the teacher by the community serves as a kind of affirmation. It is a public act of confidence that the teachers (or anyway, the vast majority) seem to appreciate.
"A minority of people in our group have strong reservations about the hiring of teachers by the communities and commissions," says Irene Hansenberter of the Dachverband Schweizer Lehrerinnen und Lehrer -- the Bern office of the largest teachers union in Switzerland. "The vast majority, however, is satisfied. It's good that the communities are responsible for which teacher their children have. Parents who are not involved then cannot complain, because they 'have their chance.' I think the people who are involved in the schools are happy with them, and this is the majority of people here."
"This system helps keep people involved," agrees Wolf Linder of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education -- the Swiss equivalent of the U.S. Department of Education. "People here have the feeling that they can change things, that the system responds to them. That is a plus. We have our problems in Switzerland, but we do not have a problem with parents being involved in their children's education."
The Swiss level of satisfaction with their schools is very high. They view the schools with perhaps the same patriotism as the army or the political system (which the Swiss also prize).
When one asks the Swiss -- -teachers, parents, officials -- why they are so satisfied, there is nearly always a pause. The Swiss seem slightly taken aback at the notion that, somewhere in the world, people may not be as happy. Then, typically, comes an empirical proof, which is fair enough, given the data. "They seem to do a good job," a woman on the community council in Hittnau comments. "Swiss children do well in their basic subjects."
But what if there is a problem?
"Do you mean for me personally, or with the school in general."
Well, let's take both cases.
"I guess they're both the same, actually. I would take it up with the teacher. And I think that is what most parents do."
Yes, that is what most parents would probably do in the United States, too. In Switzerland, you seem very comfortable with what happens then. Why do you think that is?
"Well, the schools usually respond."
Probably it is that simple -- in Switzerland, the public schools seem to be unusually responsive. The parents perceive them that way, which is the same thing. Why are the Swiss schools so responsive? The answer is a mix of cultural and personal traits, policies that have directly to do with education per se, and broader institutional and political arrangements.
The Swiss tax code, for example, does little to encourage private education, providing tax deductions for gifts to such institutions only in narrow cases having.to do with large corporate or individual trusts. The result, however, has been to focus all attention and interest on the public schools, for compulsory schooling, and even the universities. As there is very little in the way of a safety valve for the frustrated or the alienated, they work for a solution within the political system.
The Swiss polity, of course, makes such action somewhat easier than in other countries. Even if the recourse to teacher elections does not prove effective, "there is," as a public school teacher in Basel told me, "always the ballot box." In the cantons of Bern, Zurich, and Basel, three of the country's largest, there were dozens of referenda and citizen-led ballot initiatives on education policy. In Bern in the 1990s, Ms. Hansenberter of the teachers union estimates, approximately one-third of all ballot initiatives concerned education policies. "When people are especially frustrated," she adds, "or simply have a strong idea about something, it grows even larger."
Indeed, many of the proposals -- perhaps half -- emanate from teachers and their unions themselves. "It is one of their major activities," a teacher from the Ticino says. The union proposals do not fare any better, and perhaps do a tad worse, than those proposed by small groups of parents and teachers.
The initiatives that do pass, such as a referendum on parental rights in 1992 in Bern, enable the Swiss education to make constant, rolling improvements in itself over time. Other education systems seem to be more sticky. Precisely because education is so important, the smallest decision over a textbook, the conduct of a school nurse's office, or a song at the winter festi-val can become a heated controversy. This is not to dismiss the concerns or motives of those who engage in these battles; rather, to empathize with the fact that such matters will be fought out, if they must be, and if not given an outlet that is constructive, they will be fought destructively.
Alexis de Tocqueville noted this during one of the French parliamentary debates over policies allowing parents to use their family's education support from the government to send their child to religious schools. "When men cannot argue about principles, they will argue about interests, and then, personal morals. Soon we will be debating nothing but canals and conflicts of interest." The broader Swiss political system, by allows voters who cannot get the policy they want from the school administration, or the teacher, to appeal directly to parents and teachers as a whole -- and, of course, allows teachers and administrators the same privilege.
Over time, of course, the most important impact of this process may, ironically, be pedagogic. By constantly empowering even the smallest voices to set off a legislative debate and making frequent recourse to the jury of the people, the Swiss education system, in combination with the political, leads a constant dialogue. And, unlike an abstract, academic discussion where nothing changes as a result, this is, if one may co-opt a 1970s phrase, a "meaningful dialogue."
Responsiveness may help explain why Switzerland is able to offer religious instruction in its public schools with little rancor or controversy. This is not to say school curricula are theologically based throughout such courses as science and history. But each canton is allowed to encourage religion and even "establish" a particular church. Elementary schools in Geneva, Vaud, the Ticino, Bern, Luzern, Schwyz, and Zurich cantons allowed me to visit for parts of a day to get a flavor for the instruction in different languages, urban and rural settings, and among contrasting confessional preferences.
The younger Swiss students in the rural cantons often dressed uniformly, as if a certain type of dress were the norm, but not as in a parochial school. Those in Zurich and Geneva were less uniform, but still relatively disciplined in appearance and behavior compared to American, French, and British children. On the walls were occasional religious items. They were not sufficiently plentiful to make one think oneself in an American parochial school, but there were enough of them to make it clear one was not in an American public school either. At the school in Zurich, but only there, one noticed several artworks with a star of David or Hannukah menorah, one a beautifully conceived scene rising up over what appeared to be Lake Constance. Otherwise the images were all Christian -- usually neither distinctively Protestant or Catholic, though occasionally in the older grades, especially in Schwyz and Bern, one could make out what seemed to be ideas from one branch or the other.
In Hittnau, an outlying suburb of the city of Zurich in Zurich canton, the town minister sits in as some of the other town leaders and the leaders from the school plan out various repairs and events. The meeting is seamless; there are no large transitions between "religion" and "other" civic affairs, and it does not feel awkward to have the subject change from the new pipes that are going in, to next month's church festival. In Schwyz, a Catholic priest strides up the steep hill toward one of the schools. He has classes and coaches soccer in the afternoon, and will probably hear a confession or two on the side as he makes his rounds. The presence is very low key, but widespread. Even in Bern, which is relatively more cosmopolitan and wears no piety on its sleeve, such symbols are common.
When one asks Swiss officials or individuals who are in the majority -- that is, who within their canton adhere to the faith that is the cantonal one, Catholic or Protestant -- about this mixing of religious and secular affairs, they seem partly to expect the question, partly to have a difficult time grasping it. The Swiss take for granted that this overlap does not constitute an imposition on the minority provided it is bounded. "Remember, there is nothing compulsory about religion in Swiss schools," a member of the Hittnau community council told me. "Freedom of conscience is strictly protected." In many countries, though, even this degree of interaction and in this spirit would be regarded as a grotesque offense against the minority.
The responsiveness of the schools in Switzerland -- and, for that matter, of most institutions -- explains a portion of the difference. When people feel involved in a process, their day-to-day opinions heard, they are less likely to feel alienated from it even if a particular policy does not suit their preference. If only some aspects of policy -- such as the religious element in the schools -- were merely transferred from Switzerland to other countries, one might not see the same harmonious result. It is also worth remembering, however, that for hundreds of years, the Swiss were bitterly divided over religious questions, and in particular, between the Catholic and Reformed churches.
The schools, of course, also operate within a cultural context.
"In Switzerland," as a Catholic priest told me in Bern, "sometimes, the minority gives way to the majority." The very formulation, with its deliberate irony, suggests something the Swiss know in their bones, though they have had to work many years to achieve it. In Switzerland, the majority, as scholar Carol Schmid puts it, often "does not behave like a majority.'" That is to say, there are majorities in Switzerland -- Protestants, German-speakers, and others -- that abstain from establishing certain practices they might otherwise prefer, out of a deliberate respect for the minority. There are practical and self-interested considerations as well, including the social peace. This deference, however, goes well beyond a narrow pragmatism.
One sees this in the Swiss schools in many practices. In German-speaking Switzerland, students assiduously study French or Italian in order to meet the requirement that they be fluent in one of the national languages other than their own. In the French-speaking portions, German is studied, though with less enthusiasm. The French-speaking Swiss, paradoxically, as Schmid writes, "behave like a majority," in the sense that they are confident in their rights and status, feeling less need to assert them because of the arrangements made to suit them and the respect of the German-speaking majority. Schmid offers an elegant suggestive proof of this by interviewing Swiss students and asking them to estimate how many Swiss speak German as a first language, French, and Italian. The German-speaking students, because of the complex cultural signals they receive about the importance of French, consistently overestimated how many Swiss speak it as a first language, and underestimate the size of their own group, the German speakers. The French-speaking students, confident in their status, likewise underestimate the Germans, and overestimate themselves. And both groups, German and French, overestimate how many Swiss speak Italian as a first language. Italian television, radio, and other cultural affairs all receive a disproportionate share of public funding, for example -- the majority deliberately accommodating the minority. In modern times, one even sees this approach extending to the Jewish community, and being felt and appreciated by the Jewish community itself. That it is not more so has largely to do with the fact that Jews are still a tiny (about one percent) share of the Swiss population. The matter of Jewish life and culture in Switzerland is taken up in a separate discussion.
There is a price for this kind of educational system, but the Swiss -- teachers, parents, and students -- seem willing to pay it. You see it on a late evening in February, walking along the river in Baden. A single light is burning in the elementary school, which looks to hold normally 100 to 150 children. Inside what appear to be one teacher and several parents, several mothers and a father or two, are working on some kind of stand or bleachers for what looks like it will be an historical presentation the next day. Though they are inside, they are wearing medium-weight jackets -- it appears the heat is either not working, or turned down to save money.
To teachers in the U.S. or Britain, that kind of volunteer help might sound like a Godsend, but the educators pay a price as well. After all, in many Western countries that kind of volunteer labor by parents, and late-night work by one of the teaching staff, could be construed as a violation of the union work contract.
"We supported the passage of a parental responsibility policy in 1992," Ms. Hansenberter of the teachers union notes. (The measure also asserts parental rights.) "And it passed. Now sometimes the parents take too much responsibility. Still it is the best thing to have too much civic responsibility than too little."
Note 1. Conflict and Consensus in Switzerland, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981.