7. Philosophical and political science.

There are two hundred distinct courses of lectures given during the year, by forty-five professors and thirteen assistants, in the German, French, and Italian languages. The average number of students is from seven to eight hundred, and they represent almost every nation. The female students number from fifty to sixty. The charge for a complete course in any one of the polytechnical schools varies from 400 to 500 francs. Between all Swiss schools, from the primary to the university, there is an “organic connection;” the university, in the natural continuation and correspondence, crowning the work begun in the primary school. The Swiss method of teaching is never mechanical; it is gradual, natural, and rational. It is patient, avoids over-hurry; content to advance slowly, with a firm securing of the ground passed over. The fundamental maxim is from the intuition to the notion, from the concrete to the abstract, founding habits alike of accurate apprehension and clear expression. The system is not wooden, but appreciates that variety in mental food is as important as in bodily nourishment for healthy growth; that children at school are often tired and listless, because they are wearied and bored. From this the Swiss school finds relief in drill, gymnastics, singing, and drawing. Especially do music and drawing play a leading part in the programme. It is natural for children to imitate; thus they acquire language, and thus, with proper direction and encouragement, they find pleasure in attempting to sing the melodies they hear, and to draw the simple objects around them. By drawing, the eye is trained as well as the hand; the attention to the exact shape of the whole and the proportion of the parts which is requisite for the taking of an adequate sketch is converted into a habit, and becomes productive both of instruction and amusement. The Swiss system seeks to adapt the methods to the mental process; every effort is made to interest the pupil and to make learning palatable, and, like Lucretius, “to smear the rim of the educational cup with honey.” It is a common practice in schools of the United States to give children the rule for doing a sum, and then test them by seeing if, by that rule, they can do so many given sums right. The notion of a Swiss teacher is, that the school-hour for arithmetic is to be employed in ascertaining that the children understand the rule and the processes to which it is applied. The former practice places the abstract before the concrete, the latter works in the opposite way. The Swiss instruction aims to render the pupil capable of solving independently and with certainty the calculations which are likely to come up before him in ordinary life. In a word, the Swiss possess and follow a carefully-matured science of pedagogy. If a school is fate to a Swiss child, the vision comes to him in the likeness of a fairy; it is made, by public and private acts, a centre of happy thoughts and pleasant times; it shares the joy of home and the reward of church. The children have tasks to do at home nearly equal to the tasks at school. The hours of study, school-work, drill, and home-work are frequently from ten to twelve a day. Indeed, you may say, these Swiss children must tug at learning in a way that would create a rebellion with the young American. In spite of these long hours and manifold duties, the attention is never unduly strained, and, at intervals, never exceeding two hours, the class disperses for a few moments to the corridors or play-grounds for recreation and a romp. No people can boast of so many schools in proportion to population, or of a system of education at once so enlarged and simplified, so instructive and attractive, so scientific and practical. Healthy, for it takes care of the body as well as the mind; practical, for it teaches drawing, which is the key of all industrial and mechanical professions; moral and patriotic, because it is founded on love of country. In many countries it is a political or governing class which establishes popular schools for the benefit of the masses. In Switzerland it is the people, the Communes, which establish and sustain the schools for their own benefit. The same general equality of conditions prevails as in the United States, and these schools are freely used by all classes. This is as it should be in a free commonwealth, where character and ability are the only rank, and men are thrown together in later life according to the groups they form at school. Every child of superior merit, however humble and poor, has an equal chance to mount the highest round of the educational ladder. This building of human minds means business in Switzerland. Everywhere you find a school,—a primary school, a supplementary school, a secondary school, a day school, evening school, school for the blind, school for the deaf, industrial school, commercial school, linguistic school, intermediate school, gymnasium or high-school, university, polytechnical school, schools of every sort and size, class and grade, with the happy motto carved over many a door: “Dedicated to the Children.” It is a business, standing far ahead of petty politics and hunting after place, or the worship of Mammon; a business that, when nobly done, brings bountiful return in love of order, law, right, and truth.

The Swiss cantonal constitutions declare that the happiness of the people is to be found in good morals and good instruction; and that, in a free country, every citizen should have placed within his reach an education fitting him for his rights and duties. Every Canton has in its constitution some expression embodying the idea that the business of a public teacher is to make his boys good citizens and good Christians. In some Cantons the distinct announcement is made that the true end of public instruction is to combine democracy with religion. In that of Zurich it is announced: “The people’s school shall train the children of all classes, on a plan agreed upon, to be intelligent men, useful citizens, and moral, religious beings.” In Luzern it is laid down that “the schools shall afford to every boy and girl capable of receiving an education the means of developing their mental and physical faculties, of training them for life in the family, in the Commune, in the church, and in the state, and of putting them in the way of getting their future bread.” In Vaud it is declared that “teaching in the public schools shall be in accordance with the principles of Christianity and democracy.” In fact, the organic law of each and every Canton demands a system of public education, sound, solid, moral, and democratic. They all bespeak the early and imperishable impress of that great Swiss educational reformer who, more than a century ago, uttered the memorable invocation: “Patron saint of this country, announce it in thunder tones through hill and valley that true popular freedom can only be made possible through the education of man!” Since the two zealous Irish monks, Columban and Gall, went to the continent, A.D. 585, and the latter founded the famous monastery of St. Gallen, the descendants of the Helvetii have powerfully contributed to European civilization and progress; learning and science finding a home not only at St. Gallen, but at Basel, Zurich, Geneva, and Bern. In the age of the Carlovingians, more than a thousand years ago, the Abbey of St. Gallen was the most erudite spot in Europe. It had the original manuscript of Quintilian, from which the first edition was published. The art of printing, when in its infancy everywhere else, had already been carried to a high degree of perfection at Basel; and the crusaders, who conquered Constantinople, met there A.D. 1202. Geneva was early distinguished in the annals of literature and science as well as for progress in the arts. Learned men, some of the exiles of Queen Mary’s reign, among whom was Whittingham, who married Calvin’s sister, devoted “the space of two years and more, day and night,” to a careful revision of the text of the English Bible, and the preparation of a marginal commentary upon it. The result of these labors was the publication, in 1560, of the celebrated Geneva Bible. The cost of this was defrayed by the English congregation at Geneva. Queen Elizabeth, to whom it was dedicated, granted a patent to John Bodley, the father of the founder of the Bodleian Library, for the exclusive right of printing it in English for the space of seven years. Its advantages were so many and great that it at once secured and—even after the appearance of King James’s Bible—continued to retain a firm hold upon the bulk of the English nation. While Switzerland can hardly be said to possess a truly national literature, it has always maintained a very good literature in German and in French; but these literatures are not the expression of a common national life. The Swiss have displayed remarkable powers in science, in political philosophy, in history, and in letters. Among the distinguished workers in these intellectual fields may be mentioned Lavater, whose eloquence, daring, and imagination as a physiognomist procured European celebrity; Pestalozzi, the originator of a system of education to which he devoted a life of splendid sacrifice; De Saussure, the indefatigable philosopher, the inventor of a thermometer for ascertaining the temperature of water at all depths, and the electrometer for showing the electrical condition of the atmosphere; Bonnet, the psychologist; Gesner, the poet, whose “Death of Abel” has been translated into many languages; Müller, a historian remarkable for his patience in research, picturesque writing, and disgust for traditionary tales, and who is reported to have read more books than any man in Europe, in proof of which they point to his fifty folio volumes of excerpts in the town library of Schaffhausen; Zwingli, the Canon of Zurich and the co-laborer of Calvin, a man of extensive learning, uncommon sagacity, and heroic courage; Mallet, the illustrious student of antiquities of Northern Europe; Constant, philosopher of the source, forms, and history of religion; Sismondi, a writer of history, literature, and political economy; Necker, brilliant in politics and finance, and his celebrated daughter, Madame de Staël; Rousseau, who fired all Europe with his zeal for the rights of the poor and the free development of individual character, and who wielded the most fertile and fascinating pen that ever was pointed in the cause of infidelity; D’Aubigné, the well-known historian of the Reformation; Agassiz, the greatest naturalist of his age, and Guyot, his compatriot and fellow-worker, to whom we owe the inception of that system of meteorological observations called the Signal Service; Haller, Horner, Dumont, and many others who won an honorable place in learning and literature. The remarkable resources of its modern schools and universities, and the zeal of the rising generation for learning, promise well for the intellectual future of Switzerland. To be quick in thought and quick in action; to have practical, scientific, and technical knowledge; to be capable of appreciating new facts, and of taking large views; to be patient and painstaking; to have the power of working mentally for distant objects; to have an instinct of submission to law, both to the laws of society, which aim at justice to all and at order, and to the laws of nature, submission to which enables a man to use effectually his own powers and to turn to account the powers of nature; to raise life into a higher stage; to give to every one free opportunities for participation in the knowledge and moral training, combined with freedom and political equality, which will elevate the idea of humanity,—these are the moral and intellectual qualities with which the Swiss school system would fain endow the whole people. Just as their old agrarian system made land, so their new educational system is making intellectual training common to all. The powers it confers are now, in a sense, common pastures, upon which all may keep flocks and herds; common forests, from which all may get fuel and building-materials; and common garden ground, by the cultivation of which all may supply their wants. The quaint words of John Knox contain a sentiment still potent in Switzerland, “That no father, of what estate or condition that ever he may be, can use his children at his own fantasie, especially in their youthhood; but all must be compelled to bring up their youth in learning and virtue.”

CHAPTER XIV.
TECHNICAL AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

“The noble craftsman we promote,

Disown the knave and fool;

Each honest man shall have his vote,

Each child shall have his school.”

A French writer has compared a well-arranged plan of public instruction “to a railway system, with its main line, stations, junctions, and branch lines. Just as passengers on a railway get out at the different stations, so the children who, from pecuniary necessity or social position, are compelled to earn their livelihood leave school at any point of this course; all, according to the amount of knowledge they have acquired, are able to take their place in the social stratification.”

As it is the duty and interest of railway managers to give facilities for all classes of passengers, so it is the duty and interest of the state to provide for all who travel the road of learning, leaving to the operation of natural laws, in both cases, the fixing of proportions of way and through fares.