2020-12-10, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Tröhler, Daniel

In early modern Europe, relatively few people received a formal education, let alone higher education. This was not only due to the lack of schools—actually, schools existed in most cities and in many a rural parish—but mostly because many people left school as soon as they had obtained basic reading and writing skills. The generally low level of formal education led nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians to believe that literacy and numeracy rates in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe were considerably low, especially among the rural population. However, in early modern times, education was not only taught in schools. Noblemen and noble women were taught at home by private tutors, and learned societies, emerging in cities all over Europe, launched prize questions and printed the incoming treatises in order to enlarge their members’ knowledge. They also took measures to enlighten the rural people. City dwellers sent their children to private teachers who advertised to teach the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Farmers taught their children themselves, and for many, self-education was the method of choice to obtain useful knowledge and valuable skills. The biographical sketches of three women and four men presented in this chapter illustrate how those different forms of education and enculturation shaped the lives of people born in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

2020, De Vincenti, Andrea, Grube, Norbert, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Hofmann, Michèle

2020, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2019, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Brühwiler, Ingrid, Hofmann, Michèle, Westberg, Johannes, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Brühwiler, Ingrid

In this chapter, the authors raise the question of what makes the Swiss case worth presenting to an international audience. They argue that Switzerland is an interesting case because Swiss formal education lacks much of the structural systematization a system of mass schooling is expected to have. A close examination of the formal schooling in Switzerland reveals that every canton is given the autonomy to organize primary and most of secondary education. School structures and school legislation are mainly cantonal affairs, not guided by centralized agency or national body of law. However, given that similarities undoubtedly exist between those cantonal school systems, it is important to examine how those similarities came into being, as it is likely that the cantons are not as independent in their decision-making as it might appear at a first glance.

2020, Hofmann, Michèle, De Vincenti, Andrea, Grube, Norbert, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Hofmann, Michèle

2020, Hofmann, Michèle, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Grube, Norbert, De Vincenti, Andrea, De Vincenti, Andrea, Grube, Norbert, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Hofmann, Michèle

2020, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2020, Viehhauser, Martin, De Vincenti, Andrea, Grube, Norbert, Hofmann, Michèle, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2020, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

One of the central elements of the nation-building process in the 19th century was the attempt to homogenize the citizenry, i.e., to fabricate national citizens. Besides the military and church, schools were considered to be the main agencies capable of achieving this national homogenization. In this paper, focusing on the education in Switzerland and France, I argue that elementary mathematics education was also used for this particular purpose. I make the case that throughout the 19th century mathematics education became a way to familiarize the people with a standardized language – a language that was supposed to help them master their specific social, cultural, and political realities.

2019, Hofmann, Michèle, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Caruso, Marcelo

In this paper, we analyse the struggle for a unified style of writing in primary schools in the German-speaking part of Switzerland between the 1860s and the first decades of the twentieth century with regard to the contexts in which this struggle was embedded. In the late-nineteenth century, in German-speaking Switzerland, as in other parts of the German-speaking realm, a controversy emerged regarding whether general writing practices (handwriting and print) should adhere to the traditional Gothic script and typefaces called Fraktur or whether such practices should change in favour of the Latin script and typefaces called Antiqua. This controversy was fuelled by economic arguments (Latin script was used in international commerce), scientific arguments (the question of which type- face was “healthier” emerged), and arguments questioning which cultural liaisons should be upheld or even strengthened (Antiqua was identified with Romance and English languages and cultures, whereas Fraktur was identified with German language and culture). In German-speaking Switzerland, as a part of a multilingual country, the latter was particularly important because this question of cultural allegiance was expressed by the basic cultural practice of writing.