Interviews


I have interviewed teachers Franziska Schumacher and Berbel Rab and students Sara Schärrer and Pascal Vonlanthen.

Pascal told me a bit about what it's like to study at St.Michel. Ooh...scary. Just kidding. He gave me an account of what the Swiss students were doing at the moment. They seemed busy enough, though provided a surely well-needed break. In addition, Pascal mailed me 4C:s Spring -98 Tuesday schedule.

      7.50  English/French
      8.35  German
      9.25  Gym
      10.12 break
      10.25 Math
      11.12 break
      13.45 Philosophy
      14.35 Chemistry
Sara told me that the cantonal differences aren’t really that big. Little things differ. In one Canton, philosophy is obligatory for college students. In another it isn’t. Some Cantons have more Physical Education, some have less. There are other differences, however, that she considers more significant. Sara said she wouldn’t like to go to school in Bern, where she lives. She doesn’t think the teachers there give the individual students the kind of attention they get at St. Michel.

Mrs. Rab told me that she couldn’t speak of differences between Switzerland and Germany since each Swiss Canton has its own system of education! Hearing this, I asked her too about differences between the Cantons. She thought about it for a short while. Then she told me the differences weren’t very big at all. She explained that since the final exams, the "Matura", are the same all across the country the Cantons’ control of the college education is really quite limited. On the other hand, mrs. Rab as well as Sara spoke of significant cultural differences. As an example she mentioned that she wouldn’t like to teach in Bern, where teachers traditionally have less freedom.

She also told me that the biggest difference between the school systems in Germany and Switzerland is that the Gymnasium is years 5-13 in Germany (compare Switzerland 10-13) which, according to mrs. Rab, gives the German students a feeling of continuity which her pupils in Fribourg lack, that it's not problematic to have both German- and French speaking students at the school, and that a lot of the things she had wanted to change had been changed with the recent Matura-reform, "at least on paper".

From now on, all Swiss college students are to work with themes, studying things from different angles and with different teachers. They are to have block hours, thus avoiding what is called (at least in Sweden) "the 40 minute terror", to always have to jump to a new subject just as you have "gotten into" the first. Last of all, the programmes (Science, Letters, General matters) are going to disappear.

I spoke to ms. Schumacher about grades. When I asked her about it, she said grades aren’t a subject of debate in Switzerland. It didn’t seem to me she had felt a need for such a debate, but I didn’t ask her about that. She listened to my questions, questions that may have been a bit along the lines of "Don’t you think we should have a school without grades, isn’t that what you think, really?". She took them very seriously and gave me good answers, defending grades quite successfully with ”the usual arguments”. Students need the motivation. Universities need to know that applicants have some basic competence. Etc. From what she said, I also understood that tests play a much greater part for the final marks than in Sweden.

Back to that cool index 1