St. Michel is an ancient school, though not as ancient as some of its buildings. We, INT3 (and our hosts), were taken on a guided tour of the school. We saw beautiful parqueted floors, huge portraits of historical men of the church, a school church that was more impressive in many ways than the Dome of Gothenburg, and many other wondrous things. We also learned the reason for all of this. Hundreds of years ago a monastery was built at this place, a great fort for the Catholic struggle against the Reformed Churches. It was of no little importance, and it had stayed an important centre of the Roman Catholic Church for a long time. They started a priest seminar at the monastery, and eventually they had to build lodgements for those who studied there. And time went by, and the monastery and the seminar flourished. And then, Fribourg grew less important to the weakened Catholic Church. And then, one day, there was no monastery and no seminar, but there was a public college. The students are, naturally, aware of the fact that their school is special. This wasn’t the first time our hosts did that guided tour. They also know their school is special because their teams win all big college sport events in Switzerland. Of course, they are proud of this. On the other hand, St Michel is their school. It’s the place they drag themselves to every morning to learn things mostly because they have to if they want to go University and in time get what they consider an acceptable job. Their view of the place can’t be too romantic.
Somebody said if a Swedish college had looked like this the students would have torn it to pieces in three minutes. I said that, well, I didn’t know about that. People grow with responsibility, it’s really not a big percentage of us who would draw a moustache on the original Mona Lisa, even fewer would do it if they had the chance every day...Maybe I disproved this myself later in the week by scribbling my name on the wall of a medieval castle, but that’s really another story. I stick with my theory but admit that the trust they have in their students at St Michel is quite impressive.
The element of guessing in it is not small, but I want to say that I don’t think the classroom situation differs that much between Lerum and Fribourg. It’s at least a qualified guess. I’ve been to classrooms and classes in both places. Well, I’ve been to one classroom and one class in Fribourg. I heard a real Fribourgian History teacher speaking about Switzerland in English too a Swedish class (with two or three Swiss people hiding in it and) with me in it. I don’t think anything happened during the lesson that couldn’t just as well have taken place in Lerum, Sweden and the teacher didn’t seem very shocked by our horrible, relentless, Swedish, undisciplined behaviour.So College St Michel is just school, not even School with a capital ”S”, I think. I wouldn’t dream of saying there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a very nice school, too, if it only hadn’t been for that library. It was depressing to see, really. It had yellow metal shelves.
In conclusion, "Gymnasium" in Fribourg seems pretty much the same as "gymnasium" in Lerum, but also pretty much different. In Fribourg, you learn a little more facts. In Lerum you learn more about using computers (and writing things like this). I don’t know which is better. It’s the little differences.
I was at a Fribourg college, St. Michel, at a couple of occasions between 26 September and 2 October 1998. Here follows a few of my observations from those visits.