EDUCATION All the cantons comply with this general law of the Constitution ; but each of them has its own school law, and the right to rovide and to regulate their local schools is jealously guarded y the several cantons. Every proposal to extend the power of the Bund over primary education has been met with strenuous opposition. The total expenditure from public funds on all the grades of education amounts to £1,617,201 ; that is to say, £948,788 on primary education, £223,118 on higher primary and continuation schools, £30,530 on training colleges, £167,089 on lycees and other secondary and intermediate schools, £97,250 on universities, and £150,426 on technical instruction. The contribution of the communes amounts to 51 ‘7 per cent, of the total expenditure, that of the cantons to 42-2 per cent., and that of the Bund to 6T per cent., this last being mainly a recent grant for technical instruction only, and appropriated chiefly to the Polytechnicum, or Technical University at Zurich, which is a federal and not a cantonal institution. The entire revenue for general education may thus be said to be derived from local resources. There are differences of some importance in the proportion of revenue assigned in different cantons to primary and secondary instruction respectively ; e.g., in Bern and Lucerne secondary and higher schools are gratuitous and the public subvention is large; in Zurich and other cantons moderate fees are charged. By a decree of April 1891 the Swiss Confederation proposed to grant subsidies for the encouragement of technical and commercial instruction, and also to furnish bursaries for scholars specially qualified by their capacity and industry, to enable them to attend the higher courses of a local commercial school. These must be boys of fifteen, who are to undergo three years’ instruction, and at the end to receive a diploma. There are fourteen such schools in Switzerland. The chief subjects of instruction are: mathematics, arithmetic (including book-keeping, office work, and commercial law), political economy, some branch of technology, natural science, chemistry and industrial geography, one foreign language at least, type-writing, shorthand, gymnastics and military exercises, visiting factories under supervision, and writing descriptive accounts of the same. Fees are paid amounting to from 30 to 100 frs. for natives and 60 to 200 frs. for foreigners. In 1895, in the school subsidized by the Federal Government, the fees paid by students amounted to 47,891 frs., and the Federal subsidy to 63,250 frs. The total number of pupils was 542. The provision for the training of teachers is ample. There are 24 State and 13 private normal colleges, with 2600 students. Most of these institutions are training colleges pure and simple, but ten of them form parts or appendages of higher primary schools. There are no pupil teachers, but candidates for admission to a training college must have been in a higher primary school for two years. The curriculum extends over two or three years. Prominent importance is given to music, to pedagogy, theoretical and practical, and every student is required to study one language other than the mother-tongue, and some branch of experimental science. Arrangements are also made for an annual Alpine excursion of three or four days for botanical or geological research, or for visits to famous institutions. The annual cost is about £22 for each student, the State and the communes contributing three-fourths; the rest is partly derived from voluntary contributions and partly from the fees paid by parents ; but by means of bursaries, graduated to suit the private circumstances of the students, these fees are so reduced that they seldom amount to £6 per annum. Certificates of competency are granted by the Council of Education for each canton, and not by the Federal Government. There is only one (in Canton St Gall) training college for higher primary or for secondary schools, but candidates who have had the full qualification of an elementary teacher, and have in addition served one year as assistant teacher and studied for two years at a university, may come up for the higher teacher’s certificate (Sekunddrschullehrer). The teacher is not, as in England, required very early to pursue his professional and his general education
- he must up to 17 at least continue in a course of liberal training, and not attempt to take
up pedagogic study or practice until after that age. The religious difficulty appears to have been for the present satisfactorily solved. Matthew Arnold {Special Report to the Education Department, 1886) cites the article of the Swiss Constitution: “The public schools shall be capable of being attended by adherents of all confessions without injury to their freedom of faith and conscience.” He adds that no difficulty has arisen in giving effect to this principle. The Swiss communes have in every popular school _ religious instruction in the faith of the majority — Catholic instruction in cantons like Lucerne, and Protestant in Protestant cantons like Zurich. Where there are enough children of the confession of the minority, a separate school is established for them ; where there are not enough, the
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children often attend the religious instruction of the majority, if the parents consent. In the great town school of Lucerne, 400 Protestant children were found attending in class with 2900 Catholics, the Catholic children receiving their religious instruction in the school, and the Protestant children out of school and out of hours. The foregoing details as to four of the most progressive countries of Europe will serve as a basis of comparison, and will render more intelligible the fact that in ScotIaad Great Britain the educational problem has from the first presented special difficulties, and has been less systematically and more tardily solved. In the northern part of the island the solution of that problem has proved less complex than in England and Wales. Some of the conditions in Scotland have been exceptionally favourable. So early as 1560 the Church Assembly, largely owing to the influence of John Knox, put forth its Book of Discipline, containing provisions, soon afterwards ratified by the Estates of the realm, requiring that every parish kirk in a town should have its Latin school, and that in the rural districts there should be elementary schools, and in large towns colleges for teaching logic, rhetoric, and the Greek and Roman languages. This legislation, confirmed by Acts of the Scottish Parliament in 1633 and 1696, and further enforced in 1803 by requiring each parish to provide a house and stipend for a schoolmaster, has resulted in the gradual production not only of a higher level of education in the country, but also of a universal recognition of the value of instruction on the part of the community, including peasants and persons of all ranks. The parochial schools, the burgh schools or academies, have for many generations been in close relation to the Universities. The religious difficulty so acutely felt in the southern portion of the island has been greatly reduced in Scotland owing to the practical unanimity of the people in the adoption of the Presbyterian form of faith. Hence the educational progress of Scotland has in many respects been more steady than in England, and has not been confined to the primary schools. The report of the Scottish Education Department for 1899 shows that with an estimated population of 4,290,619, the country possesses 3535 separate departments in primary schools, with an attendance of 681,334 scholars, and 1016 evening continuation schools, with 57,729 scholars. The return of teachers shows that 10,676 are fully certificated, 2371 are assistants, and 4111 are pupil teachers. The experience of the Scottish Education Department, like that of the English, has led by degrees to the gradual abandonment of the practice of individual examination of children in standards as the basis for the computation of the parliamentary grant, and to the substitution of a normal or block grant for one determined by the number of passes in separate subjects. Otherwise the features of the Scottish system which distinguish it from that of England are: (1) the provision that “the normal grant may, on the recommendation of the inspector, be reduced by not less then one-tenth nor more than one-half for faults of instruction and discipline,” thus retaining the principle that public aid shall be proportioned to the efficiency of the school (Art. 32); (2) the award of a merit certificate after the age of twelve to all who pass a satisfactory examination in the ordinary subjects of an elementary school course, thus recognizing the importance of an individual examination of scholars at the end of their course; (3) the special encouragement given to advanced departments in elementary schools; (4) the larger proportion (more than two to one) of trained to untrained teachers, and of head teachers who have graduated at the Universities ; (5) the increasing influence of the Scottish Education Department over secondary and technical schools, exercised by means of inspection, by direct subsidies under the Education and
