70
The Courier-Review.
LITERARY.
The Higher Education of Women in Switzerland.
To judge from frequent erroneous statements and comparisons made by the educational press about co-education in European countries, there must be more misapprehension upon this point than almost any other. The opinion seems to prevail that women are debarred by law as well as by custom from all higher professional, technical, scientific, and philosophical education. A few facts culled from a pamphlet, Das Schweizerische Schulsystem (The Swiss School System), prepared by the Swiss Department of the Interior and distributed at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, may be welcome to many, because they give the official statistics concerning the status of co-education.
In the common schools of Switzerland both sexes are educated together, and neither enjoys any special privileges except that the girls receive from three to six hours per week of additional compulsory instruction in woman's handiwork. Of the teachers of the common schools, only 32.3 per cent. are women. The reason for this must be sought in the fact that it does not pay the government to give young women the professional education which a Swiss educator must have. Experience has shown that the average time women teachers remain in the ranks of the profssion is less than four years.
With intermediate schools of Switzerland are classed the country and city high schools, gymnasia, normal schools, industrial and agricultural schools, and theological seminaries. In nearly all of these the young women are admitted on an equality with the young men, except, of course, the theological seminaries. Of country and city high schools (Secundarschulen), there are 477, with an attendance of 28,537 pupils, and a teaching force of 1370 teachers. Of the pupils, 16'346 are boys and 12,191 girls, and of the teachers 1178 are gentlemen and 192 ladies.
The normal schools are usually, though not
always, connected with the gymnasia, of which there are over forty in the republic. In these institutions co-education is not practiced. In many cantons there are two gymnasia of similar standing, one for the youngmen, and one for the young women, and in some cities the high schools are also organized on this plan. The gymnasia for the girls are called Hohre Töchterschulen, and there are about a dozen of these. Efforts are being made at present to secure admission for women to the gymnasia for male students, and if successful this step would undoubtedly be the greatest yet taken in the direction of co-education, for the gymnasia there are no parallel schools in the American system of education—are the institutions that have made possible the great universities and polytechnic schools. They give a six or seven years course in modern and ancient languages, higher mathematics, pure science, drawing, history, etc., that is fully equal to the usual classical course of the common grade of American universities, thus enabling the universities and polytechnic schools to devote themselves entirely to scientific or professional post-graduate work. No student can enter the latter without having passed the former. The gymnasia are usually divided into three or four schools: one of science and mathematics (Realabteilung), one of classics and humanistics, one of modern languages and technical science, and one of pedagogics. In Switzerland, last year, these gymnasia gave instruction to 17,299 students, of whom only about 4,500 were women. This number, one-fourth of the whole attendance, ought to be much larger, and the admission of the young women to all the gymnasia would undoubtedly increase it considerably, yet the fact remains that only few women attend the upper classes in the Töchterschulen, showing that the facilities for higher instruction are not generally appreciated by the sex.
It is difficult to give the reason for this condition of things, but a main point is undoubtedly in the fact that a thorough education does