Radiography of a complex educational process: from the reform of mother tongue teaching to the reform of the school system

Abstract

The 1870’s were marked in Ticino (a Catholic and rural canton, the only Italian-speaking canton in Switzerland) by political tensions between the liberal and conservative parties. In power since 1875, the conservatives tried to reform the program previously proposed by their liberal opponents. This period thus marks a new political, economic and cultural parenthesis in the canton of Ticino, which coincides with the peak of the pre-existing and persistent political oppositions and conflicts between the different regions of the canton of Ticino since the approval of the cantonal constitutional revision in 1870 (Masoni, 2019). This political parenthesis culminated fifteen years later, in 1889, with the new elections that put the Liberals back in power. A study of the educational press and of the educational essays published by the Liberals in the 1870s and 1880s allows us to understand how the opposition took a stance according to the changes imposed by the new government and what counter-project was developed to deal with the new direction of educational policy. We note that the debate proposed by the Liberals is developing around the reform of mother tongue teaching, particularly through the adoption and adaptation of the Pestalozzi methods (Masoni & Tinembart, 2023). This controversy around language teaching suddenly becomes part of a wider debate that aims at the implementation of a global reform of the public education system and particulary of the pedagogical and educational aims that it should ideally endorse. This paper will analyze the debates put forward by liberals in the years 1870-1890 and reflect on language teaching as a vehicle for a more complex reform. By adopting the cultural transfer approach (Espagne, 1999) aimed at tracing the circulation of ideas and values, we propose to study a corpus of varied sources (laws, regulations, pedagogical press, pedagogical essays and reading books) in order to highlight the constellation of actors, with multiple profiles and interests, who are involved in these reform dynamics. Moreover, the analysis of the Ticino case study enables us to highlight the transnational dimension of this dynamic. In fact, the Ticino case is part of the more general debate concerning Western school systems during the same years and whose objective is to promote the generalisation of schooling and the transition to an increasingly heterogeneous mass school public by criticizing the efficiency of the public education system and its adequacy to the requirements imposed by the new democratic values (Hofstetter, Schneuwly & Criblez, 2007).

Bibliography

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Hofstetter, R., Schneuwly, B., Criblez, L. (2007). Approches empiriques de l'éducation. In Hofstetter, R., Schneuwly, B., (ed.). Emergence des sciences de l'éducation en Suisse à la croisée de traditions académiques contrastées. Fin du 19e - première moitié du 20e siècle (pp. 321-344). Bern : Peter Lang.

Masoni, G. (2019). Rapsodia del sapere scolastico: storia del manuale e dei suoi attori nel Canton Ticino (1830-1914) (Thèse de doctorart). Lausanne : Université de Lausanne.

Masoni, G. (2023). « Pestalozzi outre Gothard ». Cahiers Pestalozzi, 7, Yverdon-Les-Bains : Centre de documentation et de recherche Pestalozzi.