The Schools Take Over

Te Ao Hou, April 1958, Page 39

The Schools Take Over The decision to teach Romantsch in the Grisons schools was taken in 1894. Gradually, textbooks and school readers were produced and the problems of teacher training solved. At the moment there are two types of Romantsch schools. In schools of the first type, in areas where Romantsch is the mother tongue, all instruction is at first in that language. German is taught as a foreign language from standard four onwards, and gradually becomes the language of instruction. As the teaching in German starts. Romantsch gradually loses importance and at high school is reduced to two periods per week. In the second type of school the teacher speaks German to the children from the beginning. Romantsch is taught two periods a week from the first standard onwards (but sometimes later). Sometimes children are free to drop Romantsch if they want to. The schools are of this second type where the people have lost a good deal of their Romantsch. In practically the whole of the Romantsch area, the schools are now of one of these two types. The communities themselves decide on the school they want. They may either choose one of the two types described or a fully German or Italian school. Romantsch is at present actually gaining ground. There are examples of people introducing fully Romantsch schools where previously little Romantsch was spoken. All this was not merely the result of help from the government. Every step in the development was first of all due to the Romantsch people themselves, to their enthusiasm for their language, to their eagerness to learn and preserve it, and to their strong support of the Romantsch League. For instance, in areas where the language threatened to die out, play centres were established by the league where Romantsch was spoken by the women in charge. Children learnt the language Typical house in the Romantsch district (Photograph: Koelly. Zurich)

Top: Village in the Grisons mountains—Sedrun (Photo: Meerkaemper, Davos-Platz). Right: Typical representative of the Romantsch race (Photo: Feuerstein, Schuls-Tarasp) Old-fashioned interior still common in the mountains of the Grisons canton, with the traditional bedstead (Steiner Photograph. St Moritz)

during their play. As a result of such efforts it was possible to introduce Romantsch in some primary schools in districts where Romantsch was disappearing among the younger generation.