Die Stapfer-Enquête als Momentaufnahme der Schweizer Niederen Schulen vor 1800 [The Stapfer School Inquiry as a Snapshot of Lower Schooling in Switzerland before 1800]

(Heinrich Richard Schmidt)

Empirical surveys of the schools are not the invention of the late twentieth century; school surveys were conducted using standardized questionnaires as early as in the eighteenth century. A first large survey was conducted in 1771 in the Canton of Zurich and contained 81 questions; over 200 responses have been handed down and are now also accessible. A much larger survey was conducted at the start of the Helvetic Republic (1799), when the minister of education at the time, Philipp Albert Stapfer, wanted to reorganize the schools in all of Switzerland. The existing 2,500 responses to the questionnaire containing 60 questions provide incredibly precise information on Swiss basic primary and secondary schools before 1800. The aim of a six-year project is to make the Stapfer School Inquiry completely available to researchers; the first phase of the project is supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Here, one of the heads of the projects describes the project.