Contested Citizenship

Abstract

This article examines public education and the establishment of the nation-state in the first half of the nineteenth century in Switzerland. Textbooks, governmental decisions, and reports are analyzed in order to better understand how citizenship is depicted in school textbooks and whether (federal) political changes affected the image of the “imagined citizen” portrayed in such texts. The “ideal citizen” was, first and foremost, a communal and cantonal member of a twofold society run by the church and the secular government, in which nationality was depicted as a third realm.

Nations and Numbers: Elementary Mathematics Education as a Nationalizing Tool

“…If nation building was the goal, the unification of elementary mathematics education focused on Switzerland as a whole -just as the above-mentioned arithmetical problems posed by Voruz did, where "Swiss" history and supposedly decisive "Swiss" battles were discussed. Throughout the entire 19th century, periods when mathematics textbooks had a strong national emphasis alternated with periods when elementary mathematics education was strongly oriented towards the cantons (Brühwiler, 2017). As mentioned in the introduction, since statehood in the cantons stayed strong, the idea of a Swiss nation state remained contested.…”