According to the currently available information the 2015/2016 academic year saw classes staged in twenty Swiss cantons, i.e. at 63 instruction locations across Switzerland. Croatian language instruction is attended by some nine hundred pupils and taught by fourteen teachers. The Croatian science, education and sports ministry fully funds and organises the programme, selecting and hiring teachers for four-year terms in accordance with an ordinance covering the prerequisites for employment of teachers working in the Croatian language instruction abroad programme.
This year Croatian language instruction in Switzerland will celebrate three decades of activity. Many of the people that send their children to attend Croatian language instruction are unaware of the effort invested by our people across Switzerland to establish the programme. I myself was among the initiators and founders of the programme.
A part of the ethnic Croatian population in Switzerland, in the scope of the opportunity available to them during the 1970s period of economic migration, campaigned for Croatian departments in the Yugoslav instruction programme active at the time. In 1973 the Croatian emigrants secured a separate department for Croatian children in the city of Baden, while the programme for the rest of Switzerland continued to offer mixed classes for all nationals of the now defunct Yugoslav federation.
In 1979 a group of 263 parents, most from Baden, Zurich and Basel, signed a petition seeking Croatian language sections which, of course, did not at all impress the totalitarian mentality of the authorities in Yugoslavia. Although that effort proved fruitless, the resistance did demonstrate that a portion of the Croatian immigrant population possessed a robust national awareness that even repressive Yugoslav policies could not undermine.
A meeting was held on 22 June 1990, in the immediate wake of the ousting of the communist totalitarian regime in Croatian in May of that year, of a committee to found a Croatian language supplementary instruction programme. The programme was known as the Croatian Supplementary School through to 1993 when the Croatian authorities assumed management and administration and renamed the programme Croatian Language Instruction. The founding committee that met in 1990 consisted of Vladimir Boban, Zvonimir Čičić, the late Josip Dobša, Grana Ferić, Stanislav Ferić, Marijan Jakopović, Tihomir Nuić and Jure Primorac. Geneva resident Andrija Babić was elected the secretary of the committee. These were eminent and long-standing members and often officers of the former Croatian Cultural Community association. They were joined at their second meeting in July by friar Karlo Lovrić, then director of the Croatian Catholic Missions in Switzerland and head of the Croatian Catholic Mission in Zurich.
And while our team sought out teachers across Switzerland and kept up a running correspondence with the Swiss authorities seeking recognition and available premises, the local Croatian Catholic Missions copied and handed out enrolment forms at churches and mission offices.
We also turned to Swiss private sector institutions and foundations for financial assistance, well aware that the state would provide premises and would cover the additional costs associated with overtime work for caretakers. At the time Croatian language instruction was primarily scheduled for Wednesday and Saturday afternoons when school facilities were otherwise unused. In the spring of 1992 we secured support from retail company Migros (4,000 Swiss francs) and the Seraphisches Liebeswerk Solothurn Christian social work association (200 Swiss francs). In May of that year the Caritas association made a grant of 10,000 Swiss francs.
The first classroom session kicked off in Geneva on 8 September 1990. The teacher and spiritus movens was Andrija Babić. Blagica Alilović opened the second classroom in Buchs near St Gallen on 27 September 1990. The last of the major cities in which a classroom was opened was the Swiss capital of Bern, with classroom premises secured only in April of 1992. This eight-month delay marked the beginning of Croatian language classroom instruction for kids in Bern in the 1991/92 school year.
Following countless requests, visits to government offices in Zagreb, appeals and exhortations, the then ministry for education, culture, physical and technical education assumed control of the programme in September of 1993. The Croatian language instruction programme was the fruit of patriotic efforts, and the fact that Croatia’s government did finally assume management and administration of the programme was both a recognition of our efforts and a source of great joy. Teachers were hired, classroom curriculum created and budgets were drawn up. The programme is based on the principle of solidarity given that schools in smaller towns were not able to cover expenses to the extent the larger cities were.
There was plenty of good news concerning the programme, which encouraged and motivated our work. MOVIS, the bulletin of the Croatian Catholic Missions in Switzerland, did not miss an opportunity to inform its readership of the development and growth of the programme. Društvene obavijesti (“Society News”), the former bulletin of the Croatian Catholic missions, offered us use of its space whenever necessary. It was in these bulletins that the Croatian community in Switzerland learned who was active in the programme and who was providing material and spiritual support to its organisers. Local and national Swiss papers also reported on our bold venture and were generous in their praise.
In 1992 we launched the school bulletin Govorimo hrvatski (“Speak Croatian”), which continues to be published to this day once a year. The programme of Croatian language and culture instruction is targeted to the children of Croatian nationals with temporary or permanent residence in Switzerland and to children who live in Switzerland whose maternal tongue is Croatian, and to all other children interested in learning Croatian and about our culture and that have the requisite knowledge of the language.
Besides language and literature, the core of the programme, the curriculum also includes history, and our cultural and natural heritage. Classroom activities are specific in nature: they are held, as a rule, in Swiss schools in the afternoon following regular classes. Pupils are divided into two very heterogenous groups. The first group are children from preschool to fourth grade, and the second from fifth to eighth grade. Secondary school pupils can continue receiving instruction at the premises in the town of Dietikon or with another instructional group in their place of residence.
According to the currently available information the 2015/2016 academic year saw classes staged in twenty Swiss cantons, i.e. at 63 instruction locations across Switzerland. Croatian language instruction is attended by some nine hundred pupils and taught by fourteen teachers. The Croatian science, education and sports ministry fully funds and organises the programme, selecting and hiring teachers for four-year terms in accordance with an ordinance covering the prerequisites for employment of teachers working in the Croatian language instruction abroad programme.
The central bureau of the programme in Switzerland is located in Dietikon. It is the point from which the coordinator responsible for running the entire administration works, monitoring the work of the teachers, cooperation with and presence at the meetings of the Swiss bureaus of training and education, and cooperation with Croatian institutions, associations and Catholic missions. It also organises various extracurricular activities, including theatre and literary events, the procurement of textbooks, the creation of a school bulletin, and sees to the filling out of the (online) forms for the cantonal education departments.
One of the major extracurricular activities we can be especially proud of are the group theatre meetings of children active in the programme. This year’s event was particularly festive as it marked the tenth year the theatrical event has been staged. The first theatre activities began back in 2007 with then coordinator Marijana Ćorluka organising the first meeting in Trimbach. Since then we have staged many plays across Switzerland featuring hundreds of the pupils attending Croatian language instruction. Over the past decade much effort has gone into each of the performances from the pupils, teachers and parents who see value in nurturing the ancestral language.
There is also cultural cooperation with Croatian diplomatic offices. Every December the programme managers work with our general consulate in Zurich and our embassy in Bern to organise an exhibition of the art work of participating children, this year focused on Croatian inventions.
Links with the homeland take many forms: correspondence with peers, participation in various arts and literature competitions (e.g. the Haiku Competition organised by Vežica Elementary School in Rijeka where the Swiss programme participants took the first and third prizes, the Tin and I competition organised by Vrgorac Elementary School, the Family Seen Through the Eyes of a Child event staged by the Klasje home for orphaned, abandoned and neglected children in Osijek, the Glagolitic Script in the Eyes and Hearts of Children Iserlohn/Rome/Molise/Zagreb 2016 event), excursions to Croatia, humanitarian campaigns and projects like teacher Božica Matak’s Stories of Hearts, which we are especially proud of.
Twice a year (at the end of the first and second semesters) teachers present their pupils with report cards stating their grades in the subjects Croatian Language and Croatian Literature. In many of the Swiss cantons these grades are also incorporated into the national Swiss school report cards and are weighted the same as other grades received in school.
Extracurricular Activity
A major part of the Croatian language instruction programme are extracurricular activities, which include shows organised at Croatian Catholic Missions. There are usually two such events staged every year: one on the St Nicholas feast day or on Christmas day, and the other in spring when we celebrate Mother’s Day. These events aim to provide both playtime and learning experiences and opportunities for socialising and for recitations of poems and performances of songs and plays by the pupils before their parents and other participants of the events. The programme also works with the Catholic missions in editing the Croatian school pages in the MOVIS bulletin.
The head office of the programme in Dietikon also stages an annual literary meeting with children, parents and other interested visitors, featuring a leading homeland writer as the special guest. There are also frequent creative workshops, including this year’s Easter workshop when pupils learned the art of traditional wax decoration of Easter eggs.
Many of the teachers have been active with the pupils and parents in staging humanitarian campaigns to offer aid to poor people in the homeland.
See more at: https://moja-domovina.net/2020/05/25/ususret-tridesetoj-obljetnici-hrvatska-nastava-u-svicarskoj/
By: Tihomir Nuić