Literary texts from different sources as basis of immaterial heritage in Switzerland: local, national and universal/ethnocentric anchorages

Submitted by: Bernard Schneuwly
Abstract: Based on the literary texts used in elementary school for language teaching, this paper aims to understand the role of immaterial and educational heritage in the constitution of a Swiss intangible and cultural heritage (on the role of literature for nation building, see Thiesse, 2021). To this end, our analysis spans the 19th and 20th centuries, across Switzerland's three linguistic regions.
We hypothesize that from the inception of modern school systems in the 19th century, literary excerpts in textbooks and children's literature have played the role of vectors not only of academic and educational knowledge, but also of cultural knowledge. The works that contain them are objects of national, cantonal and school memory, enabling both a public use of the past and founding a collective memory linked to the nation.
In order to take into account the various texts offered to schoolchildren, our analysis focuses on three source corpora: official reading books, works dedicated to children (children's literature) and brochures from the Swiss children's reading collection (a series of texts - several million copies - published in the four national languages from 1931 onwards). These corpuses are complemented by official texts (curricula and syllabuses, school laws and regulations).
These various primary sources have been analyzed using both the cultural transfer (Espagne, 1999) and historical-didactic (Bishop, 2019) approaches. The study and comparison of these three corpora reveal the various components of the Swiss intangible and cultural heritage conveyed within the school. They show that the texts proposed aim to anchor students in their local and national context, while also promoting a universal aim, strongly tinged however with an ethnocentric point of view.

References
Bishop, M. F. (2017). Une question de méthode: l’approche historico-didactique en français. In A. Dias-Chiaruttini & C. Cohen-Azria (Eds.), Théories-didactiques de la lecture et de l’écriture (pp.) 225-239). Editions Septentrion.
Espagne, M. (1999). Les Transferts culturels franco-allemands. Paris : PUF.
Thiesse, A. M. (2021). The Creation of National Identities: Europe, 18th—20th Centuries (Vol. 26). Brill.