Welschlandjahr
The so-called Welschland year denotes residence of German Swiss youngsters to compulsory education in the well Welschland called Romandie , the French-speaking area of Switzerland . The stay in the Italian-speaking area of Switzerland is known as the Ticino year .
Until the late 1970s, the Welschlandjahr was part of the requirements specification for training young women and men in German-speaking Switzerland. While girls were mostly housed as domestic help or nanny in a family, boys worked as servants, unskilled workers or, less often, in a training company. The Welschland year generally served as an interim solution between compulsory schooling and apprenticeship in order to learn another national language. For young women it was a good opportunity to combine a language stay with the housekeeping year, which was then mandatory for many “female professions” . Conversely, girls and boys from western Switzerland also went to German-speaking Switzerland.
In the 1980s and 1990s, young Swiss people's interest in language stays in other parts of Switzerland declined in favor of au pair stays or student exchanges in English-speaking countries, before increasing again towards the end of the 1990s.
Today the Welschland year consists less of a French-speaking home economics than an organized au pair stay with a visit to a language school and sometimes even organized leisure activities. For young people from financially strong families, language stays lasting several months or a foreign-language tenth school year in special boarding schools are also offered.
literature
- Beatrice Hess, Eva Nadai, Brigitte Stucki: temporary daughter. The Swiss year. Chronos Verlag Zurich, 1990
- Beatrice Hess, Eva Nadai: Building block of a women's career: The Welschland year as preparation for family and work. Chronos Verlag 1992.