“Calculating Cleverly: Improving Numeracy of Teachers in the Second Half of the 18th Century”

Gabi Wuethrich, University of Zurich

The ongoing debate among economic historians regarding the Industrial Revolution's impact on human capital has predominantly centered on elite inventors and skilled practitioners, often neglecting basic education for proto-industrial and agricultural workers. A closer look at Zurich's church dominion in northeastern Switzerland reveals valuable insights. While some areas experienced heavy proto-industrialization in the 17th and 18th centuries, Zurich emerged as a hub for popular enlightenment in the latter half of the 18th century. This movement, promoting basic education for rural citizens through stricter school ordinances, had a tangible impact on numeracy skills. In 1799, Minister of Education Philipp Albert Stapfer conducted a comprehensive survey of all teachers in Switzerland, examining their occupational backgrounds and personal circumstances. Analysis of self-reported age and length of service records shows that primary teachers around 1800 exhibited numeracy levels comparable to well-educated European elites, challenging the traditional historiography shaped in the late 19th century. The responses to the so-called Stapfer Enquete, which was conducted before the introduction of a standard German language and accordingly contains many dialect expressions, were traditionally used to degrade the skills of early-modern teachers and to emphasize the professionalization of the teaching profession beginning in the 1830s. Contrary to the previous derogatory image of early modern teachers, the digital edition project of the Stapfer Enquete in the 2010s, along with subsequent research, has contributed to correcting misconceptions about the early modern school system and teaching profession. My empirical-quantitative study, which employs logit regressions, reveals, among other things, that teachers under 50, regardless of occupation, ceased heaping ages, indicating benefits from 18th-century school reforms. Zurich's commitment to rural education appears to have significantly improved numeracy skills among the agricultural population, a result facilitated by the digitization of the extensive source records of the Stapfer Enquete.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 100. Educational Reforms and Transformations: Revisiting Several National Experiences