Hochdeutsch im Kindergarten

Abstract

According to the results of the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) the linguistic competencies of Swiss students need to be improved. Currently, there is a strong tendency to ban local Swiss-German dialects from Swiss schools, including nursery-schools, and to replace them by Standard High-German more or less completely. Since parts of the Swiss-German speaking population have strong reservations about High-German or at least the use of High-German in nursery-schools, school authorities look for scientific support. Indeed linguistic research has shown favourable results for the pre-school use of High-German: German speaking children are encouraged to use High-German freely and spontaneously. Migrant children benefit regarding fluency and proficiency in German as a second language. The following article comments on some steps taken by school-authorities and summarizes the current discussions on the part of educational and linguistic research in Switzerland.