Is it common in the Swiss school system for students to take classes in four different languages (German, English, French, Italian), or did Einstein attend a special/elite school?
It wouldn’t surprise me since French, Italian and German are three of the four official languages of Switzerland. (I don’t know whether that was the case in 1897 but those three languages were definitely all spoken in Switzerland in 1897.)
Today students in Swiss secondary education have to learn at least two non-native languages (besides their native language), one of those two has to be one of the official Swiss languages. Einstein only learned one more language, that doesn’t seem extraordinary.
It would be nice if someone from Switzerland could shed some more light on this. The situation in, for example, Germany is as follows: If you want to continue on to university learning two languages is standard, learning a third language is optional but possible pretty much everywhere. The four available languages in my school were English, French, Latin [0] and Spanish and you could pick up to three of those. (Only certain combinations were possible, English was always the first foreign language and you had to take it.)
[0] I still hate myself for picking Latin. It’s beyond useless.
I am from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, I started learning German in kindergarten (though those lessons were mostly useless until 7th grade). By 9th grade I had French, German, English and two options : Latin and Ancient Greek.
(All students were required to stay from 8AM to 4PM at school, those who didn't study ancient languages just sat in a room guarded by a teacher whose task was to make sure they did not talk to each other too much).
In High School it was a bit different, you had to choose between German and Italian (Two of the four official languages) and between English and Ancient Greek (Yes, some people actually pick Ancient Greek) and an option, which spans from Math, Biology/Chemistry or Psychology to Latin, Spanish or Italian.
None of these choices actually restrict what you can study later in college.
I remember reading in a book ("Sparks of Genius") that he went to a very specialized school. The book talked about there being a focus on the importance of conceptualization/visualization. If I remember correctly, the example that was given was of Einstein doing a physics problem involving a sail boat. He describes the importance of being able to feel as if you yourself were the boat -- to have the waves cut through your body, to feel the wind against the sail, to feel and hence form a deep and comprehensive understanding of all the large and minute interactions. This focus would clearly be a very important skill in theorizing...
Today students in Swiss secondary education have to learn at least two non-native languages (besides their native language), one of those two has to be one of the official Swiss languages. Einstein only learned one more language, that doesn’t seem extraordinary.
It would be nice if someone from Switzerland could shed some more light on this. The situation in, for example, Germany is as follows: If you want to continue on to university learning two languages is standard, learning a third language is optional but possible pretty much everywhere. The four available languages in my school were English, French, Latin [0] and Spanish and you could pick up to three of those. (Only certain combinations were possible, English was always the first foreign language and you had to take it.)
[0] I still hate myself for picking Latin. It’s beyond useless.