Figure 1.--This French-speaking Swiss school required that the boys wear smocks. The boy on the left, however, may not have liked them as he came to school on class photograph day without his smock. I'm not sure about the regulation. The fact that all the other boys wear smocks suggests the rule was strictly enforced, but whay about the boy who showed up without his smock? See text.

There was no national rule in Switzerland about wearing smocks to school. There were substantial variations among catons. Many individual schools, however, did have regulations requiring them. While Switzeland has three linguistic regions (even 4 with rumantsch), there are 23 different cantons with 23 separate educational regulations. Some older Swiss will refer to 22 cantons. The Swiss decided to create a new canton (Fench speaking Jura was part of german speaking canton Bern). So there are 23 cantons. Each part of Switzerland is culturally linked to either France, Germany or Italy. Boys in the German cantons did not commonly wear smocks like Ticino (Italian) and Romandie (French) boys who in their cantons more or less has schools with compulsory rules--depending on the canton.

Cantons

Switzerland had no national policies on school smocks. These policies were set by the canton school authorities. Smocks were required in the French and Italian cantons and were generally not worn in the German cantons. There were also some mixed cantons where the situatiin was more complicated. Generally the population within these cantons had regional linguistic majorities which would affect the schools. Often these cantons would encourage, but not require smocks in French schools.

Individual Schools

Many individual schools adopted their own regulations. Many French schools insisted on smocks, at least for the younger boys. After a certain age, it was often made optional. Some boys would still wear smocks to school after this age as their mothers insisted upon it. Usually the schools did not insist on a ceratin style of smock, only that smocks be worn. Thus boys in state schools would wear quite a variety of styles. Private scgools would more commonly insist on a specific style or color.

Individual Case

All the boys in the class pictured above, except for one, wear school smocks. Clearly the rule about smocks is being enforced at the school, otherwise there would not be so many boys wearing them. HBC is puzzled as to why the boy who came to school on class photography day would be placed in the front row. I would have thought he would have been placed in a back row. HBC thought that perhaps this teacher was not to bothered about the smock rule. A Swiss contributor who attended this school reports, "Contrary to above speculation that the school and teacher not being bothered about it, the teacher was in fact upset." Our Swiss contributor reports that the boys were apparently aligned in same order than in classroom

Enforcing Rules

Wearing a smock was compulsory for children up year 10 in French cantons. Boys who came to school without their smocks would be sent back home to fetch it--except for boys living more than a few minutes. These boys had to come back next day with explanatory note from parents. Sometimes boys would be assigned lines to write. A common assignment was as homework to write 50 times same sentence: "I must come to school with my smock".

Any violation of the smock rule would be reported in the monthly notebook with all other discipline failure such as "late arrival" or "chats in the class" or "did not know poem by heart" and resulted in a lowering of your behaviour mark (from 6 = excellent to 0 = very bad).

There were not many regulations at school. The main ones were mainly the necessity to: come to school, arrive in due time, work at school and do the homework, have a good behaviour, and wear a smock

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Smock-related pages:
[Pinafores] [Fauntleroy suits] [Fauntleroy dresses] [Sailor hats]
[Park outings] [French page]
[Renoir page] [School smocks]

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Bibliographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Contributions] [Countries]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: DEcember 16, 2000
Last updated: December 18, 2000