The Swiss love learning so they take lots and lots of courses. Quite often the company pays for their courses which makes it even nicer. Keeping up to date on company time. After awhile it turns to habit, so even retired Swiss continue taking courses and learning.
Farmer Painting
Not including German courses, one of the first, if not the first course I took in Switzerland was a ‘Bauernmalerei’ course. This special Swiss ‘farmer’s painting’ style is primitive art which really means painting without formal training. Swiss farmers painted daily scenes like an Alpine decent with the cattle or flowers on furniture as decoration. The course I took was basically furniture decoration.
What was fun about this course, apart from the fact that I spoke almost no German, were the other people in the course. All women and all over 65 years old. We were given the choice of a stencil of either a bird or a flower to paint. I chose the flower and my neighbor chose the bird. The teacher started with the bird and carefully demonstrated the style and sequence of what had to be done. Even with my very limited German I understood you start with a white background in the form of the bird. Then you painted the bird over the white. That way the colors would show up better. It makes sense.
The lady sitting next to me started directly with painting the bird. No white first. I saw she was doing it differently than the teacher but didn’t say anything. If she didn’t listen to the teacher she certainly wouldn’t listen to a young whippersnapper who barely spoke German. Who knows, maybe I misunderstood the teacher. In the end she was extremely disappointed with her results. The teacher was somewhat exasperated with her for not following directions. Me? I learned for better results, you should listen to what the teacher says.
Being Prepared for PDF
As time goes on I have taken many courses in different fields. I learned I can get the most out of a course when I am prepared. So I make sure I’m prepared. I don’t think this is a Swiss-thing, it’s more like a Lisa-thing but it works for me.
Early in my computer career I took a PDF course. To prepare for the course I read some information about PDFs. There were so many neat things to do with the program. I wrote a list of goals for the course which turned out to be two pages long. Like I said, there were a lot of neat things I wanted to learn.
As usual, the teacher started by asking what we wanted to learn in the course. I was the only woman so the teacher decided to start with me, ‘ladies first’. I turned out to be the teacher’s worst nightmare. Still, after my extensive answer he gallantly asked the other members of the class what they wanted to learn. They all said my list sounded good and interesting, they wanted to learn that too. No one had anything else to add to my rather comprehensive list.
Usually day courses are somewhat social and the teacher is around during the breaks and lunch to talk shop. Our teacher didn’t come to either. He said something about only wanting a sandwich. When we returned from lunch he was sitting intensely at the computer. I think maybe he was checking up on how to do something on my list. The course was pretty good and I learned a lot.
Learning by Teaching
Quite often instructors learn something in their courses, too. A while back Ben took a course for teachers about careers which involved casting. So the teachers actually knew what casting was, they cast something in sand. The object the instructors chose to make was a 5 franc piece. The details were amazing and it was really convincing.
During a school special career week, the teachers, full of élan, showed their students how casting was done. Shortly thereafter the police started finding counterfeit 5 franc pieces in vending machines. Someone had paid attention. The trail led to the students, who said they only did what they learned in class. Then to the teachers, who said they only taught it the way they had learned. And subsequently back to the course instructors. Strange, but the instructors no longer use 5 franc pieces to show how good the sand is. They found something else.
Also, the material you hand out when you give a course, should be yours. When we taught, we often bought course books for our students and worked through them in class. A friend of Ben’s took a music course where each participant received a complete photocopy of a book. Copyright laws allow teachers in Switzerland to copy more than the average bear for classes, but not whole books. To add oil to the fire, the author of the copied book just happened to be in that course. There were some pretty harsh consequences in that case.
After All is Said and Done
Not all courses turn out to be super courses. In one computer course the first thing the teacher said was that he had never given this particular course before. He wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out but was going to try and make it good. I’m not for lying but that is not the first thing you want to hear from your teacher. He certainly didn’t inspire any confidence in either his credibility or teaching abilities. The course bombed out completely.
I always say, you can learn something in every course you take. You can reach your set goals or even goals you didn’t know existed. Even if the course was completely hopeless, you can learn how NOT to give a course.
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