“Balance of mind […] seems more necessary than the promotion of teaching machines” – technology in Swiss schools in the 1960s

Abstract

Advocates of educational innovations usually employ a classical rhetoric of high promises, discrediting alternatives, and moral pleas to distract from the ambiguous results in practice. Using this educational rhetoric, the protagonists aim to push for certain reforms. Clearly, the teacher is consistently represented as the key figure in such movements. In the 1960s, however, a pedagogical innovation emerged that challenged the position of the teacher: The propagation of so-called teaching machines. Moreover, as a departure from the users of the classical educational rhetoric, the supporters of the new school technologies focused on the effects in practice. Consequently, empirical results and an emphasis on efficiency became relevant in their argumentation. Whether supposedly impartial, effective, and individualizing machines could replace teachers emerged as the central theme of such investigations. Using the propagation of teaching machines in the 1960s as a highly informative case in point, the analysis presented in this work aims to elucidate how the line of argumentation pushing for the new school technology was intertwined with the classical educational rhetoric. Therefore, as a part of the present study, the arguments, misgivings, and hopes permeating the debate are identified by examining articles published in Swiss professional journals and newspapers, along with pertinent television broadcasts covering the period between 1965 and 1970.