Open or closed doors: a cultural analysis

In Switzerland, classroom doors were always closed. In Canada, it depended on the teacher.

The older I get, the more important doors are to me. I don’t remember having been fixated on doors when I was young and unencumbered; this obsession about having a room with a door started only after I lost my private space, and that was some twenty-plus years ago.

But now, I divide my time between a house that has no room with a door and a house where I have a room with a door I can shut at will. All this talk about doors made me reflect back to my formative years which I spent in Switzerland during the 1970s.

Seems for central Europeans, doors play a different role than they do for Canadians, at least as far as my own experience is concerned.

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I hereby invite you to take a trip down memory lane and get a glimpse into what life was like for me as a child in Switzerland and later in Canada shortly after we moved to Toronto.

Click this tiny clip below and watch me open my door for you.

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Elementary school in Switzerland 1970s

The first time I became acutely aware of doors was in my elementary school in Switzerland. It would have been the early 1970s and I was assigned to Fräulein Laumer’s room for grades 1 to 3. My classroom was at the end of a long dark hallway in the basement of a relatively modern school building. To get to that classroom I had to pass two other doors which were always closed.

From that moment on, I learned to accept doors were meant to be closed.

Once we entered the classroom, our teacher closed the door. She opened the door for recess and then closed the door again when we returned. At no time did I ever observe the door open during teaching or classroom activities.

I moved up to the second level for grades 4 to 6. Fräulein Hürlimann (later Frau Nater) was a favorite teacher who taught in a sun-filled classroom next to the stairs. She left after she got married and Fräulein Bodmer taught us grades 5 and 6. She was a grim lady who struggled to keep her class under control after her fun predecessor left.

Both ladies kept the door to the classroom firmly shut at all times.

One other classroom existed on that floor, but I never saw the inside of it because the door was always closed.

In the main entrance way, there was an atrium where they taught music. I played recorder in that room, both in music class and in recorder school taught on free afternoons (Wednesdays and Fridays). I also remember going to school on Saturday mornings, either from 8 am to 10 am or 10 am to 12 pm.

Odd, I know. I'm not sure if it's still like this now…

Doors to the music room were always closed.

Junior Middle School in Canada

Fast forward to 1980 to my first experience in a Canadian classroom. My grade 6 homeroom teacher at Morden Junior Middle School in Oakville, a suburb 30 minutes west of Toronto, was Mr. Sportum who was also the school’s gym (physical education) teacher.

His classroom was a mess. Clutter everywhere! It was an inviting, colourful room, but a culture shock to my senses compared to the orderly, tidy, clinical classrooms I was used to in Switzerland.

Mr. Sportum’s grade 6 classroom

The door to Mr. Sportum's classroom was always open. During announcements, the national anthem Oh Canada and the Lord's prayer (which, at that time, was still recited over the intercom) and all day. Didn't matter if we wrote tests or gave presentations, whether Mr. Sportum was teaching or letting us work on something, his door was always open.

We traveled between classrooms in the Canadian school, something I was not used to either. My Swiss teacher in grade 1 to 3 was the same teacher for all subjects. As of grade 4 in the Swiss school, we also had the same teacher for all subjects except for sewing or shop, which were in a different building and conducted by different teachers.

In Canada, we were continuously moving from classroom to classroom. Miss Baxter was the music teacher, Mrs. Wedeles was the English teacher and Mr. Harrison was the math teacher. I don’t remember who taught History, Science or Geography etc, but we had multiple teachers for various subjects, always conducted in different classrooms.

Mrs. Wedeles’ grade 7 classroom

As mentioned, Mrs. Wedeles was my English teacher and if I remember correctly also my grade 7 homeroom teacher. She spoke fluently German and was able to help me more than any other teacher by translating whenever I didn't understand something from English to German. I didn't know any English at all when we moved to Canada in 1980 and my mom simply plunked us kids into our designated grades: myself into grade 6, my sister into grade 5 (I think) and my brother grade 3 (?).

I was 11 and it was tricky to be exposed to so many new things without a way to articulate in the new language. My senses overload was immense! But somehow we kids managed to figure it out and all three of us are University graduates. My siblings even went further to obtain advanced degrees in various subjects including Masters degrees in Nursing, Business and more. I also went back to school multiple times to learn and train in other things and received certification in Technical Writing from York University after I completed my BA at the University of Guelph.

But back to the classrooms at the Canadian public school.

Mrs. Wedeles’ classroom was a holy mess, worse than Mr. Sportum's. There were books, binders and papers everywhere and other assorted clutter. I had no idea where anything was, let alone able to find it if asked to look for something, and I don’t think my teacher did either. It stumped me that this was allowed, frankly, after ten years in orderly, organized Switzerland.

One day, Mrs. Wedeles brought lilacs in a vase and placed them on her desk at the very edge because there really was no room for a vase with flowers among her pile of clutter. I was seated right behind her tower of mess and I was afraid the flowers would fall onto my desk. That didn’t happen, but the sweet scent that wafted from her desk to my desk was so strong I almost passed out.

To her credit, she noticed and moved the flowers to a window sill. Don’t ask me to describe the window sill but I'm sure it was filled with books and papers.

Like Mr. Sportum, Mrs. Wedeles never shut her door either, but in her case it was probably because it was blocked by all the stuff and clutter she kept in her classroom, piled high to the ceiling in boxes and bins or on open shelves lined against walls.

Mr. Harrison’s grade 8 classroom

Math was taught by Mr. Harrison who ended up being my homeroom teacher in grade 8, my final year at that school. His classroom was the only classroom I remember which often had the door shut. He kept his classroom extremely tidy, almost clinically tidy, which didn't really bother me and reminded me of Switzerland.

He was also the only teacher who sometimes moved a child’s desk into the hallway. One girl in particular was very chatty and if he found her disruptive, he would command her to stand up so he could move her desk out in the hall, next to the door. The chatty girl was then told to go sit there where she had no one to talk to and listen to the instructions from the hallway. That was one time he left the classroom door open, but usually, his door was closed.

Mr. Harrison also had a temper. To quiet down a rowdy classroom, he would take a sturdy ruler and smash it really hard onto a desk, making a loud noise which scared us.

Interestingly, whenever he felt the need to do this, his classroom door was shut. I was an astute child, aware of body language whenever Mr. Harrison seemed stressed or upset. Maybe it was because of my hearing loss and not understanding the language very well that I picked up the nuances in people's behaviour (or, in his case, potential behaviours). I usually knew to prepare myself before he started smashing the ruler (because of the hearing issue, I was sensitive to unfamiliar noises). Once the classroom returned to quiet, Mr. Harrison would leave the door shut unless the chatty girl was seated outside.

I doubt this method to calm a rowdy room of tweens would be tolerated in today's public school system…

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Doors in Swiss homes

Thinking back to my grandmother's house in Switzerland, every room had a door. The kitchen door was always open except on cool mornings when she wanted to retain heat. I remember sleeping over with my sister when we were little, up in the attic where she kept extra beds in another little room which had a door. In the mornings, we would smell coffee and hot chocolate being cooked in her little kitchen and once we descended the stairs, we would immediately notice the door to the kitchen was shut.

“Come in quick,” my grandmother would encourage us and swiftly shut the door behind us. On the breakfast table we would see toast with butter, jam and honey, a coffee carafe for her and my grandfather and milk cups for our hot chocolate. It was so tight and so cozy, warm and inviting. I remember my grandmother’s kitchen more clearly than any of the other kitchens I grew up in (we lived in various apartment buildings). Those cold mornings in her warm kitchen is a cherished memory.

It was her tiny gas stove that kept the little kitchen warm and toasty.

The rest of the day, the kitchen door remained open.

The German connection

I came across a fun article where an expat American wrote about why the Germans not only prefer, but enjoy closed doors. He called their closed-door obsession compartmentalization, which his German friends approved. To them, having separate rooms with doors was instrumental for whatever needed to be conducted in said room.

One day the American invited his German friend into his open-concept loft. The German man hated it for a variety of reasons, criticizing each one with charged emotion. He finished his barrage of complaints by pointing out the main reason: the so-called killer draft.

I’m familiar with the killer draft. The Swiss abhorred drafts of any kind and used the expression: Es zieht!

As soon as someone said es zieht, people immediately got up and shut all the windows and doors.

Killer draft

Keeping windows and doors closed seems to be a thing in central Europe, probably not just in Switzerland and Germany. According to the Europeans I know personally, cross-ventilation makes you sick. (Not true.)

They also remarked that going outside with wet hair will make you sick, which, incidentally, is also not true. A virus will make you sick, or bacteria. Perhaps having your head covered and kept warm during cold weather has its benefits (teenagers will disagree with this statement), but the cold itself is not going to make you sick unless you breathe in some virus.

But I digress (again). Back to the killer draft.

Have you ever noticed how many Germans (and Swiss) wear bandannas or scarves around their necks, even tiny toddlers? It's to protect against the killer draft.

Odd.

The killer draft in an office building

I remember visiting a Swiss aviation company as a young adult, many years after I moved to Canada and returned to Switzerland on a business trip. I was probably around 26 or so and worked for a simulator training company. One of my colleagues went to Zürich to teach a course and I was invited in a marketing capacity.

The day I entered the facility was a warm, sunny day. The room was a wide open space filled with many tables and desks. Each person (most of them female) was seated at their desk typing or talking on the phone.

I was led to a spare desk near a wall next to a printer and used a desktop computer to do my thing. After a while, I became hot and looked up. A huge row of windows without blinds let in the warm sunshine, making the room stuffy and increasingly warmer.

I turned to a lady seated near my desk and asked if we could open a window.

There was a collective gasp.

“But then, we’ll all get sick!” they exclaimed, referencing the killer draft.

Cross-ventilation was a strict no-no, prohibited under all circumstances. It was much better to suffer in the stale hot air than to open a window.

The weird thing was, the windows were all on one side, not on three or four different walls. Cross-ventilation only happens when multiple windows on opposing walls are open, no?

Wrong again. They pointed to the door.

“What if someone walked in? They would have to open the door and the killer draft would enter the room (and kill us all)!”

I made that last part up but that’s pretty much the impression I got from their refusal to let fresh air into the stuffy room.

One can’t open a door or window because they will all cry out “es zieht!“.

I think I left the facility not long after and wandered around town, boarded a train and went to visit my family in Uster.

Thank you for reading

Note: I wrote this article at a table in an open concept room with three windows open on different walls enjoying the early fall draft wafting through the room which, incidentally, has no door. Sorry not sorry.

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