Mr Largo, what is lacking in our education system?

A gloomy Tuesday morning, snowflakes swirling through the air, cars labouring up a steep road in Uetliburg, Canton St. Gallen. Remo Largo lives up there in a beautiful detached house with a marvellous view as far as Lake Zurich. «Did you find it okay?» asks the paediatrician, taking off his coat and scarf. «I'll make you a cup of tea,» he says and invites you into the lounge, where we spend the next few hours chatting.

Remo Largo, your book «The Right Life» has been on the market for a year now. The media response has been great, and in some cases not exactly positive. Did that surprise you?

Not in hindsight. I can understand that many readers don't like my theses. They expect easy-to-implement advice. The book is about questioning yourself and your life.

What is a «suitable life» for you?

Leading a suitable life is a basic principle of evolution. This is what every living being wants, be it a bacterium, a plant, an animal or a human being. We are constantly endeavouring to adapt or to find an environment that meets our needs. It's also about being able to apply our very own competences - without being permanently overwhelmed or underchallenged. This is what I call the «fit principle» - which is essentially the meaning of life.

Everyone wants to be able to stay true to themselves and be recognised for who they really are. Why is it that only a few still manage to do this?

We have been changing our environment massively for around 150 years. This is mainly to do with technological progress and the massification of society, i.e. globalisation. But we humans are not arbitrarily adaptable. Our ancestors lived in communities with familiar people for at least 200,000 years. It was rare to meet someone you didn't know. This way of living together has shaped us. Now we live in an anonymised mass society for which we were not made.

And in a mass society we can no longer adequately satisfy our basic needs?

I am convinced of that. Especially the social and emotional ones. Security, social recognition and a secure position in the community are basic needs that we are less and less able to fulfil. Children and older people suffer most from this.

You need to explain that in more detail.

«It takes a whole village to raise a child,» says an African proverb. A nuclear family is not enough. Children no longer get the security they actually need. In addition, many parents are stressed. They are afraid of losing out in our meritocracy. They pass this fear on to their children as pressure.

The majority of our children today are growing up in small families ...

... and have too few other carers. Grandparents often live too far away to be actively involved in childcare, and we don't maintain close contact with our immediate environment, such as the neighbourhood. We have become accustomed to a life with great individual freedom and little interpersonal contact and responsibility and are reluctant to give this up.

True to the motto: «We as a family have to do it alone.»

But that is virtually impossible. The family was never a social island on which parents raised their children alone. It was always integrated into a community in which there were several supporting reference persons: the extended family, neighbours, people with whom children shared their lives - and of course many other children.

As deeply social beings, we need long-term, sustainable relationships with trusted people.

You can delegate tasks to service providers: Domestic help, daycare centres ...

... but it doesn't lead to more emotional support and security. Or to put it another way: I don't tell the nursery teacher about my marital problems, but I might tell my trusted neighbour. I am firmly convinced that this isolation impairs our well-being. Small families in particular are completely overwhelmed by this. As deeply social beings, we need long-term, sustainable relationships with trusted people.

Don't you romanticise these ways of life from the past too much?

You are right, the social control and therefore the pressure in a village in the 18th or 19th century was high. Most inhabitants simply had no choice but to live there. Nobody wants those times back. What I have in mind are communities formed voluntarily. For example, a group of people found a housing co-operative in which they make a financial contribution. People support each other in caring for children or the elderly, cultivate hobbies and play sports together. Living spaces need to be created that leave plenty of room for socialising. To achieve this, all residents, including children, must be involved in planning the community and its activities.

Such flat-sharing communities already exist in this country. At least to some extent. Some people thrive in them - others simply don't want so much closeness and want more privacy.

Nobody should be forced to live like this. Anyone who wants to can continue to live in their detached house with a fenced-in garden. But everyone else should be given the opportunity to lead a life that suits them.

How do you intend to make business and the state more responsible in this respect?

The state should promote the new forms of family and cohabitation by supporting them with tax relief for families and favourable mortgages for housing cooperatives. In this way, it creates framework conditions in spatial planning and legislation that facilitate the construction of communal housing; property rights must be adapted and protected with legal requirements. In order for people in cohabitation to be able to lead a suitable life, working conditions must also be improved and parents must be given time off. Parental leave, part-time options and flexible working hours are important keywords.

Real education consists of supporting the child in all its competences, including social skills.

That sounds like the ideal society. Too good to be true?

This is no utopia. The Scandinavian countries are already leading the way without any economic losses.

Another demand you have been making for years concerns a fundamental reorganisation of our education system. Why is that?

Today, the education system seems to have only one task: To produce labour for the economy. Our education system is a planned economy. A curriculum is devised at the top, the teachers have to enforce it and the children are controlled by examinations. Which makes children, parents and teachers unhappy. That's not what I mean by education. Real education consists of supporting the child in all their skills, including social skills. To do this, we need to scrutinise our image of humanity. I want a child to become a competent adult with good self-esteem and self-efficacy who feels committed to the community.

What is missing?

The sad thing is that most young adults today no longer feel themselves because they have been told from an early age what they have to do. Children are under constant pressure to perform, which demotivates them. As a result, we end up with young adults who are completely externally determined and lack self-confidence and self-efficacy. Yet all children want to achieve. We should finally trust that all children want to learn, but at their own pace and in their own way.

Villa Monte is often cited as a prime example of self-determined learning. An alternative public school in the canton of Schwyz.

There is neither a timetable nor an annual plan, nor are there any exams or grades. The children decide for themselves how they want to learn. If they need help, teachers are available to them. In the end, these children go to grammar school just like those from state schools - but they become completely different adults, with good self-esteem, good self-efficacy and high social skills. I'm not saying that primary schools should be completely overhauled. But Villa Monte is a good example of how child-centred learning is possible at school.

Success brings back the motivation to learn.

Lack of confidence - is this one of the reasons why many people find it so difficult to find the life that suits them?

Exactly, confidence in themselves is something children need to learn. They need to experience that they can achieve things on their own. During my scientific work at Zurich Children's Hospital, I got to know a boy who was highly gifted in mathematics. He later studied theoretical physics, which is one of the hardest things you can study. After completing his studies, he said: "So, now I'm going to become a carpenter. He knew exactly what made him happy. I was very impressed by this inner freedom.

Isn't it generally easier for people with high cognitive potential to choose their profession freely? (Almost) all doors are open to them. As Head of Developmental Paediatrics in Zurich, you have certainly often experienced the opposite, where parents had to be made aware of their children's developmental deficits - and that these cannot be «treated away».

Countless times. But it doesn't have to turn into a tragedy. What parents don't want is for their child to be stigmatised and ostracised. Dyslexia cannot be cured. But you can help the child to make the most of their limited reading skills and should not overburden them in the process. Mums and dads can usually assess their child very accurately; they know exactly what they can and cannot do. You have to build on this and organise the child's environment in such a way that they can succeed. Success brings back the motivation to learn.

Many parents worry when their child falls short of the «norm» or even reproach themselves: «My child doesn't fulfil the requirements. Should I have encouraged them more?»

You know, I don't know of any study that has shown that children can be encouraged beyond their talent potential. When it comes to growth, we also accept individual limits. Everyone knows that overeating doesn't make a child taller, but fatter. The same applies to mental and language skills.

But don't you understand the existential worries of a father whose 15-year-old son wants to drop out of school without graduating?

Yes, of course. However, whether he will be successful in society does not depend on knowledge that has been grafted onto him, but on whether he has been able to develop his skills, knows exactly where his strengths lie and has learnt to deal with his weaknesses. This is the only way to achieve good self-confidence: I can make it in this society.

Science has a bitter realisation in store for ambitious parents: The more gifted they are, the greater the likelihood that their children will be less gifted.

This is a biological law that applies to all living beings. In summary, regression to the mean means that children tend towards the centre when compared with their parents in terms of characteristics such as growth or intelligence. For example, if parents have an IQ of 130, the probability is more than 80 per cent that their children will have an IQ below their own. However, for parents with an IQ below 70, the probability that their children's IQ will be higher is also 80 per cent.

What can parents do to ensure that their children lead a suitable life?

You should take a close look: What are my child's needs? What are his or her competences? You should accept your child as they are. They should be allowed to pursue a school career that suits them. This will protect your child from being constantly overwhelmed and the adult from inevitable failure.

It is not possible to live in constant harmony with your environment.

Would you rather be a happy gardener than an unhappy doctor?

You are alluding to my eldest daughter. Eva already knew at the age of 12 that she wanted to be a gardener. She finished school at 16 and became an enthusiastic gardener. We heard from all sides: «Why doesn't she go to grammar school, with two academics as parents?»

Did that worry you?

Not at all. Perhaps also because I don't come from an academic family myself. When my best friend went to secondary school, my father was even afraid that I would follow him. He didn't want me to study, but to take over his mechanical workshop. So I went to secondary school. It wasn't until my younger brother decided to become a toolmaker that I was free.

What would you say: Have you led a life that corresponds to your talents, that suits them well?

Sometimes more, sometimes less. It is not possible to live in constant harmony with your environment. I don't see the fit principle as a goal, but as a path. The life situations you find yourself in are always different and you have to adapt again and again. What forced me personally to adapt the most was my severely impaired health.

At the beginning of the 1970s, you became seriously ill, lost the hearing in your right ear and suffered constantly from dizziness and other health problems.

This put an end to my career aspirations of becoming a paediatric surgeon. By chance, I ended up in the «Growth and Development» department at the Children's Hospital in Zurich in 1974 - no one ever wanted to go there. That was my good fortune. I had a boss who believed in me and supported me. I was able to research child development for 30 years and set up an outpatient clinic for children with developmental and behavioural disorders. What's more, this position was much more compatible with my role as a father than being a surgeon would have been.

So you also led the right life in your private life?

I was often able to work from home and was therefore present for my three daughters. Something most fathers were denied. Unfortunately, living conditions for families have not improved at all since then, on the contrary: they have become worse.

Which brings us back to the error in the system.

Even if it will frighten some readers: I am firmly convinced that we should radically rethink our society.

What does that mean in relation to family issues?

We finally need a driving political force that wants to change society so that starting a family is fun. At the age of 20, 90 per cent of young people want to have children. In the years that follow, excessive stress increasingly spoils this wish. This has consequences. In order to keep Swiss society stable, one million more children should have been born in the last 40 years than were actually born. Switzerland is not family- and child-friendly.

What do you have in mind?

A family party or, even better, a women's party. I am convinced that these would be very popular. There are enough issues: the compatibility of family and career, an economy that takes parents into account, free childcare, housing infrastructure that brings families together, a child-friendly school and so on and so forth.

But gender alone says nothing about political convictions.

It's less about political views and more about what women and men consider worth living for. And I think there is a big difference there. I'm not saying that all women and no men should join this party. But the lead should lie with women. They must take political responsibility for those areas of life for which the established parties have only had flowery words for decades.