German School System

This is a picture of a cat who thought the most comfortable place to take a nap in the entire house was on my homework.

11.Sep.2008

Our theme for the past few days of language school has been education. We spent some time discussing the German school system and a bit talking about the various systems in our various homelands. It has been an interesting few days; I’ve learned a lot.

The German school system isn’t doing so hot right now. The teachers at the lower levels aren’t as good as they should be and compared to other European countries, there is generally a lack of people pursuing further education, especially in technical disciplines. Their system is quite different from the US.

Kids enter the Grundschule (Ground School) at 5 or 6 years old and spend four years learning elementary school stuff. At the end of the four years, the teacher (potentially with less than admirable motivation, bordering on corruption) makes a decision about the child’s future. The child will enter the Gymnasium, the Hauptschule, or the Realschule. In my state Nordrhein-Westfalen, there is also a fourth option but it’s not too important. The Gymnasium is considered here the most intellectually advanced and after they finish (total of 12 years, recently lowered from 13 years), they make their Abiture, a relatively long extensive test that allows them to go to the Hochschules (higher level school). The Realschule is kind of how it sounds; the children prepare for a job by studying more real/practical things and less theory. These folks will go on to further occupational training if they so desire after their 10th year of school. These are the mechanics, construction workers, and other types of what we could consider blue collar workers. The Hauptschule, though initiated for other reasons, has turned into what seems like the least desirable place to be. The teacher described this as the place for kids without a chance, which seems really harsh, but that is another topic I will address later. Kids with sub par German language abilities and difficult kids seem to end up in the Hauptschule.

The Gymnasium kids, after completing the Abiture have the choice between the University and the Fachhochschule (subject-high-school), both considered higher education. The University is more theoretical in nature and teaches literature, philosophy, math, languages, and also technical things like engineering while the Fachhochschule is geared toward practical technical work. The University gives out Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate degrees and the Fachhochschule only does Bachelors and Masters because there is more of an emphasis in practical application rather than theory and research.

In theory, any student, regardless of the initial school placement, can attend the University or the Fachhochschule but in practice this isn’t the case. Twenty-five percent of students go the Gymnasium and those are generally the ones that go on to higher education. I get the feeling this system and the viewpoint of the Germans are connected but I’m not sure which one came first. My host ‘mother’, when I was explaining our system where everyone studies more or less the same thing through high school, asked about the “dumb” kids, as if there was a group of people that were inherently less intelligent. This is quite a difference from mine and the American viewpoint and it is easy to see this difference in the style of our education systems: the American system generally keeps all of the kids together through 12th grade and the German system splits the kids into groups very early on. My German teacher is not a fan of Germany’s system.

The second interesting thing I learned about education systems around the globe lies in the curriculum. Despite declaring my engineering major from day one, I still took literature, history, art, music, philosophy, religion, psychology, and sociology classes. My Macedonian and Venezuelan friends thought that was way weird and the German teacher was also surprised that a technical dude such as my dabbled in the “soft sciences”. They only took classes related directly to their major and asked why I messed around with all of that extra stuff. Egypt, Albania, China, and Kazakhstan all backed me up, helping to explain the benefit of a broad education but in the end, we agreed to disagree. My Venezuelan friend said that learning history, religion, art, and philosophy are indeed important but they are individual responsibilities; the student should enrich his- or herself on his/her own time. A valid point, but I think there is a lot to be learned by learning in a group; there are more viewpoints and insights one cannot gain by studying alone.

With my new perspective on world schools, I’m quite pleased with the education I’ve received.

-H