German Schools

[finknottle]

Get it off your chest

There are, as anywhere, good and bad aspects to the school system.

So if you want advice, help or an embittered rant - feel free.

On a postive note - anyone see the thread on Primary about security? I've just taken dd to kg and on the way back wanted to drop off a school library book ds2 has had since before Christmas and forgot again.
All I did is walk in, went to his classroom and left it on his PE kit so he'll see it at break.

No one worries unduly about security here. The caretaker has an office (all glass) outside the main building but he's rarely in it.

Is it only village schools? Looks so odd to me to have a school "locked down".

[SSSandy2]

Guess what? I got the WRONG week. What a dumbo. Still I got to take her home early so wasn't too bad in the end! Admylin is off to Ludwigshafen maybe then. Haven't a clue where that place is to my shame.

[admylin]

Wow I like your strategy though! You sound like you do better than me at these Gespräche, I never know if I'm over doing it so I daren't say what comes into my head and end up just nodding and smiling alot.

What did you usually say as an excuse when your dd was off school so often? Last year we did that alot with ds because it just wasn't worth him going in to waste his time and we went through all the excuses.

[SSSandy2]

migraines, check-ups and doctor's "tests". Lay it on real thick

I feel an almighty rant coming over me today but not school-related for a change, not sure I want to contaminate the other thread though! Going over there to discuss Ludwigshafen instead now

[admylin]

What has put you in a rant mood today SSSandy?

[SSSandy2]

should I really say though? Well things like WHY do bl grown-ups think it is ok to just plow straight into my 7 year old dc all the time? FGS is there not enough space on the pavement, can they not manoeuvre their bodies at all and just what the f is their problem? It's not like they don't see her, they are LOOKING at her and then walk straight into her, HARD, they knock her off balance even. The fwits. It p me off so much and it happens all the time and I am forever trying to pull her this way and that out of the way of bl* stupid idiot grown-ups who think they were sent into the world to bear down like a tank on anything smaller than them.

Get the picture, getting my mood yet?

[berolina]

Sympathies. I (all of 5'1") was walking down Unter den Linden a few years ago and some oh-so-fing-important bloke just barged into me, hard. I was livid, but too shocked to shout anything after his retreating ignorant ase. Must be even worse for a child.

[admylin]

I take it you have to go to school in the rush hour? Poor you and dd. Can dh not drive her to school? Doe she go to work by car?

It bugs me when you want to get off a bus or tram here and the people getting on push past you. I really had to learn to put my elbows out and charge forward - not exactly good bevaviour to teach out dc but if they have to live in Germany they are going to have to (oh please let us get out of here soon)

My old secondary school is great isn't it, I bet that's why I can't settle here , everywhere has a lot to live up to when you've been brought up in a place like that. The military used it too so we had a lot of boarders from abroad and some non military from all over the world.

[berolina]

Oh this one is good too. Day before yesterday, waiting with ds1 in pushchair and ds2 in sling to get on the bus at the middle doors. Lots of people use the fact that t's open (for me actually) to their advantage, several pushing past me. One woman sees I'm there, pushes past me, lifting her about 6yo dd over the pushchair, then when I tut involuntarily, turns round completely unaware that she has done anything out of the ordinary and asks if I need help with the pushchair. I refused rather ungraciously.

[finknottle]

Your poor dd
Your dh should apply for a job down here. There's the odd vile specimen - the woman at the tree nursery who appeared glued to the floor even after I asked her politely if I could get past with my huge tree-laden trolley. Unnecessarily vitriolic looks
On the whole, people often step onto the road around us here, esp when I'm with a child. Get a sunny smile and a Danke from us - dc too.

[finknottle]

MN fingers crossed for ds2. Yesterday he had his Aufsatz, eine Tierbeschreibung und ein Tierlexikontext. Practised lots with papa.
Today Sachunterricht test, Tiere im Winter: we have gone over the whole file and he's written notes all organised into bit-sized chunks with little mnemonics.
Tested with me, even light-heartedly on bikes yesterday.
He went off confidently and I told him, write something if you don't know.
Fell wird dicker!
Sucht eienen sicheren Unterschlupf!
Frisst Nuesse!
A couple of decent marks will lift him so much.

[admylin]

Ooh I remember ds having that test last year on exactly the same subject. Maybe we aren't so behind as I was thinking.

My ds (year 4) has a test every day at the moment with a new German teacher. They write the test then the teacher hands them out to the dc and they mark it (not their own though) and the mark get's put in the Klassenbuch. Ds nearly cried the other day because he got a 3 and he said it was merked by the one boy in the class who is probably going down a year in September. Ds said he marked it wrong but the teacher still wrote it in the book.

[finknottle]

admylin that's daft. Esp if the marks are being recorded. You have to say something!
As practice for science tests ds2's class were writing little mocks for each other. Ds2 & his friend were correcting their test here and I caught them giving X child (class bully) a worse mark because they don't like them. I tore them off a strip - these were just little class things, not Noten.
Mind you was more that they told me X calls them 'scheiss Auslaender' and that ds2's friend was thicker than the others because his skin is darker

[SSSandy2]

OMG and they tell you school days are the best days of your life.

Yes admylin I agree if the grade influences the mark on his end of year report, I'm afraid you'll ahve to take it to the teacher pointing out that it was incorrectly marked and ask for her to adjust his grade. It isn't fair on ds otherwise.

Dd has this too, they do spelling tests and correct each other. She is always getting something marked wrong when it is actually right. She gets annoyed with it but since it doesn't count for anything, I don't bother with it. I think the teacher should mark it because the end result counts for your dc

[admylin]

You know I really have to hold myself back every day and not go into school and say 'That's daft' to them all! So much of it is down right daft - I am so pleased it's Friday. I start counting the days on Monday mornings when I get up and on Fridays I know we can chill out and throw the school bags in a corner for a while.

[berolina]

it shouldn't be this way, should it?

[finknottle]

Blimey - can't believe you two keep your children off school so often as it's so bad.
You're not doing much for my sunny mood - even cleaning seems suddenly more appealing

[SSSandy2]

I know I just wish I could shout : BEAM ME UP SCOTTY! And it would work.

I miss that common courtesy and easy friendship I knew abroad too admylin. God I miss it so much it hurts at times. I don't know if smaller places here are kinder gentler places. THey might well be. Probably Ludwigshafen is nicer than Berlin but it would still not be as nice as your home town and the school situation might not improve much but I'd expect the schools would look nicer (?).

OK so still have to find out where this Ludwigshafen place is. Off to do it now!

Fridays are my all time favourite day of the week because I can pick dd up "early", ie. she is not totally exhausted and there is no school for two days. YIPPEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[finknottle]

article in the Observer about Germans wanting to HE

[berolina]

ooooooooh! will read that later. We're packing up today to spend a week or so in the Rheinland (Bonn and near Aachen, so not your neck of the woods).

How are you today?

[berolina]

Have just opened the article. Oh, that is interesting that the Schulpflicht stems from Nazi times.

[berolina]

[emkana]

Hi there, just reading this thread to try and cure me from my homesickness for Germany. It's working as well!

In response to what you wrote further down, yes as a child I just accepted it that this is how things work, dreigliedriges Schulsystem etc etc, it's only now that I see it from a UK perspective that I question it. When I was in Germany last week I got into a debate about the Sinn and Unsinn of the dreigliedriges Schulsystem but I was given short thrift (is that the phrase?) appaerently es ist besser so, manche Kinder sind halt am besten fuer manuelle Berufe geeignet und sollen deshalb auch von vornherein fuer diesen Werdegang ausgebildet werden. Und sie koennen ja schon spaeter auf's Gymnasium wechseln wenn sie sich nur genug anstrengen. Aber dies natuerlich von Eltern deren eigene Kinder auf's Gymnasium gehen...

[berolina]

em - das war ja klar... those on the sunny side of the system see no need to change it Yup, 'wenn sie sich nur genug anstrengen' nice way of offloading responsibility for structural inequality and convincing themselves that the school system really does sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I find the whole question thoroughly depressing, I really do.

[SSSandy2]

I know a few families (foreigners, mostly American) who homeschool but their dc are not registered as living in Germany at all. It would be nerve-wracking if they knew you had school-age dc here though, can you imagine if they froze your bank-account, tried to take your dc away and put them in foster families saying they are now the "property of the state"? Good grief. I couldn't cope with that worry all the time.

I think this 3-gliedriges Schulsystem made sense when it was introduced and the idea was that the dc of different classes should be prepared for different professions and the concept of social mobility was not yet universally accepted. So the idea was the aristocracy sent their boys into the army, the upper middle class to Gymnasium and then on to professional training. The shopkeepers' dc went to Realschule and took over the dp's business, the rest went to Hauptschule and learnt to read and write and do manual labour. The bulk of work would have been manual labour anyway and it suited the ruling classes to keep the bulk of the population in their place.

Think nowadays the bulk of the population needs to get the highest possible educational standard before leaving school. I read in Poland something like 90 % sit Abitur equivalent exams, here I think it is still under 30% (is that right?). I think it is ok to do manual labour or work in a shop etc EVEN IF you have Abitur. It should be more of a general proof of education not just the gateway to a specific range of careers IMO.

Wish the aim was to HELP as many dc as possible to reach that standard. Those who are not geared toward tertiary education won't go down that path anyway.

[SSSandy2]

actually it is particularly unfortunate that they have kept that system in Germany I think because one of the things that struck me most when I first came here was how egalitarian people are cf. the UK and how unimportant the whole class issue is which determines so much of daily life in the UK. I've always found it particularly bad when it affects dc which in the UK it does with the private schools and elitist activities,beyond the reach of poorer families.

I find that great about Germany and even very comfortably off people who will buy the most expensive clothing for their dc have a kind of aversion to being considered snobbish and want their dc mixing with dc from other backgrounds. There isn't quite the same feverish panic about keeping them away from people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

You see it in so many things here, how the govt tries to give people on benefits the same health care, decent housing and so on so that they are not as obviously different to the working families and also the way poorer families have school trips paid for so no dc need miss out or that sportsclubs etc offer a reduced rate for low income families. Even in the most expensive residential areas here, there is subsidised housing for low income earners so areas are a lot more mixed and generally dc mix with dc from all backgrounds. I find that much better.

There's a lot that's done better in Germany when you think about it