The Gray Monk

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September 30, 2006

Learning

There's quite a debate going on in Germany about our education and school system. Recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) studies have shown German students to be far away from top positions and have mercilessly displayed the shortcomings of the German system. The results of the first PISA study in 2000 came as a bit of a shock for our politicians and - as always - promises were made to remedy the situation quickly. "Education is investment into our future!" "Highly skilled and well educated people are the only resources we have!" "A much higher portion of our gross domestic product has to spend on our school and university system." Surprisingly, we didn't do that much better in the next one in 2003 and the debate about what needs to be done is still going on but nothing seems to happen as is the way with politicians, I suppose.

One has to admit that the situation in Germany is a bit complicated, to say the least. Matters relating to schools, universities etc. are under the authority of the 16 Federal States. In former times that didn't even have common standards in Germany what students have to know when having completed a certain class at school. This caused all kinds of problems when students had to move for some reason form one state to another. For example, Bavarian Universities would not acknowledge the "Abitur" (the final exam at school that you need to pass before entering University) from Hessian schools, thereby excluding Hessian students from entering Bavarian Universities, because they thought the Hessian Abitur inferior to the Bavarian. They were most probably right in this but this was certainly no fault of the Hessian students.

I was lucky. I once had to move form Nordrhein-Westfalen to Hessen. Changing schools was easy for me but wouldn't have been the other way round. Now the Federal States have at least agreed on common guidelines for the Abitur. The aim is to have a centralised exam, meaning all students have to take the exams at the same day and time and will be asked the same questions. One would thinks this should have been a matter of course.

The schools face huge difficulties, mostly an overpowering lack of money. My sister, who is a teacher at a primary school in Niedersachsen, told me that for the second year in a row there was no money to clean the school rooms thoroughly at the beginning of the new term after the long summer vacation. I mean, it sort of helps if the pupils are able to look outside through the window, doesn't it? Likewise the frequency of cleaning has been cut down, instead every teacher was provided with a broom to look after the dust him/herself.

During the evaluation of the PISA results it has transpired that quite a lot of lessons in schools were cancelled because there were not enough teachers available, or on sickleave or whatever. At the last election of the Ministerpräsident (head of a Federal State) of Hessen the candidate who eventually won promised that provisions would be made so that no more lessons had to be cancelled in Hessian schools. Great! What did he do? Employ more teachers? No! The brilliant idea was to prolong the working hours of teachers. That doesn't improve the situation at all, of course.

I have experienced the German school system as one where the children are presented with the things they have to learn in lessons and they can either learn it or not. Not much thought was given of different ways of learning or promoting individual skills of the children. This is not so much a problem for the very good pupils but very much so for the rest. For years we have been allowing young people to leave school without having acquired even the most basic skills. It seems that teachers were content when after eight years at school the children were able to write down their own name.

This is probably the reason why we did not well in the PISA studies. The countries that came out top had learnt to promote the children individually to enable them to be asset to society after school instead of a burden. Now they try a similar approach in Germany but they are not providing the funds for it despite all they say. If you want to further and promote children individually you will need a lot more teachers than are available right now. And they will have to be properly trained especially for the very young who are still highly motivated and inquisitive when they enter school. Yet the estimate for this year is that we are short of 14,000 to 16,000 teachers which means that each week 1,000,000 lessons will have to be cancelled.

I wonder how much longer it will take for politicians to realise that the system itself needs to be radically changed and that it also means putting money into it and not squandering on another of their costly but utterly superfluous and badly managed pet schemes. Otherwise we will have to keep paying money for all those who were allowed to leave school without having learnt enough to be able to find a job and stick to it. This is highly frustrating not only for the young people themselves but also for the rest of the society who has to finance this through their taxes. I believe everyone can make a worthwhile contribution to society even if not all of us turn out to be 'Einsteins'.

Posted by Mausi at September 30, 2006 12:48 PM

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Posted by: The Gray Monk at September 30, 2006 01:05 PM