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Call for Germany to scrap English lessons in primary schools
- mikece 3y ago> focusing on German instead of English made more sense in schools where 70% to 90% of the students have a migrant background with "hardly… sufficient knowledge of German." Sounds like this is more of an immigrant issue than a “should we teach English” issue.
- thriftwy 3y agoI wonder how you are supposed to assimilate the immigrants when they are more than 40% of all students, not to mention 70 to 90%.
- sprash 3y agoYou won't and that is the point. A population without social cohesion is easily governed.
- twixfel 3y agoThat's not true at all. Germany is easily governed already.
- sprash 3y agoIndeed. The social cohesion in Germany was bad to begin with. This is what happens when you are occupied territory for more than 70 years. But mass immigration destroys the last glimmer of hope for self governance.
- twixfel 3y agoNone of that makes any sense. Having Western military bases in Germany harms social cohesion? What? Social cohesion in Germany is high anyway. Nothing you say makes any sense, the conclusions and reasoning are both wrong. You're not a serious person. Also people like you normally argue that more immigrants means more disorder, so I am really not convinced your stance is even remotely coherent.
- sprash 3y agoOccupying forces are in control of the state media obviously. But since their influence on people blow 70 years of age is going to zero fast more migrants are needed. And having experienced mass migration first hand I can assure you: more immigrants means more disorder, more violence, more cost for social net, less quality of life and lower wages across the board. My experience with migrants is 100% universally bad. And I'm absolutely serious about that.
- twixfel 3y agoAh yes, obviously, of course. > more immigrants means more disorder, more violence, more cost for social net, Strange, you literally just insisted immigration would make Germany easier to govern. Difficult to take you seriously.
- inglor_cz 3y agoLooking at France, with its assortment of violent movements and protests and ever growing ethnic plurality ... your theory seems to have some flaws.
- sprash 3y agoObviously not. Thanks to "plurality" people are occupied with fighting each other instead for themselves against rulers that repeatedly act against their interests.
- geraneum 3y agoIt say in schools “where” 70 to 90 percent have immigrant background. I don’t think it means that portion of all students everywhere on average have immigration backgrounds.
- manuel_w 3y agoThere doesn't seem to be accurate data available, but surveys show it's around 39%. [1] I wouldn't be surprised if the German government doesn't collect reliable data on purpose. Original text: > Wie viele Schüler in Deutschland einen "Migrationshintergrund" haben, ist nicht ohne Weiteres zu beantworten. Denn die Datenlage ist lückenhaft und die Ergebnisse sind häufig nicht miteinander vergleichbar. > Laut Mikrozensus hatte 2021 über ein Drittel (rund 39 Prozent) der Schüler*innen an allgemeinbildenden und beruflichen Schulen in Deutschland einen Migrationshintergrund. Die Daten des Mikrozensus basieren jedoch nicht auf der amtlichen Schulstatistik, sondern auf einer repräsentativen Befragung von rund 810.000 Personen. Die Ergebnisse werden hochgerechnet. English translation through Google: > How many schoolchildren in Germany have a "migrant background" cannot be answered without further ado. The data situation is incomplete and the results are often not comparable with one another. > According to the 2021 microcensus, more than a third (around 39 percent) of students at general and vocational schools in Germany had a migration background. However, the microcensus data is not based on the official school statistics, but on a representative survey of around 810,000 people. The results are extrapolated. [1] https://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/schule.html https://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/schule.html
- Someone 3y agoThat’s for a fairly broad definition of “migration background”. Everyone who wasn’t born a German citizen or has at least one parent who wasn’t a German citizen at their birth qualifies (“Wer die deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit nicht durch Geburt besitzt oder mindestens einen Elternteil hat, bei dem das der Fall ist, hat einen "Migrationshintergrund".”) For example, Angela Merkel’s mother was born in Danzig in 1928. That wasn’t part of Germany at the time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig), so chances are she wasn’t born with German citizenship. If so, Angela Merkel has a migration background according to that definition. For primary school kids, I would guess many of them are children of people who have lived and worked in Germany for decades.
- constantcrying 3y agoYou do not. From a cultural standpoint the only visible trend I have ever seen is German kids picking up migrant trends. Of course after over a decade most children come out of it with enough German. But that is integration only on the thinnest level imaginable.
- tfourb 3y agoI went to school with children of Italian, Portuguese, Turkish and Greek backgrounds (mostly the parent generation migrated) and none of them were distinguishable in terms of "broad" culture from those whose grandparents were born in Germany. Not sure what kind of "migrant trends" you are talking about. The most prevalent cultural influence in my school time was probably MTV and the local "Landjugend" and in my sons' kindergarten and primary school its (sadly) Paw Patrol. Yes, some very specific school districts in urban centers are predominantly migrant and there are cultural ramifications to that. But that is a fraction of German schools.
- constantcrying 3y ago>Not sure what kind of "migrant trends" you are talking about I don't know where you live, but here Arabic and Turkish Music (especially "rap" performed by these groups), attitudes and even language (I regularly hear turkish/arabic slang) clearly have a large influence outside of their respective migrant cultures. >I went to school with children of Italian, Portuguese, Turkish and Greek backgrounds (mostly the parent generation migrated) and none of them were distinguishable in terms of "broad" culture from those whose grandparents were born in Germany. I had a simmilar experience in my school. But we also had a lower tier school right next to us where that clearly was not the case. And there Turkish/Arabic influence was very clearly greater than any German one.
- oaiey 3y agoWell, there is a bias there. If you would ask the parents of the migrant kids you would get a statement that they lost 80% of their culture. A mixture is to be expected and is a necessity for human and society evolvement.
- c00lio 3y agoIt is a combination of an immigrant issue with the refusal to make a distinction between different pupil populations. One could e.g. teach additional remedial German lessons, or split the class and teach German to those who don't know enough German, English to the rest. But this is intentionally not done, several states emphasize identical curricula for all their pupils. The intention is to give everyone "the same chance". But this severely holds back brighter pupils as well as those who are e.g. more knowledgable in German or other subjects. Thereby lowering the overall educational outcomes, because everything is lowest-common-denominator by law.
- tfourb 3y agoIt is also the unwillingness to spend the money required for the necessary number of teachers to have a differentiated curriculum. If 1 teacher = 25 students, everyone of course has to learn the same stuff. Edited to add: this also has nothing to do with some students being “brighter”. Different kids have different learning requirements, and not speaking the local language is an obvious one, though not at all correlated with intelligence.
- c00lio 3y agoThe "brighter" distinction isn't relevant in this case, yes. It just comes up in the overall discussion about whether to have a 3-, 2- or 1-branch school system, that is whether to have different branches of schools after primary school that cater to more-brainy-less-handy or more-handy-less-brainy types. And I don't think money is an issue. The problem with lots of immigrant children is mostly one found in cities, where there is typically more than one "second grade" per school. So you could easily, with the exact same amount of teachers, give English lessons to classes 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d and German lessons to 2e and 2f.
- tfourb 3y agoJust to share some insights from our local rural primary school (where I am the head of the parent's association and have regular conversations with the school principal about personnel) and from a primary school in Berlin Kreutzberg (where my sister is a teacher): Schools get a number of "teaching hours" allotted based on the number of children attending that school (some children might be classed as requiring more hours, i.e. those with certified special learning requirements). It is universally accepted (except by the politicians setting those hours) that these are insufficient to actually provide the supervision and support to have the learning outcomes that are desirable and demanded by government/parents. They also do not cover additional (but foreseeable) requirements due to illness, etc. No school actually has all of these teaching hours covered because there are simply not enough teachers to go around. Even if, by some miracle, 100% of hours are covered at the beginning of the year, every teacher that leaves during the year due to illness, pregnancy, etc. is pushing down coverage. Because of the lack of actual teachers, the hours are also increasingly covered by people transferring from other professions. These are counted as full teaching staff, but are obviously not as qualified as actual teachers. Teachers are also expected to do a lot of stuff that is not teaching, i.e. school administration, social work, counseling, etc. My personal guess is that in most schools, you would actually need about 130% of the teaching hours currently allotted to provide a quality education for all pupils, while schools in special situations (i.e. large migrant populations) would need probably more like 150-200%. In reality, the typical school probably has only 80-90% of allotted hours available (some of which are covered by non-teachers) with schools in special situations often having even less, because they are typically situated in places with more budgetary constraints/not a desirable workplace.
- kleene_op 3y agoIt's a real shame for the 10 to 30% of german children who will have to waste their time attending classes for a language they already know when they could get a headstart practicing english.
- oaiey 3y agoIn my childhood, we have not had english and therefore in your argument also no extra German. Sometimes, we expect too much of our kids.
- tfourb 3y agoMaybe important to point out that schools with 70-90% migrant children is the exception, not the norm and limited to very specific contexts in a handful of major cities. Those major cities, especially Berlin and some in the mid-west also tend to be quite broke exacerbating the issue. The bigger problem for the German public education system (and there is no private education worth speaking of in Germany) is that the federal states (which are responsible for schools) have systematically underinvested in teacher recruitment for the past two decades. The pipeline is empty, a large share of teachers will go into retirement in the next 15 years and politicians (of all parties) have so far ignored realistic projections concerning the number of teachers required. So yes, reducing English lessons to improve German reading comprehension makes sense in a way. But what would make even more sense would be to drastically increase funding for teaching positions to ensure that kids don't loose two-three weeks worth of school per year, because too many teachers are sick and neither German nor English lessons are taking place.
- anonzzzies 3y agoEverything in the EU is suffering from not having a universal language, be it English, German, Spanish, Mandarin, I don't really care, but it's incredibly bad for everything but 'the culture' to not speak one language. My German is excellent and the last time I had a project in Germany, ALL my German colleagues wanted to speak English to practice their English. It is almost worthless, from a financial perspective, to speak any of the smaller languages and doubtful if German, even in Germany, would give you a better outlook than speaking bad German but solid English. In ES/PT/GR this is definitely the case; English will make you king, the local lingo will do nothing but allowing you to read the literature. It's important, but really shouldn't be a priority imho. It's mostly old people wanting to keep this alive and the youth is fed up not having chances because not speaking a viable language.
- aerhardt 3y ago> In ES/PT/GR this is definitely the case Spanish and Portuguese open the doors to LatAm. Know a good number of Spanish business owners who have built fortunes in the Spanish-speaking world with dubious English.
- anonzzzies 3y agoSure, but most people are not entrepreneurs and they just want jobs and have a family where they are born. I am not saying we should be speaking English (although it makes sense), i'm saying to pick a language (Spanish is fine) and just do it.
- ben_w 3y agoThere's a lot to unpack here, so I'll probably miss something. I'm British and living in Berlin; my German is… I can get most written text, and the carefully-edited examples in recorded lessons, but I only understand about half of spoken German, regardless of if that's DW Langsamer Gesprochen Nachrichten Podcast or a conversation. Most of the Germans I talk with have ample examples of exported culture from Hollywood to learn English language from. But: (1) I'm mostly interacting with the companies that hire foreigners like me, and (2) everyone says Berlin is exceptional in how welcoming it is of outsiders. Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek? I'm not sure, as I have no experience of working there, και εγω barely μιλαω two of them, but I assume the external cultural pressure from Brazil helps a bit with promoting Portuguese, and the rest of Latin America likewise with Spanish.
- throw0101b 3y agoA book I enjoyed: > English is the world's lingua franca-the most widely spoken language in human history. And yet, as historian and linguist Nicholas Ostler persuasively argues, English will not only be displaced as the world's language in the not-distant future, it will be the last lingua franca, not replaced by another. > Empire, commerce, and religion have been the primary raisons d'etre for lingua francas--Greek, Latin, Arabic have all held the position--and Ostler explores each through the lens of civilizations spanning the globe and history, from China and India to Russia and Europe. Three trends emerge that suggest the ultimate decline of English and other lingua francas. Movements throughout the world towards equality in society will downgrade the status of elites--and since elites are the prime users of non-native English, the language will gradually retreat to its native-speaking territories. The rising wealth of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will challenge the dominance of native-English-speaking nations--thereby shrinking the international preference for English. Simultaneously, new technologies will allow instant translation among major languages, enhacing the status of mother tongues and lessening the necessity for any future lingua franca. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8366156-the-last-lingua-franca https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8366156-the-last-lingua-... * Not in bookshop.org's database
- bombcar 3y agoThe second part is perhaps more important than the first - once we have nearly perfect automatic translators, the need to learn the lingua franca will drop. As it is, the "movers and shakers" in the BRIC all speak the lingua franca (English), and more importantly; they speak English between each other even when no native English speakers are around. In fact, the downfall of the Pax Americana (which from a language perspective is just the Pax Britania continued) may result in solidifying English as the lingua franca, as it would become a neutral language that doesn't show deference to any particular up-and-coming power.
- trilbyglens 3y agoWe absolutely do not have anything close to perfect automatic translators. Machine translation is still largely shit, and very definitely shit if you try to use it in a real time situation.
- mrazomor 3y agoFrom my experience, this makes sense (at least for the lower classes). I had English classes since my first grade. Considering the results, it was mostly waste of time. None of us had even basic proficiency even after years of attending English classes. Language learning requires frequent classes and a decent amount of exposure (TV doesn't provide it). This is possible with older kids, not the young ones.
- jacquesm 3y agoFrom my experience, it doesn't. All of my kids are fluent in English, Dutch and at least one more language. And I credit early exposure and the schools spending a lot of time on this from age 6 and up.
- ivoflipse 3y agoIt helps that in the Netherlands we subtitle rather than dub foreign (and thus most English) speaking content. I was surprised when watching Forest Gump to hear that "Shit happens" is translated to "Scheisse passiert" and my German speaking friends didn't even know the English version. Ironically, I think most German speakers are more familiar with Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice actor, than his own voice while being from Austria. Our music also contains more English music than German, which doesn't seem to be the case in Germany. So in the Netherlands, we're exposed to English a lot more than German, French or Spanish speaking countries. I bet the same applies to the Nordic countries, which also have great English speaking ability
- mrazomor 3y agoThere's something that the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden do well when it comes to English. Almost all people I met from those countries spoke fluent English with good pronunciation. What do you believe Dutch schools do well when it comes to learning English? How large are the classes? Are there any things outside the school that might play important role in learning English? Could it be just the language compatibility? (not sure how Switzerland would fit)
- 3y ago
- jacquesm 3y agoThat would be an own goal. International trade and communications for business reasons is in English, like it or not. What's next, voice overs in German instead of English subtitles? /s German is a hard language to learn, especially for migrants who learn it as their second language. This is not going to be solved by scrapping English lessons, it is solved by improving the way German is taught.
- twixfel 3y agoThere also needs to be a cultural shift in Germany regarding how non-native German speakers are treated. If you're not absolutely fluent, you are fucked. Living in Germany as a non-native is being stuck between two worlds. Germans only speak English to you, whilst insisting that you absolutely must learn German, and rejecting completely you if you're not fluent. So in the end, you cannot really win.
- throwaway290 3y agoHow does that rejection manifest itself?
- twixfel 3y agoInsisting on speaking English with you, thus slowing your integration. Actively avoiding you if you're an Ausländer. Segregation along racial/linguistic lines in the workplace or other settings (my workplace has three groups: Germans, Slavs (I am an honorary Slav it seems) and Chinese). Speaking either fluent, mumbled German or not at all or just English—no attempt on their part to accommodate your imperfect German by speaking more slowly/clearly/simply. IMO that is what it's like to live in Germany. I don't expect people to bend over backwards for me. But on the one hand, Germans absolutely insist on immigrants learning German, but on the other hand, even when you are learning German, they don't really change their behaviour at all, so actually learning German is far less helpful than you might think.
- throwaway290 3y ago
- constantcrying 3y agoIdiotic. I can't say I learned much in school, but learning witten and spoken english has been something which has consistently been valuable almost anywhere.
- bell-cot 3y agoSounds like a one-size-fits-all proposal by an utter idiot. (Admitting that the situation may be such that Meidinger himself has no viable alternative.) Vs. - the primary school I attended had 3 classes of students per year. At the start of the school year, they gave reading and math proficiency tests to students starting their final year, and - for those two subjects only - shuffled kids around so that reading and math lessons were in classes with similar proficiency levels. That required ~zero extra resources, and there was no fuss made over it. If Germany could somehow lock up all the bureaucrats, hotheads, and idiots...how easily could the German teachers (at least those in schools large enough to have a few full classes per year level) do something similar?
- logifail 3y agoHow many hours of English per week do German primary schools actually teach? I know for sure that thanks to federalism it varies hugely across Germany.
- tjansen 3y agoNRW: one of my daughters has 2 hours per week, grade 1-4. But they changed it a while ago, and kids will now have English only in grades 3-4, but the number of hours is supposed to double.
- niemandhier 3y agoThey should get rid of early English and teach the kids the language of their neighbours. My ( German ) grandfather spoke polish and check, my grandmother spoke French and Dutch. It used to be normal to know enough of the language from the other side of the border to get by, at least until WW2. The only people who should worry about English is those in the Center of the country.
- c00lio 3y agoLearning French might be worthwhile since there are quite a few speakers on the planet. Although English, Chinese or Spanish are preferable in that respect. Polish, Chech and Dutch are a waste of time, they aren't spoken anywhere but their origin regions and those are rather small to begin with...
- jFriedensreich 3y agoIf germany would just stop dubbing virtually everything no matter how small from english to german they would get years of intrinsic english learning for free. Whenever i meet someone with surprising english skills (ignoring cases of having native speakers in the family) part of the answer is that they watched english shows and movies from a super young age because their countries were not dubbing.
- a_bonobo 3y agoI am a German who lives in Australia. Australia handles immigrants far, far better than Germany, and I feel like that is reflected in these school outcomes. In my kids' school, about 80% of kids' parents don't speak that much English. The school and the child nurse told us, 'don't worry about English, they'll learn that here at school, focus on their native tongues'. I don't think that's isolated to Australia, which is far more multi-cultural than Germany in many regards (government infrastructure, city-life, Yet Australia scored 11th in the same test: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/16/victorian-students-reading-scores-went-backwards-amid-long-remote-learning-period-international-study-shows https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/16/victo... I don't think scrapping English in primary school will change anything, that's just grasping at straws. You'd have to change how the entire society works: get rid of a weirdly stratified school system, support immigrants far better (have government staff who actually speak English, for a start...), get rid of the class-heavy barriers in peoples' heads, too much to do. Germany is on spot 21, by the way - took me far too long to find that information. https://pirls2021.org/results/achievement/ https://pirls2021.org/results/achievement/ click on 'Download Section' for a PDF with the ranking. Looking at the range of reading skills (those barcharts on the right), Germany isn't actually doing that bad.
- rawbert 3y ago> 'don't worry about English, they'll learn that here at school, focus on their native tongues'. My parents got the same advice after moving from eastern Europe to Germany and they ignored it. They did it because they recognized pretty fast how important it is to "appear German" otherwise you might be disadvantaged. If I had the choice myself I would not repeat the decision my parents made thirty years ago. I am convinced I would have learned German and Englisch without loosing my native language. Scrapping one language for another makes no sense for me.
- a_bonobo 3y agoIMHO, they might have felt compelled to do so- in the 90s Germany's Neonazis were at their strongest. Amadeu Kiowa was murdered by Neonazis in 1990. The Solingen fire-bombing by Nazis (5 people dead) was 1993, the Luebeck refugee home burning killed 10 people in 1996. That decade saw dozens of refugee homes burned down with dozens of murdered people. Look at the list of refugee home attacks during the 90s, with a peak in 1993 (I count 61 attacks) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_fl%C3%BCchtlingsfeindlicher_Angriffe_in_Deutschland_1990_bis_2013 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_fl%C3%BCchtlingsfeindlic... I can understand why your parents felt the pressure to have you fit in!
- epups 3y agoGermany likes to blame immigration for the underachievement of its school system, but the reality is that it's an extremely outdated system that is absolutely not prepared for the modern world. While in Scandinavian countries - with similar levels of immigration - children are not only learning English but also programming and other innovative subjects, German teachers come up with obviously short-sighted policies such as these.
- c00lio 3y agoThere is no "German" school system. There are (at least) 16 different school systems in Germany. The original article glosses over that. Each state has (almost) full autonomy regarding schools, there are only voluntary (by the council of state education ministers) alignments between states. The federal government can only apply minimal directions by providing some additional funding in limited areas. And even within states there are often different kinds of public schools depending on the current political trends in that state at the time, e.g. to try out or introduce "Gesamtschule" (1-branch secondary school system) vs. 2- or 3-branch (and maybe fuse some or all secondary 3-branch "Hauptschule" and "Realschule" into "Mittelschule"), 8- vs. 9-year Gymnasium etc. It is a total mess, what might be true for one kind of school in one state might be different a few kilometers away in the next state. So comparisons are hard, even between German states. I also think this autonomy is one of the reasons why the overall average quality is so bad: Schools are a political issue that is used to distinguish a new state government from a previous one, and to distinguish one state from another. So with each election, you get state politicians running around like headless chickens, trying to "make things better" in schools by randomly doing "something", because what the previous government in the same state did obviously cannot be right. And what that other state governed by a different party does cannot be right either. ad inf...
- epups 3y agoA case could be made that this state-level independence is a strength, not a flaw: you can experiment and see what works and doesn't, and also accommodate to local realities if needed. In practice, I agree with you, states are not doing a good job and we don't see tangible benefits from all this variety. To be pedantic, this disjointed system IS the German educational system. And I would worry about fixing it before putting the blame on immigrants.
- MandieD 3y agoA bit of background missing from this article: primary school (1st - 4th grade) English is a relatively new (last 20 years or so) innovation, while secondary school (5th grade onward) English has been a widespread thing for far longer. That English instruction, judging from the quality of similarly-aged colleagues' understanding and use, was far more thorough and effective than even my relatively good Spanish instruction (8th-11th grade in the 90s) was in Texas. My husband didn't have school English until 5th grade, but sounds like a Brit to Americans, and can negotiate pretty well: his mother was a Gymnasium (college-prep high school) English teacher and taught him a bit as a four year old while she was home for the year after his little sister was born, but didn't really bother with it after that. That bit as a little kid, however, was apparently the magic. His sister, by the way, does not speak English better than most other well-educated Germans her age - their mother was too busy to repeat the experiment with her. I joke that my mother-in-law has only herself to blame for getting stuck with an American daughter-in-law - I doubt I'd have been able to form as deep a relationship with my husband if he couldn't speak English as well as he does. My German is enough to carry on a cordial relationship with my in-laws and participate in parents' council and amateur radio stuff, but not to deal with the weightier parts of marriage and how we're raising our child. As the parent of an American-German and a Bavarian schools taxpayer, I'd rather see a little exposure in Kindergarten (3-6 years old) than the current very uneven primary school efforts. Get the English sounds in their ears while their little brains are still so flexible, and do the education later, after they're fully literate in the language they need to know: German. The Krippe (daycare) and Kindergarten workers are relatively young, and have more casual English exposure (and confidence) than the older, better-educated school teachers, and might be better positioned to provide that early exposure, funny enough.
- stumblingalong 3y agoThis action goes against what it takes to raise a child (in the global community). Instead of looking at integration as an attempt to homogenize a society, we should look at multi cultural opportunities as a way to expand global views. Especially when it comes to language. I couldn’t help but notice that as soon as they could, after brexit, German companies eliminated the English translations included on appliances and foodstuffs. As a recent returning german/american I get many disdainful comments on my imperfect language skills, which I know, from my years of experience as a community organizer, is also a form of racism. Our capacity for learning languages is an individual cognitive ability. According to Germans, you don’t even speak proper German if you speak with someone from a different province...this attitude needs to change systemically. And removing the opportunities to learn other languages from the curriculum during Childrens’ early years, is exactly the opposite of what should be happening in the schools.