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> 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

• thriftwy 3y ago
  I 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 ago
    You won't and that is the point. A population without social cohesion is easily governed.
    • twixfel 3y ago
      That's not true at all. Germany is easily governed already.
      • sprash 3y ago
        Indeed. 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 ago
          None 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 ago
            Occupying 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 ago
              Ah 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.
              • sprash 3y ago
                "divide et impera" is not exactly a new concept. Maybe you should brush up your greek philosophy.
                • twixfel 3y ago
                  Lol
    • inglor_cz 3y ago
      Looking at France, with its assortment of violent movements and protests and ever growing ethnic plurality ... your theory seems to have some flaws.
      • sprash 3y ago
        Obviously not. Thanks to "plurality" people are occupied with fighting each other instead for themselves against rulers that repeatedly act against their interests.
  • geraneum 3y ago
    It 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 ago
      There 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 ago
        That’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 ago
    You 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 ago
      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. 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 ago
          Well, 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 ago
  It 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 ago
    It 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 ago
      The "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 ago
        Just 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 ago
  It'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 ago
    In 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 ago
  Maybe 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.