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I 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

I 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 ago
  IMHO, 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!

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 ago
IMHO, 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!