Water fights, Breakfast, and No homework

Every summer, we travel to Germany to visit our relatives. My brother and I go to school with our cousins for two weeks every year. In Germany, the schooling system is very different than one might expect in America. When you think of schools you probably think along the lines of an organized place of learning. In Germany however, school isn’t usually taken as seriously, one reason being that only 11th and 12th-grade count for their Abitur, which is the test that they will submit to universities. Because of this idea, the schooling system in Germany is much more relaxed than the American system. They have block schedules, but usually, their school day ends before 1:00 pm.

Every year the Arbiturienten, the seniors, will perform an Abistreich, most likely blockading the path to the school. One year when I was visiting, they posted a couple seniors at each door with water guns to stop any underclassmen and teachers from entering. For some reason, the underclassmen tried to get into the building and we all got sprayed by the water guns. One student made it into the building but couldn’t open the door from the inside because the seniors were ramming against it. That same student had a rope and went to one of the classroom windows. A couple people climbed up and opened the door from the inside. Why the underclassmen wanted to get into the school so badly is still a mystery to me, maybe they were just trying to counter the upperclassmen.

Last year one of the students hid behind the blackboard without the teacher noticing for two hours. He wasn’t reprimanded, but the teacher asked him if he had learned anything. Of course, he replied that he had understood all the material, but the teacher was still shocked. The students almost never do their homework, because the teachers usually don’t check, and if they do it’s just for completion. Our class planned a breakfast for the Latin class, without the teacher knowing, and showed up with our rolls, Nutella, and a full breakfast menu. The teacher just joined our feast and learning Latin was forgotten. If a teacher can’t come to school because they are sick or have a meeting, there are no substitutes available, so classes are canceled on a regular basis. Some teachers will even let students out an hour early if they want to.

The school system I just described probably doesn’t sound like it would function very well in practice, but the German schools do better in international testing than the American schools. I was surprised to hear this, but I think it makes a lot of sense. In America, we are taught that we always need to excel at everything, especially grades. In Germany, they are much more relaxed about this issue and there isn’t as much pressure to succeed. Because of the pressure put on American students, they will often memorize instead of learning. Using their short-term memory to do well on a test, but not learning anything for the future. I think that the German students might learn more by being allowed to fail and then succeeding later on. 

Comments

  1. CCNovember 10, 2017 at 8:42 PM

    Yeah, this sounds like every American high school student's fantasy school system. I had no idea that this was how schools operated - for some reason every time I think of Germany I think of staunch rules and complete order, but that's largely a result of only being exposed to it through the media. Maybe it really does pay off for them in the end. I think another aspect to this is that here in the U.S., I think we're expected to be experts in our field of study at a very young age, since it's so competitive academically here. Maybe in Germany, the timeline for progression is a bit more spread out, which allows younger students to feel a bit more relaxed in high school.

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  2. AdamNovember 11, 2017 at 8:13 AM

    In my second to last post about education, Germany topped the worldwide education rankings. But as you describe here, their education system seems to be much more relaxed than it is in America. I agree with your claim that our education system is based on memorization and not long term learning, and this kind ties in with the cons of standardized testing in my last post.

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  3. Julian MontagueNovember 11, 2017 at 3:48 PM

    That system sounds very interesting. It's curious how different the atmosphere sounds. Although you mention that only 11th and 12th grade count for their higher education prospects, that's only two more years than here. Yet I feel that middle school is still pretty rigorous, and although elementary school is more relaxed it's not 'school's-out-at-one-pm' relaxed. Even though I am very critical of the current education system we have, I found myself having a negative gut reaction to this 'strange' way of teaching. But I guess you can't argue with results, and if Germany is doing much better than we are then maybe we have a thing or two to learn from them.

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