Friday, November 6, 2015

The Topic of Education for the New Immigrants

At some point this morning....the German Interior Minister....Thomas de Maizière....spoke to the refugee crisis and the education models that likely come in the near future to fit the new immigrants.  It probably won't make many Germans happy, but he is suggesting that some standards at schools or vocational training be lessened.

He tried to use the comment "improvised, with common sense" to fit the occasion better.

The overall strategy of the German government is to create a funnel where an approved immigrant will enter into language training (likely to take six months), then integration training (figure a minimum of one month), and then onto school or vocational training.  All of this....is to limit the time sitting there on welfare and doing nothing productive.

Negativity from opposition parties?  Well, yeah.  They kinda say that these quick-funnel ideas are inadequate, hurt Germany as a whole, and limit the new immigrant in the long-run.

How would one create a masterpiece of a funnel with massive education?  Maybe if that immigrant kid was six or seven....it'd all make sense.

But when you stand back and see different blocks (teenagers, mid-twenties adults, and guys over forty)....it would cost tens of billions per year to build some massive program that would fit and deliver the best opportunity to each of these people.   Then you have to measure up the national levels of other countries and admit that education for a fourteen-year-old against the German system....is seventy-percent of what you'd typically expect.  Country-group by country-group.....you'd have to have several thousand tutors around and assigned to various individuals to bring them through an entire year of school....in three months.

The Interior Minister is likely correct.....you have limits and you will have to just admit up front....getting this guy to speak 5th-grade German language skills might be totally acceptable as long as the work he is doing is strictly brick-mason type work.

If you had an unlimited pot of money....maybe you could do unlimited schooling.  I just don't see that type of money pot existing.

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