The Education Story

This topic came up yesterday in various news sites from around Germany....I note the better piece from ARD's network news. 

Germans often test school kids to determine if things are going well, or not.....so the recent tests for fourth-grade students really didn't turn out well.  There is an obvious negative trend for German language and math.  This naturally.....begged questions.

This trend?  Well, they note that it's been going on for at least five years.  So it generally started before the refugee episode started up (2013).

Nationally, they even note that the kids up around Bremen are worse than any other region. 

In the midst of this report, the experts note that roughly 34-percent of the Bremen 4th graders in this examination....were from migration situations. 

The hype out of this?  More teachers.  But this would also trigger the debate on separate teaching situations for the migrant or immigrant students....away from the German kids.

Back in 2014/2015, no one really spoke to this problem but you could see it approaching.  The German school system simply wasn't developed or maintained in such a way to handle several tens of thousands of kids with varying aspects of past education.

If we were talking purely over Syrian or Iraqi kids....you'd have one part of the puzzle.  But you have kids showing up from Russia, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Serbia, and Africa.  You could be standing in a school with four-hundred kids, and six different languages being part of the background of the students.

Bringing on more teachers?  If you knew that this immigration thing was going to be a regular experience, it'd make sense. If you knew that the 2015 period was the peak and you'd never return to that level....then you'd build the increase of teachers or tutors in a different way.

The impact problem here is that you really need some massive fix to start within the next six to eight months, to prevent a major issue for these kids becoming marginal students with no real job or potential by age sixteen.  If you wanted a ghetto-like attitude among these kids....just stall this out and watch what happens in five brief years.

My suggestion?  I'd go at three major shifts.  First, I'd go and route immigrants who had a teaching background in the old country into a quick 12-week program to Germanize their style and approach, and then give them some type of certificate....bringing them into these areas that need their skill and language. Second, with the math skill business....I'd go and recruit Germans who have a math background or degree, and convince their bosses or business operations to give the guy a 12-month sabbatical and use him/her for math-tutor activities.  Third, I would probably review the idea of a one-year intensive German language introduction period and force the kids to attend after-hours school programs (add three hours a day onto their backs).  Maybe even add a half-day on Saturdays with reading assignments.

The problem here....is if you do nothing, you trigger a bigger mess in just a couple of years.