It came up in the news over the past couple of days and it's drawn my thinking over the topic. Over the past year....the German authorities now admit that roughly 50-percent of 172,000 immigrants and migrants who were taking the mandated German integration classes....scored the bare minimum necessary.
This minimum? Well, the language courses are divided up into two A-series, and two B-series. You start with A1 (the basic level)....progress over to A2, and eventually get to B1, which is considered level required for 'integration' (basically enough to get a job). If you were interested in further German education or skill-craft courses, then you'd have to go onto B2, and then the C-series.
So the results basically say that vast number of migrants are having trouble, and only getting to A1 or A2.
Why? I spent roughly 18 months taking a couple of these German classes, and came to eight basic conclusions:
1. A lot of migrants might only have a 6th-grade level education to start with. I met a Syrian carpenter, in his 30s, who had a lot of trouble with the organization requirements of the language. The guy admitted....he'd gone on at 13 and gotten into carpentry, and that language training just proved difficult.
I suspect that 10-percent of the folks showing up, were in this category.
2. Let's be honest....this whole die, der das, den, dem business (the 'thes')....is a pain. I've had at least two instructors who readily admitted that it could take ten years for someone to really be accomplished at the various 'thes' and which nouns fit with each.
3. I generally felt at the end of the A1 series class....there should have been some three-week 'hands-on' situation, with TV shows, movies, etc....being used to force use and comprehension. The same should occur at the end of the A2, and B1 series classes.
4. I'll suggest and probably take heat from the intellectual crowd, but some individuals are absolutely terrific at language training for adults, and some folks are absolutely lousy.
5. The vast majority of immigrants and migrants I came in contact with....were interesting and calm individuals. There were two or three of the male 'lads' who simply weren't cooperative and if it'd been me in charge, I would have dismissed them out of the class. The European folks who showed up (the Greeks, the Poles, the Swedes)? They probably should have been all put into one single group.
6. Religion affecting the classes? Well....yeah. Ramadan as I came to discover, with half of a class filled with Islamic enthusiasts....were trying hard to be with the rules (that means dehydration, lack of a smoke, and depriving themselves of food at mid-day). After two weeks of this obedience.....the class was frustrated with the two or three gentlemen who were making this effort. I felt sorry for the guys, particularly those who were dehydrated and understood their dilemma, but there was zero chance that they were learning during this period.
7. At some point, I asked the question how the A1, A2, and B2 levels were determined, and the only answer that came out of this was....an instructor said some PhD folks (years ago) had discussed the matter and came to this conclusion. Perhaps they knew what they were doing, but maybe this really did fit more for European languages and trying to relate them over to German. This, I'm not sure about.
Finally, there's one other note out of this news item.....migrant kids are worse off. A study from a north German city came to the conclusion that fewer than 10-percent of the kids were able to speak, read and write German. In simple terms, they are being dumped into the school system, and the system apparently is just accepting this. It begs questions, but that's whole emphasis of this policy decision from 2013 to now. Smart people lead the country to this point, and they really can't solve this problem.
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