Thursday, January 7, 2021

How School Now Works in the Extended Lock-Down

 After the smoke has cleared, my regional state (Hessen) wrote up the general ban rule....in-school activities are suspended.  HR (regional public TV) did a good update on this entire topic).

So from the 7th grade up....in-home school is the only path until the 1st of Feb (even this might be extended out again).

Fifth/Sixth grade kids?  They are exempt from this but strongly encouraged to do in-home schooling.  

The general belief by the politicians is that via either method (in-school or in-home), you get the same valued education.  A lot of parents will probably disagree with this concept or belief.

The idea of 'streaming-video' out of the classroom and to the home?  The state Education Minister basically admitted this is not practical in a lot of classrooms in the state.  The other issue....you can't readily say that even two-third's of the kids have the internet speed at home to allow in-home schooling.  

If you go 30 km north of my place (getting into the boonies of Hessen)....you start to find various villages that simply don't have the bandwidth.  For a decade, this issue has existed and politicians have been making promises.

All of this leading to chaos?  I would suggest that this entire school year (having started in August) is probably already two weeks behind, and you can add at least three to four weeks onto the school-year as we progress toward the spring.  Kids unprepared for the next 'step'?  It's hard to imagine German teachers just passing half-ready kids into the next grade.

Last week, I read through a German Twitter comment where someone asked the question....why couldn't the government hustle up a dozen satellite channels and just broadcast the daily lessons.  They have a point on that but it'd take the government probably five years to design such a program, and it's difficult to imagine because you have 16 different states running their own educational process/agenda.  

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