#germany education system

[aimchase]

Free education in Germany | Zero Tuition Fees | Study in Germany | Aim C...

[uncanny-tranny]

Big reminder that your country is not immune to bigotry. I've seen so many people, for example, pretend like antisemitism doesn't exist in the USA because we were part of the allied forces in WWII (of course, they conveniently don't remember that we rejected jewish refugees when WWII broke out and we only really joined because Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I digress).

If you think your country is immune from antisemitism, racism (including anti-Indigenous racism), class issues, ableism, whatever else it may be, look deeper because you will find it.

[nonconstories]

Someone pissed me off a couple of days ago

So! Below are several links to programs and foundations that promote adult literacy! Hundreds of millions of adults world wide were failed by their education system and now must fend for themselves while trying to read contracts and hospital bills and infographics from the CDC. But they don't have to be alone, and it is never too late to learn!

ProLiteracy: A network of educators, researchers, and advocates which provides research reports, learning materials, and other support to adult education programs. They assist with connecting volunteers to local programs and provide guidance and support to community leaders trying to use their programs' findings to advocate for social and political change.

Adult Literacy League: An adult education program in Central Florida, which aims to provide students with one on one attention to foster growth and confidence. It also offers English Second Language courses and job skills training, and each new student receives a comprehensive assessment to determine the best plan for them.

Saint Vincent and Sarah Fisher Center's Foundational Skills Program: A 100% free adult education program aimed at adults reading below a fifth grade level. It operates year round and is either in person or remote, and they now have a GED testing center that is open to students and the public alike.

Washtenaw Literacy: A free network of trained tutors for adults in Washtenaw County, Michigan.

Adult Learning Program (Las Vegas/Clark County): Free education classes to those lacking a high school diploma, those seeking to learn ESL, and adults who read below an eighth grade level. Also assists in students' search for gainful employment. Nevada got so fucked by COVID and the education/literacy numbers in the South West are grim. Please help these guys.

Hawaii Literacy: In addition to helping adult residents of Hawaii Island learn to read and write AND bridging the education gap in Hawaii's underserved children, they offer computer literacy classes, ESL classes, and a bookmobile. 1 in 6 Hawaiian adults struggle to read and write.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[newsupdate2]

Visit more

[kraro-school-life]

i am interested in what a Gymnasium is! i am from the u.s. so we don't have anything really like it.

from my googling, it seems to be like a higher level/more advanced secondary school/high school before university? i am pretty curious. what do students have to do to qualify?

Ok, wow my first ask!! (💖) Thank you so much I hope I can explain it good enough:

A Gymnasium is a type of secondary school, that comes after elementary schol. In Germany, the individual „Bundesländer“ (States ig?) manage the laws for Education, so it’s very different depending on which „state“ you live in. Elementary school is mostly 4-6 years long, and after that you go to secondary school.

There are 3 main types of secondary school, “Hauptschule”, “Realschule”, and “Gymnasium”. (There are of course other options you can take, but these are the most common ones). And the school you get into depends on your average grade the last year of elementary. To explain it simply: it’s worst to best. The children with the best grades get accepted into a Gymnasium, the less good into a Realschule and then Hauptschule.

And that’s the thing about the German Education system. Not to exaggerate, but it’s like your life depends on how well you do in school as a kid as early as 4th grade. Which is fucked. Like how does that make sense?? Most of the students who are in a Gymnasium are expected to go into university, and it’s harder to get in if you only graduated from f.e. a Realschule (which is also shorter btw). Unfortunately, there is also a direct correlation between the amount of money parents are earning and what level education their children get.

You could say it’s sorted by skill, but really, i feel like it’s not. I could rant about the education system in Germany and how it’s just bad, forever (I even went to a convention that talked about it), but it could be worse honestly. It’s not THAT bad.

(Although I say that I go to a gymnasium, it’s a bit different for me personally, because it’s kind of a private school, but mostly the same.)

I hope I could help you out a bit, and I think it great how you want to know more about other systems!! American schools seem so different to me though, the freshman, sophomore thing is kinda confusing to me. I have to inform myself now lol.

(edit: wow this turned into a rant I didn’t intend on writing, hopefully I still answered your question)

[pirates-and-ninja-lover]

fuck politics btw <3

[littlebigmouse]

People like to make fun of YA worldbuilding tropes that sort teenagers into arbitrary categories based on arbitrary characteristics that nonetheless have a huge impact on the teenager's future.

This is not unrealistic however, because the german education system sorts 4th graders based on their "academic merit" as determinded by one of their elementary school teachers into one of three (sometimes four) further type of schools, which has a drastic impact on the likelihood of you even getting the qualification to attend university.

Yes, your entire academic career path is dependent on whether your elementary school teacher likes you or not. Don't worry, some states think that's bullshit too and instead make fourth graders sit entrance exams for the education level of their (parents') choice. (Although the teachers still get a say). That's why sometimes have news articles about the burn out rates of elementary schoolchildren in Bavaria.

But don't worry! Politicians love to complain about... to many people in recent years receiving the qualification to attend university...

[heatsu]

tfw you left your family to pursue your music career in the big city™ only to get roasted by professors on your entrance exam and not get into university because you don't have enough experience and knowledge for your age

now you have nowhere to go and life is shit

[galacticneighbor]

Had a conversation last night with a group of non-Americans and I've come to the conclusion that some people don't understand the student debt problem in the USA. Like I was having such a hard time trying to explain that you have to find a way to pay for school WHILE you're going instead of paying it back to the government when you start working which is. Apparently the way it works in some places??

Yeah, university might not be any cheaper in other places, but Americans at 18 years old have to cobble together a mix of private loans and scholarships and family assistance to stay in college at all. I dropped out because I ran out of money and no one would loan me more.

[yes-germany-chennai]

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[anigdha]

Head Office : 2nd Floor, N Block, Opposite - Axis Bank,

Sector -18, Noida - 201301

[phoenix-king-ozai]

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis killed millions of (6M) Jews, (3M) Poles, (10M+) Russians, other Slavs, and "undesirable" "subhuman" people during WWII conquest and battles and of course the Holocaust. The ideology of the Fire Nation is more Imperialistic than pure fascism and racism like Nazism. Nazis and Fascists were generally anti-monarchist nationalistic unionists. The Fire Nation is heavily influenced by Imperial Japan from Meji to Showa era more so than Nazi Germany besides the Genocides and Ethnic Cleansing which Imperial Japan also committed in China in the Rape of Nanjing. The fact that the Fire Nation is compared to Nazi Germany instead of Imperial Japan or the Mongol Empire shows how pitiful the American education system is and how much history is neglected as a subject by both administration and the students. A good comparison for Fire Princess Azula probably would be the Mongolian Warrioress Princess Khutulun. 💯🔥⚡️🌋

ATLA fandumb stop comparing a fictional 14 year old abused child to a real life dictator challenge (impossible)

[komsomolka]

The unification process, which in practice amounted to an annexation of the GDR, had all the hallmarks of a colonisation. The intellectual elite was stigmatised, marginalised and dismissed, so that it could be replaced by personnel from Western Germany.

Among the institutions that were to be closed were prestigious intellectual centres like the GDR’s Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Arts. [...] The result of which was that thousands of lecturers and researchers were purged. They not only lost their tenured jobs but were also stripped of their legal contracts and seniority protections.

Those who did manage to hold on to their jobs were subjected to a vetting process in which so-called evaluating commissions (staffed only by West German academics) assessed the professional competence and personal integrity of all academics. The reason given for the necessity of this vetting was the alleged low academic standard of research in the GDR, i.e. the assumption that it was all manipulated to serve the ideological demands of the regime. The assessments were, it seemed, an attempt to denigrate East German intellectual achievement and to break up key centres of research. The process was demeaning and humiliating, and a number of internationally renowned academics refused to undergo it and so were dismissed on the spot. During this process those academics and researchers not immediately sacked were placed ‘on hold’ (Warteschleife). This also meant that they lost their employment rights and could easily be dismissed once the ‘holding period’ came to an end. The actual result of the evaluation surprised the assessors themselves since they had to admit that the standards were, despite often inferior material conditions, comparable to those in the West. Yet it was too late, the assumption of an ‘academic desert’ or, more to the point, the imposition of an ideologically-determined plan to oust the GDR intellectual elite, had led to the decision to close down these centres of research. [...]

The third method of cleansing the intellectual elite was the political vetting of every employee in education (schools, colleges and universities). All staff had to complete questionnaires that, in addition to professional qualifications, asked for detailed information on their present and former party affiliations, political opinions and activities. Although such questions are illegal under the German constitution, people from the GDR were told that the completion of the questionnaires was a pre-condition of further employment. [...] Teachers were found politically unacceptable on the basis of trivial activities, such as being a choir leader, because this was considered to be an activity supportive of the system. [...]

The closing down of academic institutions and university departments as well as political vetting resulted in more than one million people with a university degree or its equivalent losing their jobs. This constituted 50 per cent of that group and it meant that, percentage-wise, the Eastern part of Germany, following unification, had the highest unemployment rate for university graduates in the world. [...]

In this context, it is perhaps of interest to note the comments made by Dr. Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport when she was granted her doctorate in Hamburg over seventy years later, at the age of 102! Her case made headlines in Germany.

She had completed her medical studies in Germany during the 1930s, but was denied her doctorate when the Nazis came to power. Being an active communist and Jewish, she was forced to flee the country and found exile in the USA. But with the rise of McCarthyism in the post-war period she and her husband, also a doctor, were summoned to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Persecution once again forced them to leave the country and they eventually settled in the GDR.

Happy as she was to receive her degree belatedly in 2015, she said that the preparations recalled enough bad memories to rob her of sleep - of brown-shirted Nazis shouting and trampling at lectures by partly Jewish professors, but also of the years after the end of the GDR in 1989. She learned of its demise during a scientific congress in the USA, but when Americans congratulated her on ‘German unification’ she felt no joy. Of the years that followed she wrote: ‘I would never have believed, more than 45 years after the victory over Hitler fascism and 40 years after the McCarthy era, that I would again experience such a flood of sackings, such mass destruction of livelihoods and contempt for talents.’

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It by Bruni de la Motte & John Green with Seumas Milne (Contributor), 2015.

[vague-humanoid]

Though calling out antisemitism is central to the commissioners’ role, it’s unclear what qualifies these officials to adjudicate anti-Jewish bigotry. Klein, for instance, came to his current position after a stint working as the German government’s representative to Jewish organizations, but prior to that, he spent most of his career in Germany’s foreign service working on unrelated issues, stationed in places like Cameroon and Italy. When I visited him in his office in Berlin last April, only a menorah decal pasted on one of the windows hinted at the nature of his position. Klein told me that there are no standardized training programs for the commissioners or educational requirements that they must fulfill before their appointments. Schüler-Springorum pointed out that, though references to the Holocaust underlie every aspect of Germany’s antisemitism system, many of the commissioners are far from experts on the history in question. “It’s amazing how little they know about National Socialism,” she lamented. None of the antisemitism commissioners for either the German Federal Government or its Bundesländer, or states, is ethnically Jewish—which, according to Klein, is by design. “The fight against antisemitism is a problem for the whole of society. It isn’t a problem for the Jewish community to face by itself,” he told me. “I mean, it’s not as though the most pressing problem with antisemitism in Germany is among Jews.”

Indeed, when Jews interact directly with the system, it is often as its targets: Klein told the Berliner Zeitung in a January 2021 interview that “tendentially left-leaning Israelis in Berlin” should “be sensitive to Germany’s special historical responsibility” when they criticize Israel. In the eyes of the commissioners, this seems to be all the more true of Muslims and Arabs—especially Palestinians—who voice support for the Palestinian cause. “Palestinians are like a thorn in the side of Germany’s memory culture,” Palestinian German lawyer Nadija Samour told Jewish Currents. They’re “disposable,” but also “crucial for the German identity . . . If you really want to prove how civilized you are, and how philosemitic or pro-Israel you are, you get the chance to prove that by throwing Palestinians under the bus.”

This commitment to Israel advocacy—which requires disciplining the state’s Jewish critics as well as suppressing Palestinian speech—has led observers to argue that the system of antisemitism commissioners exists less to ensure the safety of Jews than to placate Germans’ feelings of guilt for the Holocaust. Indeed, last summer, in the course of admonishing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for comparing Israel’s crimes to the Holocaust during his visit to Germany, Klein emphasized the way that antisemitism hurts Germans. “By relativizing the Holocaust, President Abbas lacked any sensitivity towards us German hosts,” Klein said. Emily Dische-Becker, a left-wing Jewish curator and journalist in Berlin, told Jewish Currents that German antisemitism efforts are ultimately not driven by a concern for Jews. “It basically is an issue of German identity politics at the end of the day,” she said. Neiman—whose 2019 book Learning from the Germans argues that the nation provides a model for other countries struggling with the weight of collective memory—told me that the creation of the commissioner system, and the passage of the anti-BDS resolution the following year, had caused her to question her previous evaluation. “Things have changed really dramatically since the book came out,” she said. “I still think that Germany did something historically unique by putting its crimes in the center of its national narrative, but I also think it’s gone haywire in the last three years. This system of antisemitism commissioners basically went in all the wrong directions.”

[deadhorsepress]

But then, one learns about Nazism in school. Even as an AP Euro student, I can’t recall learning much of anything about Francoist Spain or Fascist Italy, but the horrors of Nazi Germany still consume America’s attention. Pop history books about Nazis crowd library shelves. Countless fact-free torture-porn stories about the Holocaust like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas are required reading. And all the same, when pressed to define “fascism,” your average American just starts describing their opponents. 

In spite of the popularity of fascism as a signifier, what it signifies isn’t clear. And that’s hardly the fault of the public education system. Even academics like Umberto Eco and Ian Kershaw have struggled to contain a definition to a few sentences, instead creating lists any nascent fascist can be measured against, like legal tests enshrined in statute. 

Lots of ink has been spilled measuring Trump against these lists. It’s useless. Academic definitions of “fascism” first must assume that “fascism” is coherent enough to be defined. If Mussolini’s rapid redefinition of his ideology into something that gelled better with Hitler’s proves anything, it’s incoherence.