Hudson Dooley, writing from Ergste, Schwerte, in the Ruhrgebiet region of Germany.
In my 5 months of German schooling perhaps one word can sum up the differences between our systems: trust. It’s become clear to me that the American school system is built upon control; bathroom passes, study halls, students being tracked at all times–these elements are non-existent in Germany, and so far, people are shocked by the level of control the average American student faces. I think a prime example of this is study hall. In America, we are required to stay in study hall for the whole period. In Germany, students can simply leave the school, get on a bus, and go to McDonalds. Students are also not required to go to school if they have the first period free, substitute teachers don’t exist, and between every period there is a 15 minute break. These key differences lead me to believe that American school culture places very little responsibility and trust in the hands of its youth.
School culture here is also quite different. In the United States I feel we often look to school for community–sports, clubs, after-school events, etc. In Germany, however, that sense of community is already provided by tight-knit cities and villages; as such, school is seen more so as a strictly learning environment. There are no real school sports, or afterschool events, or for that matter any real clubs; students instead look to outside organizations for these activities. Despite this learning-focused environment, I find German school to be less challenging, on a content basis, than American school (or at least Charter). In math classes for example, we’ve been learning at times relatively basic things like the quadratic equation, but at other times much harder things like derivatives or matrixes. Still, Germans don’t learn about imaginary numbers, non sin and cos trig identities, or other topics till much later. From what I’ve observed, the work is a lot lighter and easier, but it is nonetheless very hard to receive a good grade. Most students are more than happy with 3+ (C+). Students notably don’t have access to their grades until they receive their report card, and the grade they receive is mostly based on the grade the teacher thinks they deserve, with class participation being a deciding factor. I find that because of this class participation is a little bit more common.
The students here are in the majority of ways similar to Americans, but the class size is much smaller, with only 90 people in the grade. Unfortunately, I have experienced quite a lot of casual racism here, which is strange, as I find Germany to be overall much more liberal than in the United States. Everyone here plays this stupid game called block blaster, and I don’t understand it– it’s like an epidemic here…it’s really dumb in my opinion, but what do I know? Germans at times are really closed and reserved, and then at other times they’re louder than Americans. I think a good example of this is when we played a game with our teacher where one progressively says a word louder and louder until they notice… One notable cultural difference is instead of clapping after a presentation Germans will knock on their desk, which I find to be funny every time. I could go on forever about the cultural differences we have in school alone, but hopefully this is enough to convey an accurate picture of the German school culture.
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