Darlene Quayle: European Schools Research and Explorations

Outside a preschool in Rostock; the former Eastern Germany has a very strong government-funded preschool system.

I was fortunate to be able to visit with the sister and nephew of a friend in Port Townsend. She’s been in Germany since 1992 and her son was born there, in Rostock. She is a university senior lecturer and he’s in 7th grade. We had a much-too-short visit, and I hope that we can continue our conversations via email.

Helene Lange Gymnasium; Art class: student bring all their own materials

I also visited a bilingual high school in Hamburg, which provides two tracks of education for its students: International Baccalaureat (IB), and the traditional Gymnasium. Both tracks are designed for preparing students for university entrance. This is different from the Gesamptschule, or comprehensive school, that we call high school in the U.S.
Students who attend the Realeschule (vocational/trade school) that many students choose to attend (or are recommended to attend) after 9th grade may choose to pursue their “A levels” after graduating so that they may attend university, but most go straight into technical jobs or job training.
Lower achieving (or less-motivated) students often go to a Hauptschule, where they get a basic education for service jobs.
Students start first grade at age 6 and have 13 years of school. All male graduates must perform one year of military or social service after high school, and most students travel to another country for a year after graduating. This makes most students starting university about 20-21 years old.

This school has been bilingual in practice for over 30 years, and officially a Hamburg bilingual school for 15 years. There are currently ten English bilingual schools in Hamburg and two French bilingual schools. They feel strongly that bilingual education must start early (most start English in 3rd or 4th grade, and there is an effort to start English lessons in 1st grade), and that students benefit both in language and academically from this. I spoke with a woman from Stuttgart, and she said she knew of two English bilingual schools and one French bilingual school there, as well.

Unfortunately for the teachers in Hamburg, the government has only just begun to see value in technology for schools, so the schools here have overhead projectors and maybe one or two small computer labs per 3000 students. Teachers do not have computers in their rooms, only one or two to share in the staff room. As in other schools we have seen so far, teachers share a planning area, a staff room, and move from room to room to teach their subject area. They are envious of teachers in the U.S. who get their own rooms and require the students to move instead. My daughter sees value in the students having their own classroom and therefore the space to keep in-progress projects, despite the fact that the classrooms are fairly small and have little storage space.

The math level in Germany is much higher than I have found in other schools. Students are using cross-cancelling and mental shortcuts and order of operations with multiple fractions and are working in pre-calculus at 10th grade. Students here are surprised that geography is not a required, separate subject in American schools, but after sitting in a geography class, I realized that our geography studies are not missing, but enveloped into science as earth science coursework, and into history as map and social geography studies. In 6th grade art class, students are working with contrast using color. They have a textbook for art that is referenced by students from 5th grade through 8th grade.

While there are some textbooks available, there are few made for bilingual schools, so the school selects its own texts to best meet the state requirements for the subject area, and teachers often create their own materials to supplement concepts. They have a sister-school connection with a high school in Illinois, and after a visit there, several teachers were able to provide information and pictures for the textbook that they use for American Studies.

This particular school is known for being at the high end of the scale for schools in Germany, and especially in the Hamburg state. They offer an IB program as well to further challenge their university-bound students, and students are tested twice a year, including oral exams, and give group presentations beginning at an early age. Public speaking is important, and they encourage argumentation skills and independence of thought.

The biggest challenge for German schools right now is that the school system is changing from a grades 1-13 program to a 0-12 program. Students already in the system now have to crunch 9 years of secondary education into 8 years, and with specific learning expectations and school-based decision-making for its structure (including profiles, or interest groupings, that put students into academic teams), this puts extra stress on the teachers as well.

I will be visiting another school later in my journey and look forward to hearing more about German school issues as they are addressed in another one of the country’s states.