Call for Germany to scrap English lessons in primary schools

https://www.dw.com/en/call-for-germany-to-scrap-english-lessons-in-primary-schools/a-65876721

by redbell • 3 years ago

41 115 3 years ago

mikece• 3 years ago

focusing on German instead of English made more sense in schools where 70% to 90% of the students have a migrant background with "hardly… sufficient knowledge of German."

Sounds like this is more of an immigrant issue than a “should we teach English” issue.

thriftwy2• 3 years ago

I wonder how you are supposed to assimilate the immigrants when they are more than 40% of all students, not to mention 70 to 90%.

sprash5• 3 years ago

You won't and that is the point. A population without social cohesion is easily governed.

geraneum3• 3 years ago

It say in schools “where” 70 to 90 percent have immigrant background. I don’t think it means that portion of all students everywhere on average have immigration backgrounds.

constantcrying6• 3 years ago

You do not. From a cultural standpoint the only visible trend I have ever seen is German kids picking up migrant trends.

Of course after over a decade most children come out of it with enough German. But that is integration only on the thinnest level imaginable.

c00lio8• 3 years ago

It is a combination of an immigrant issue with the refusal to make a distinction between different pupil populations. One could e.g. teach additional remedial German lessons, or split the class and teach German to those who don't know enough German, English to the rest. But this is intentionally not done, several states emphasize identical curricula for all their pupils. The intention is to give everyone "the same chance". But this severely holds back brighter pupils as well as those who are e.g. more knowledgable in German or other subjects. Thereby lowering the overall educational outcomes, because everything is lowest-common-denominator by law.

tfourb10• 3 years ago

It is also the unwillingness to spend the money required for the necessary number of teachers to have a differentiated curriculum. If 1 teacher = 25 students, everyone of course has to learn the same stuff.

Edited to add: this also has nothing to do with some students being “brighter”. Different kids have different learning requirements, and not speaking the local language is an obvious one, though not at all correlated with intelligence.

yorwba2• 3 years ago

refusal to make a distinction between different pupil populations. One could e.g. teach additional remedial German lessons

There's no such refusal and your suggestion is the status quo.

https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/Integration/ZugewanderteTeilne...

throw_pm233• 3 years ago

You make a good observation, but it can also go the other way. There are bright immigrant/expat kids who don't speak German well initially, but by being treated the same as native speakers, they catch up by third or fourth grade sufficiently, and in addition also learn English to comparable levels (or better) as the German kids. This leads to good integration, and they would not be well-served by being put on a "dumbed down" track. The curriculum is by and large so light anyway (compared to e.g. Eastern European countries), that sharper kids coast through without much challenge.

LargoLasskhyfv2• 3 years ago

Splitting classes requires more rooms and teachers. Which propably won't happen, because the (school) system is in shambles.

Not everywhere to the same degree, but the general trend is downward. OTOH I'm surrounded by Kindergardens, 1 expanded and overhauled with nice and enlarged playgrounds, another expanded, and one being built right now into a former ALDI, which moved into a small mall.

So...shrug?

Btw...

But this severely holds back brighter pupils as well as those who are e.g. more knowledgable in German or other subjects. Thereby lowering the overall educational outcomes, because everything is lowest-common-denominator by law.

This is nothing new. Happened 40+ years ago also. (To me. While being one of the https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36275943 Imagine!1!!)

kleene_op• 3 years ago

It's a real shame for the 10 to 30% of german children who will have to waste their time attending classes for a language they already know when they could get a headstart practicing english.

oaiey3• 3 years ago

In my childhood, we have not had english and therefore in your argument also no extra German. Sometimes, we expect too much of our kids.

tfourb10• 3 years ago

Maybe important to point out that schools with 70-90% migrant children is the exception, not the norm and limited to very specific contexts in a handful of major cities. Those major cities, especially Berlin and some in the mid-west also tend to be quite broke exacerbating the issue.

The bigger problem for the German public education system (and there is no private education worth speaking of in Germany) is that the federal states (which are responsible for schools) have systematically underinvested in teacher recruitment for the past two decades. The pipeline is empty, a large share of teachers will go into retirement in the next 15 years and politicians (of all parties) have so far ignored realistic projections concerning the number of teachers required.

So yes, reducing English lessons to improve German reading comprehension makes sense in a way. But what would make even more sense would be to drastically increase funding for teaching positions to ensure that kids don't loose two-three weeks worth of school per year, because too many teachers are sick and neither German nor English lessons are taking place.

anonzzzies3• 3 years ago

Everything in the EU is suffering from not having a universal language, be it English, German, Spanish, Mandarin, I don't really care, but it's incredibly bad for everything but 'the culture' to not speak one language. My German is excellent and the last time I had a project in Germany, ALL my German colleagues wanted to speak English to practice their English. It is almost worthless, from a financial perspective, to speak any of the smaller languages and doubtful if German, even in Germany, would give you a better outlook than speaking bad German but solid English. In ES/PT/GR this is definitely the case; English will make you king, the local lingo will do nothing but allowing you to read the literature. It's important, but really shouldn't be a priority imho. It's mostly old people wanting to keep this alive and the youth is fed up not having chances because not speaking a viable language.

aerhardt• 3 years ago

In ES/PT/GR this is definitely the case

Spanish and Portuguese open the doors to LatAm. Know a good number of Spanish business owners who have built fortunes in the Spanish-speaking world with dubious English.

anonzzzies3• 3 years ago

Sure, but most people are not entrepreneurs and they just want jobs and have a family where they are born. I am not saying we should be speaking English (although it makes sense), i'm saying to pick a language (Spanish is fine) and just do it.

ben_w2• 3 years ago

There's a lot to unpack here, so I'll probably miss something.

I'm British and living in Berlin; my German is… I can get most written text, and the carefully-edited examples in recorded lessons, but I only understand about half of spoken German, regardless of if that's DW Langsamer Gesprochen Nachrichten Podcast or a conversation.

Most of the Germans I talk with have ample examples of exported culture from Hollywood to learn English language from.

But: (1) I'm mostly interacting with the companies that hire foreigners like me, and (2) everyone says Berlin is exceptional in how welcoming it is of outsiders.

Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek? I'm not sure, as I have no experience of working there, και εγω barely μιλαω two of them, but I assume the external cultural pressure from Brazil helps a bit with promoting Portuguese, and the rest of Latin America likewise with Spanish.

twixfel12• 3 years ago

Sorry but what have you unpacked? I don't understand what point you're making here.

anonzzzies3• 3 years ago

I am unsure how this relates to what I posted?

MandieD2• 3 years ago

I live in Großraum Nürnberg, which is more cosmopolitan than anywhere in the former East (aside, of course, from Berlin), and I'm stuck in the plateau of speaking German well enough to get the Ausländeramt (excuse me, Auslanderbehörde) to grant me a Niederlassungserlaubnis (permanent residence permit), and to maintain good relations with my in-laws, but not what could be called "verhandlungssicher" (capable of negotiations or other serious business discussions), and that has put a definite ceiling on my career possibilities - I'm sought after as an individual contributor, but I will never be in management unless I manage to kick my German use up a couple of levels.

Germany is a prime destination for ambitious young people from Spain, Portugal and Greece, many of whom are willing to put forth the effort to learn German well enough to be successful here, but get their feet in the door with English.

Spain, Portugal and Greece are prime destinations for Germans on vacation, and the more intellectually ambitious will attempt to learn enough of the local languages to be polite, but there are enough not intellectually-ambitious Germans with sufficient money to travel that menus and hotel room info are often offered in German, along with the ubiquitous English.

TL;DR: There's a bit of an economic hierarchy going on that makes the language situation for Germans different from that of the Spanish, Greeks and Portuguese.

trinix912• 3 years ago

English will make you king, the local lingo will do nothing but allowing you to read the literature. It's important, but really shouldn't be a priority imho.

Because most jobs outside of IT require you to be fluent in the local language as that's what all business is done in. No matter what sector. Even if you work in IT, if you're a sysadmin for example, you still have to be able to communicate with the business dept, other employees, software and documentation is in the local language, and so on.

Adiqq• 3 years ago

Language influences the way we think, however I agree that would be better to focus on single universal language. Multiple local languages just create additional barriers in communication. I can't just move to Germany, France or Spain, because unless you fluently know their language, you're more or less disabled person that requires translations.

throw0101b2• 3 years ago

A book I enjoyed:

English is the world's lingua franca-the most widely spoken language in human history. And yet, as historian and linguist Nicholas Ostler persuasively argues, English will not only be displaced as the world's language in the not-distant future, it will be the last lingua franca, not replaced by another.
Empire, commerce, and religion have been the primary raisons d'etre for lingua francas--Greek, Latin, Arabic have all held the position--and Ostler explores each through the lens of civilizations spanning the globe and history, from China and India to Russia and Europe. Three trends emerge that suggest the ultimate decline of English and other lingua francas. Movements throughout the world towards equality in society will downgrade the status of elites--and since elites are the prime users of non-native English, the language will gradually retreat to its native-speaking territories. The rising wealth of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will challenge the dominance of native-English-speaking nations--thereby shrinking the international preference for English. Simultaneously, new technologies will allow instant translation among major languages, enhacing the status of mother tongues and lessening the necessity for any future lingua franca.

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8366156-the-last-lingua-...

* Not in bookshop.org's database

bombcar• 3 years ago

The second part is perhaps more important than the first - once we have nearly perfect automatic translators, the need to learn the lingua franca will drop.

As it is, the "movers and shakers" in the BRIC all speak the lingua franca (English), and more importantly; they speak English between each other even when no native English speakers are around.

In fact, the downfall of the Pax Americana (which from a language perspective is just the Pax Britania continued) may result in solidifying English as the lingua franca, as it would become a neutral language that doesn't show deference to any particular up-and-coming power.

trilbyglens2• 3 years ago

We absolutely do not have anything close to perfect automatic translators. Machine translation is still largely shit, and very definitely shit if you try to use it in a real time situation.

enkid• 3 years ago

This isn't even true in it's face. The lingua franca the term is derived from was a trading language across different cultures. It was used across the Mediterranean when there was a common language due to geopolitical or religious barriers. The need for such a language has only increased with increased global connectivity and global commerce. This is the same role it's filing in places like the EU, where only a small population speaks it natively, but it's a working language of the central bank and and the European Commission. In India and South Africa, it's lack of a native population has actually helped it maintain it's status, as other potential languages of commerce/government (for example Hindi in India and Afrikaans in SA) are associated negatively with nationalistic political movements for a majority of the population. Even in a country like Vietnam, where you would think a negative history with the United States would discourage it's use, over 50% of its population has some use of it. Overall, I just think it's hard to see any sort of trend of English lessening as a lingua franca.

midasuni2• 3 years ago

It’s possible increasingly accurate and usable real time translation removing the need for a common tongue over the next 20 years, let alone 100

throw0101b2• 3 years ago

The lingua franca the term is derived from was a trading language across different cultures.

Which is the first 80-90% of the book: the history of various ones going back about to 3000 BC (or some such).

mrazomor2• 3 years ago

From my experience, this makes sense (at least for the lower classes). I had English classes since my first grade. Considering the results, it was mostly waste of time. None of us had even basic proficiency even after years of attending English classes.

Language learning requires frequent classes and a decent amount of exposure (TV doesn't provide it). This is possible with older kids, not the young ones.

jacquesm4• 3 years ago

From my experience, it doesn't. All of my kids are fluent in English, Dutch and at least one more language. And I credit early exposure and the schools spending a lot of time on this from age 6 and up.

ivoflipse• 3 years ago

It helps that in the Netherlands we subtitle rather than dub foreign (and thus most English) speaking content. I was surprised when watching Forest Gump to hear that "Shit happens" is translated to "Scheisse passiert" and my German speaking friends didn't even know the English version. Ironically, I think most German speakers are more familiar with Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice actor, than his own voice while being from Austria.

Our music also contains more English music than German, which doesn't seem to be the case in Germany.

So in the Netherlands, we're exposed to English a lot more than German, French or Spanish speaking countries. I bet the same applies to the Nordic countries, which also have great English speaking ability

mrazomor2• 3 years ago

There's something that the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden do well when it comes to English. Almost all people I met from those countries spoke fluent English with good pronunciation.

What do you believe Dutch schools do well when it comes to learning English? How large are the classes? Are there any things outside the school that might play important role in learning English?

Could it be just the language compatibility? (not sure how Switzerland would fit)

trilbyglens2• 3 years ago

Seems like Holland manages this just fine?

Imo dropping the only language that is common across the continent is a bad idea. When cultures lose intercultural comprehension, they become more isolated, and that's entirely a bad thing.

Germany is the defacto leading culture on the continent, and having a population that is able to be integrated in international information streams is critical to it playing that role well.

Just look to other countries who speak less English. You don't want to end up like the french do you?

funklute• 3 years ago

You don't want to end up like the french do you?

Exactly what do you mean is the problem with the French?

Assuming I've understood you correctly, I think it's worth pointing out that the French very consciously hold onto their linguistic identity. Many people would argue that is a good thing, rather than a bad thing. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I do think that your claim of "entirely a bad thing" is something that depends a lot on your perspective.

risyachka• 3 years ago

I bet it heavily depends on teachers and curriculum. I had English classes from first grade and at the end of school I was fluent in written and spoken English.

But the curriculum was not even close to what they teach in most schools. It was pretty hardcore. The groups were small (10 students max) and the teachers were relentless and actually cared.

jacquesm4• 3 years ago

That would be an own goal. International trade and communications for business reasons is in English, like it or not.

What's next, voice overs in German instead of English subtitles? /s

German is a hard language to learn, especially for migrants who learn it as their second language. This is not going to be solved by scrapping English lessons, it is solved by improving the way German is taught.

twixfel12• 3 years ago

There also needs to be a cultural shift in Germany regarding how non-native German speakers are treated. If you're not absolutely fluent, you are fucked. Living in Germany as a non-native is being stuck between two worlds. Germans only speak English to you, whilst insisting that you absolutely must learn German, and rejecting completely you if you're not fluent. So in the end, you cannot really win.

throwaway2906• 3 years ago

How does that rejection manifest itself?

constantcrying6• 3 years ago

Idiotic. I can't say I learned much in school, but learning witten and spoken english has been something which has consistently been valuable almost anywhere.

bell-cot• 3 years ago

Sounds like a one-size-fits-all proposal by an utter idiot. (Admitting that the situation may be such that Meidinger himself has no viable alternative.)

Vs. - the primary school I attended had 3 classes of students per year. At the start of the school year, they gave reading and math proficiency tests to students starting their final year, and - for those two subjects only - shuffled kids around so that reading and math lessons were in classes with similar proficiency levels. That required ~zero extra resources, and there was no fuss made over it.

If Germany could somehow lock up all the bureaucrats, hotheads, and idiots...how easily could the German teachers (at least those in schools large enough to have a few full classes per year level) do something similar?

logifail• 3 years ago

How many hours of English per week do German primary schools actually teach? I know for sure that thanks to federalism it varies hugely across Germany.

tjansen2• 3 years ago

NRW: one of my daughters has 2 hours per week, grade 1-4. But they changed it a while ago, and kids will now have English only in grades 3-4, but the number of hours is supposed to double.

niemandhier• 3 years ago

They should get rid of early English and teach the kids the language of their neighbours.

My ( German ) grandfather spoke polish and check, my grandmother spoke French and Dutch. It used to be normal to know enough of the language from the other side of the border to get by, at least until WW2.

The only people who should worry about English is those in the Center of the country.

c00lio8• 3 years ago

Learning French might be worthwhile since there are quite a few speakers on the planet. Although English, Chinese or Spanish are preferable in that respect.

Polish, Chech and Dutch are a waste of time, they aren't spoken anywhere but their origin regions and those are rather small to begin with...

jFriedensreich• 3 years ago

If germany would just stop dubbing virtually everything no matter how small from english to german they would get years of intrinsic english learning for free. Whenever i meet someone with surprising english skills (ignoring cases of having native speakers in the family) part of the answer is that they watched english shows and movies from a super young age because their countries were not dubbing.

a_bonobo2• 3 years ago

I am a German who lives in Australia. Australia handles immigrants far, far better than Germany, and I feel like that is reflected in these school outcomes.

In my kids' school, about 80% of kids' parents don't speak that much English. The school and the child nurse told us, 'don't worry about English, they'll learn that here at school, focus on their native tongues'. I don't think that's isolated to Australia, which is far more multi-cultural than Germany in many regards (government infrastructure, city-life,

Yet Australia scored 11th in the same test: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/16/victo...

I don't think scrapping English in primary school will change anything, that's just grasping at straws. You'd have to change how the entire society works: get rid of a weirdly stratified school system, support immigrants far better (have government staff who actually speak English, for a start...), get rid of the class-heavy barriers in peoples' heads, too much to do.

Germany is on spot 21, by the way - took me far too long to find that information. https://pirls2021.org/results/achievement/ click on 'Download Section' for a PDF with the ranking. Looking at the range of reading skills (those barcharts on the right), Germany isn't actually doing that bad.

rawbert• 3 years ago

'don't worry about English, they'll learn that here at school, focus on their native tongues'.

My parents got the same advice after moving from eastern Europe to Germany and they ignored it. They did it because they recognized pretty fast how important it is to "appear German" otherwise you might be disadvantaged. If I had the choice myself I would not repeat the decision my parents made thirty years ago. I am convinced I would have learned German and Englisch without loosing my native language. Scrapping one language for another makes no sense for me.

a_bonobo2• 3 years ago

IMHO, they might have felt compelled to do so- in the 90s Germany's Neonazis were at their strongest. Amadeu Kiowa was murdered by Neonazis in 1990. The Solingen fire-bombing by Nazis (5 people dead) was 1993, the Luebeck refugee home burning killed 10 people in 1996. That decade saw dozens of refugee homes burned down with dozens of murdered people.

Look at the list of refugee home attacks during the 90s, with a peak in 1993 (I count 61 attacks)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_fl%C3%BCchtlingsfeindlic...

I can understand why your parents felt the pressure to have you fit in!

epups2• 3 years ago

Germany likes to blame immigration for the underachievement of its school system, but the reality is that it's an extremely outdated system that is absolutely not prepared for the modern world. While in Scandinavian countries - with similar levels of immigration - children are not only learning English but also programming and other innovative subjects, German teachers come up with obviously short-sighted policies such as these.

c00lio8• 3 years ago

There is no "German" school system. There are (at least) 16 different school systems in Germany. The original article glosses over that. Each state has (almost) full autonomy regarding schools, there are only voluntary (by the council of state education ministers) alignments between states. The federal government can only apply minimal directions by providing some additional funding in limited areas. And even within states there are often different kinds of public schools depending on the current political trends in that state at the time, e.g. to try out or introduce "Gesamtschule" (1-branch secondary school system) vs. 2- or 3-branch (and maybe fuse some or all secondary 3-branch "Hauptschule" and "Realschule" into "Mittelschule"), 8- vs. 9-year Gymnasium etc. It is a total mess, what might be true for one kind of school in one state might be different a few kilometers away in the next state.

So comparisons are hard, even between German states.

I also think this autonomy is one of the reasons why the overall average quality is so bad: Schools are a political issue that is used to distinguish a new state government from a previous one, and to distinguish one state from another. So with each election, you get state politicians running around like headless chickens, trying to "make things better" in schools by randomly doing "something", because what the previous government in the same state did obviously cannot be right. And what that other state governed by a different party does cannot be right either. ad inf...

epups2• 3 years ago

A case could be made that this state-level independence is a strength, not a flaw: you can experiment and see what works and doesn't, and also accommodate to local realities if needed. In practice, I agree with you, states are not doing a good job and we don't see tangible benefits from all this variety.

To be pedantic, this disjointed system IS the German educational system. And I would worry about fixing it before putting the blame on immigrants.

MandieD2• 3 years ago

A bit of background missing from this article: primary school (1st - 4th grade) English is a relatively new (last 20 years or so) innovation, while secondary school (5th grade onward) English has been a widespread thing for far longer. That English instruction, judging from the quality of similarly-aged colleagues' understanding and use, was far more thorough and effective than even my relatively good Spanish instruction (8th-11th grade in the 90s) was in Texas.

My husband didn't have school English until 5th grade, but sounds like a Brit to Americans, and can negotiate pretty well: his mother was a Gymnasium (college-prep high school) English teacher and taught him a bit as a four year old while she was home for the year after his little sister was born, but didn't really bother with it after that. That bit as a little kid, however, was apparently the magic. His sister, by the way, does not speak English better than most other well-educated Germans her age - their mother was too busy to repeat the experiment with her.

I joke that my mother-in-law has only herself to blame for getting stuck with an American daughter-in-law - I doubt I'd have been able to form as deep a relationship with my husband if he couldn't speak English as well as he does. My German is enough to carry on a cordial relationship with my in-laws and participate in parents' council and amateur radio stuff, but not to deal with the weightier parts of marriage and how we're raising our child.

As the parent of an American-German and a Bavarian schools taxpayer, I'd rather see a little exposure in Kindergarten (3-6 years old) than the current very uneven primary school efforts. Get the English sounds in their ears while their little brains are still so flexible, and do the education later, after they're fully literate in the language they need to know: German.

The Krippe (daycare) and Kindergarten workers are relatively young, and have more casual English exposure (and confidence) than the older, better-educated school teachers, and might be better positioned to provide that early exposure, funny enough.

stumblingalong• 3 years ago

This action goes against what it takes to raise a child (in the global community). Instead of looking at integration as an attempt to homogenize a society, we should look at multi cultural opportunities as a way to expand global views. Especially when it comes to language. I couldn’t help but notice that as soon as they could, after brexit, German companies eliminated the English translations included on appliances and foodstuffs. As a recent returning german/american I get many disdainful comments on my imperfect language skills, which I know, from my years of experience as a community organizer, is also a form of racism. Our capacity for learning languages is an individual cognitive ability. According to Germans, you don’t even speak proper German if you speak with someone from a different province...this attitude needs to change systemically. And removing the opportunities to learn other languages from the curriculum during Childrens’ early years, is exactly the opposite of what should be happening in the schools.

Call for Germany to scrap English lessons in primary schools

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