Ein Lehrer bloggt über: Amok – Schule – Bildung – Pädagogik – Psychologie – Gewalt
Beiträge mit tag "education @en
childproofing a crib – howto
1vor 1 Jahr
von cd
in Pure Madness
This is how to prevent your toddler from climbing out of its crib (click to enlarge):
childproofing a crib
Should work pretty well…
cd
Watch your language, people!
6vor 1 Jahr
Yes, we all know that problem…children and juveniles nowadays make frequent use of bad language. As a teacher, I am trying hard to counter this trend, but obviously to no avail. And all of you might have already figured, this is of course attributable to the music played on the radio and on TV these days. While listening to one of my favourite records, the album “Rage against the machine” by a band with the same name, I immediately heard an example for what is going wrong nowadays.
The song “Killing in the name of” features the following line, which is repeated over and over again:
“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”
Phrases like that mess up our children’s language. As responsible adults we all know how this should have been phrased…it’s got to be:
“Fuck you, I shan’t do what you tell me!”
There you go…watch your language, people!
cd
Dude, you bent my tower – Part III
1vor 2 Jahren
Alright, sorry guys, I promised I’d write more in English and haven’t for about a year..but I couldn’t help but notice that more and more anglophone people seem to be interested in my rants about education in Germany…at least the logfiles say so…so finally, here is another part of the „Dude, you bent my tower!“ series:
Alright, I did mention the PISA-shock in the first and second installment.
I also mentioned that they chose politicians to do the job…and as it is the case just about anywhere in the wold, politicians are usually one’s worst choice when it comes to actually solving a problem..and Germany was no different…
After Germany had recovered from the initial blow of „hero to zero in ten easy lessons“, they came up with a whole lot of bright ideas to save the day…they wanted to dominate…and history tells us that whenever Germany tries to dominate, things get ugly very quickly…
To understand why Germany is completely lost when it comes to things other than designing cars, brewing a decent beer and designing nuclear weapons, you must know the key feature of the German people: They’re whiny and impatient…
Whatever happens, it’s -thanks to the marvellous BILD newspaper- always a complete catastrophe and sure to be the knell for all mankind…you thought Woody Allen was depressed? You haven’t seen a German shortly after the reception of bad news then….and the usual reaction is: We demand our truste(e)d politicians (hey Gerhard, how are you getting on with your Russian lessons?) to change the world…within a second or two…
So here’s what German politicians sold as a „solution“
1. They started discussing whether it still made sense that rules and regulations regarding education were state law, not federal law
The idea of having each individual state take care of its schools all by itself might seem a good idea in a country the size of the USA…you can cross Germany north to south or east to west within a couple of hours….so it might not be such a great idea here…still, the bottom line was that education shall remain a matter of state law…
Some of the states, such as Bavaria and my current homestate North Rhine Westfalia have centralized examinations for the finals and interim evaluations (google „Lernstandserhebung“ if you happen to understand German), while other states do not….in those states every single school has a different final examination leading to the „Abitur“…
But not only that…Bavaria and NRW might have introduced centralized examinations….but do they have the very same ones? NOOO….of course not…that would have made too much sense…so even with centralized examinations, Bavaria still has standards different from NRW or other states….completely ridiculing the reason for having a centralized exam in the first place: standardization! Mind you, to get from my home to Bavaria I’d have to hit the Autobahn and drive for a measly four hours….
So, get this: Germany has standards for just about anything. There’s a shitload of DIN-norms….hell..I mean, there probably is a DIN telling you how to pee the proper German way…if I bought an M4 nut in Hamburg and an M4 bolt in Munich, I would trust my life on the fact they’d fit each other perfectly….but if a child from Bremen is -for whatever reason- forced to move to Duesseldorf, it will most likely have to redo a grade because the syllabus is different…how sick is that?
2. They cut the 13th year
They looked at those countries who had surpassed us in the PISA-evaluation and finally considered the thirteenth year in school unneccessary…
I agree..from a practical point of view the knowledge gained in the final year is less than useless…it belongs to the „nice to know“ category, but not knowing these things would hurt no one…especially when we consider the fact that universities retrain all necessary skills to homogenize the students, since they -as mentioned before- all have different levels of knowledge…
So, guess what they did? They cut the 13th year and let the children be? NOOOO….of course not….they DID cut the 13th year, but kept the syllabus!
Result: Even the eleven-year-olds now have to stay in school from daybreak until late afternoon….they kept the syllabus and crammed it into the remaining 12 years…
Well…that’s how it is in other countries you might say…but wait…there’s more ingenuity involved!
Yes, other countries such as Belgium always had their kids stay for much longer than the usual six periods formerly common in Germany…but…they were PREPARED for this…because there is one more thing children need besides love, liberty and Ritalin…children need FOOD every once in a while!
So, guess what just about any school in Germany DOESN’T have? …a canteen!
Okay…cliffhanger,…stay tuned!
cd
Dude, you bent my tower – Part II
3vor 3 Jahren
alright…were was I ?
Ah, yes…they gathered politicians to save the PISA-shocked Germans…I think I mentioned how one gets into the ministry of education, didn’t I ?
So they tried to figure out what went wrong and how come the country that once produced marvellously bright people such as Albert Einstein, Wernher von Braun and Juergen Klinsmann suddenly failed so horribly.
In 2000, in our trademark field, the natural sciences even the Czech Republic was better than us. We were number seven, not from the top, but BELOW THE AVERAGE!
Regarding reading comprehension, we made 21st place…regarding the relationship between exceptionally bad and exceptionally good pupils only Mexico, Brazil, Luxemburg and the Republic of Latvia had more illiterate pupils than us and on the good side we still were two places below the average. At least, we were slightly better than France…and no, I won’t mention the results regarding mathematics…
But we also had highscores. No other country had more pupils who stated they didn’t like to read (>40%). And in no other country among the countries which participated your success is as determined by your social origin as it is in Germany…even in Poland or the Russian Federation poor children have a better chance for a good education than in -as we used to call it in German- “the country of poets and thinkers”….yes…I agree…we wrote lots of poems about how good we THOUGHT we were…
Wanna know what happened ? Stay tuned…
cd
Dude, you bent my tower!
3vor 3 Jahren
Well, here I am again to tell my anglophone readers tales of greatness about education in Germany.
Today’s installment of spoon-fed wisdom shall focus on PISA – Permanent Incompetence Sucks Ass.
First, a little lesson in architectural history. Most of you should know there is a country named Italy. In Italy you will find a place named Pisa. This is famous for its leaning tower. A marvellous piece of medieval civil engineering having become THE metaphor for making the best of a basically good thing having gone horribly wrong. To me this is the reason the Programme for International Student Assessment was given the same name…
To save the tower from collapsing (mainly because then Pisa’s economy would have done the same soon thereafter…) they gathered the world’s best civil engineers to find a solution. Read the story on Wikipedia…
Look at the infamous PISA-shock which struck Germany. The race that once tried to conquer the world (which was an Austrian’s fault by the way…Californians…we warned you…you didn’t listen…you should have considered what the one Austrian leader we ever had did to our country…it’s a miracle that the Governator hasn’t invaded Mexico yet…) was nowhere to be found among the top ranks. The papers were outraged. They published articles about how close Germany’s education system was to a complete meltdown. Oh really? I wouldn’t have noticed…
What did they to do save the day? They gathered politicians…
stay tuned!
cd
Fun Facts about Education in Germany – The basic structure
9vor 3 Jahren
Ok, to help you understand why I sometimes can’t help but yell at people for no reason, I’ll start with a brief introduction to what once was a working system…
1. The school system is part of the German government. Employees with a permanent contract usually have the status of a “Beamter“, so teachers are somewhat equal to policemen, judges etc. This is where the trouble starts. Germans are commonly known to be thorough whatever they do…Beamte like to plan thoroughly…they like laws…they like to be strict…they need you to fill in forms for just about anything…then they need to fill in forms too…you get the point…
Beamter is a lifetime-status. To lose it, you must be a child-molester or a mass-murderer. Otherwise you’re set for a decent pension once you turn 67. You cannot be fired for being an alcoholic…you cannot be fired for being a drug-addict…you cannot be fired for calling in sick for a period of two years or for calling in sick about every three days…you cannot be fired for being an incompetent retard…once you are awarded this status, you officially made it…girls, if you want to marry a German, marry a Beamter…you will have to apply for an application form for the permission to have sexual intercourse three days in advance and you will be given permission about two or three months after the day for which you wanted permission to have sexual intercourse on, but hey…you’ll be driving a BMW or a Mercedes…
Did I mention German teachers are usually Beamte, too? Yes…German teachers cannot be fired for being incompetent….
So what can one do? Those of you who work with/for/under/against your country’s government will already know the answer: You write them a report that certifies they’re brighter than Einstein and Hawking together and have them promoted out of your school…the other school does the same…and this usually goes on until they’re at the top of the ministry of education…and just guess how great the legislations are these people pass in this country…
2. There is no such thing as a preschool in Germany. Kindergarten isn’t mandatory, so children may be raised as vegetables until the age of 6 when they are deemed mature enough to be locked away in a classroom to their parents’ delight…
3. after four years in primary school their teachers will recommend what type of secondary school their parents should send them to:
-the Hauptschule (5-6 more grades, lowest grade of education, usually leads to crate-shifting in a warehouse, alcoholism and/or suicide)
-the Realschule (6 more grades, medium grade of education, usually leads to a more or less decent career in an office of some kind)
-the Gymnasium (9 more grades, highest grade of education leading to the “Abitur”, the only grade which allows access to universities)
There is one hybrid school called the “Gesamtschule”, a formerly experimental type of school which coeducates children of any capability and offers all available grades up to the Abitur…some states in Germany consider them a failure and abolished them shortly after their introduction, other states consider them a great invention…
Another special form is the “Foerderschule”, a school for the mentally incapacitated/disabled, children with physical disabilities, children with behavioural problems and educational basket cases, usually leads to having your application rejected no matter how bad the job is you apply for…
4. For those who strive for a non-academic career, Germany has a thing called the “Duales System” (=dual-system, ironically, the same term is used for households dividing their garbage into organic and non-organic and thus needing a grey and a yellow garbage can…). They become an apprentice (if they manage to find a company who offers apprenticeships…) and work for six months, then they go to a “Berufsschule” (“profession-school” = vocational school) for six months, then go back to work for six months etc…after three years they’re done…
So much for the basics, more on Wikipedia if you care…
cd
Yes, I do speak other languages…
2vor 3 Jahren
Hello and welcome to my English-speaking readers!
I made a special category for postings in the English language so from now I will occasionally write something intended for a more widespread audience…
This blog was originally intended to be about GermanAlice, the German version of the popular Alicebot. Since the mailing lists’ lingua franca is English, I decided not to exclude a large portion of the Alice-community any longer and maybe show them bits of my world besides the development of talking machines…
The blog is titled “School – Education – Educational Sciences – Psychology – Violence – The world of madness”.
Over time I will gradually explain why I chose this title.
A brief explanation for now:
I studied to be a school teacher for philosophy and the English language, worked in the university’s department of educational sciences for a while, specialised in educational psychology with focus on more severe disorders such as Borderline and similar personality disorders and juvenile violence, school shootings and the likes, did some research, published some stuff, got a deep insight into the German education system…and you know what they say…what was seen cannot be unseen…
Today, I’m a happy freelancer and I teach the English language to anyone who wants to learn it…I do freelance work for some schools and I have contracts with some firms in the area…
So don’t expect any highly scientific stuff here, I mainly use this book as a means of stress-and-anger-relief whenever Germany and the Germans drive me up the wall again…
cd
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