Homeschooling German family granted US asylum

[Terxpahseyton]

Mad and proud of it!

If you can find out and tell us what the real difference is, you can come to Oslo in December and get yourself a Nobel's Peace Price.
That would certainly help to keep the public peace in Norway.

So you have the same system with more money and the education still suck. Really weird. I can understand the public uprising.

One nice thing though, is that NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting, has made a database they call the "Powerbase". In it, they try to keep an up-to-date overview of all friends, contacts and economic allies that politicians and different important people in the country have. It's supposed to help making it easier to see who is a friend of who, and such. Works pretty nicely too.

That is really hot s****. I'd like that for Germany too.

*No offense meant by referring to Hitler btw. I just have to make some Hitler/Nazi/German-joke when the opportunity presents itself.

Nazi-Jokes for the world man

If the grades determined the school choice the system wouldn't be half as bad as it is in practice.
Actually many teachers often don't base their recommendation on the grades but on the socio-economic background.
Dieter is lazy and not all that bright but his father is a doctor -> Gymnasium
Mustafa is clever and has good grades but his father is a construcion worker and an immigrant at that -> Realschule.
The result is a lot of wasted potential and a low ability to integrate minorities into our society.

If it were true this were totally outrageous in deed. But it isn't.
Truth is that if parents push hard enough they can overcome the teachers school recommendation (or influence it beforehand) and thus can send virtually any child to Gymnasium. That Walter from the doctor's office makes more use of that than Uwe from the factory can not be blamed upon the teacher. It again comes down to how much effort the parents make.
To even suggest what you have makes my hair stood on end.

That is also the major flaw of our system. Because in theory it is not unfair at all. But when applied it makes the parental influence more important than necessary resulting in kids of the upper class who enjoy better support to more likely succeed.

 

[Riffraff]

If it were true this were totally outrageous in deed. But it isn't.

It is true, it happens every day and it is outrageous.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

It is true, it happens every day and it is outrageous.

Peter.. Hello, the father is advocate. One Gymnasium!
Hans.. Well, too bad, the father is janitor. One Realschule!

This is BS. Please read the rest of my post.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

In my high school a lot of the courses have three versions. One of them is the support, for the slower (or lazier) students. The academic version is the regular one, and advanced is for the real smart kids. I take mostly academic but I do take quite a few support ones because I'm sort of dumb.

They also have OPP, which is Occupational Preparation Program which where you learn to do a job. And they also have IB, which is International Something, but it's for the really smart students going to really fancy universities and stuff. To me, it seems they spend most of the time going to assemblies though. It seems every other day they're called down to assemblies.

If I recall my highschool had regular (did not actually have any label), accelerated, and advanced/gifted version of most classes. The "regular" was probably closer to your support version though, as the kids in accelerated classes were mostly quite average. They started phasing out gifted classes when I was a sophomore, and making more AP and then also IB classes available for those students instead.


IB is International Baccalaureate. While I was there my highscool became the second (iirc) school in Georgia (or was it just metro-Atlanta?) to offer that, with my graduating class being the first to offer IB certification.

I chose not to do it, largely because they require you take a modern
language and wouldn't let me continue with Latin. Also, they require an awfully lot of papers, and I tend to stress out over writing assignments way too much. Additionally, some thing my mom read about it made her think it might include a lot of left-wing indoctrination.


I ended up graduating 7th in my class (of 297), because there were about two dozen IB students who got an extra point added to their GPA in every class (and because I was a bit lazy and sometimes just didn't turn assignments in). IB students did not seem any smarter than those who simply took several AP classes (like me). There were a few classes where IB versions were not yet available, so the IB students took AP instead, and generally did slightly below average there. I got the impression that IB work was slightly easier than AP but that their work load was much higher.


Some of the better teachers in my school (my Calculus teacher, for example) refused to be involved in IB because it required them to leave the classroom for IB accreditation workshops far too often. My AP Computer science teacher was only present about a third of the time, mostly because he was forced to go to so many meetings. He got fed up and quit his job right over winter break.

 

[chegel]

This is BS. Please read the rest of my post.

This (german) article was about a study showing that even the forenames of children in grundschule have an influence on their grades because some names like Kevin or Jaquelin are considered to be typical working-class names. I read a lot about studies that show what a major impact the parent's social affiliation has on the educational future of the children. If I have time tomorrow I will try to find some.
And yes, it is outrageous.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Here is the stuff from the student hand-book. I copied it from the PDF file.

Spoiler :

Credit Types
Each course is categorized as one of the following credit types:
Advanced - These courses are designed to meet the needs of students who have demonstrated an exceptional degree of academic ability or achievement. All International Baccalaureate (pre-IB and IB) courses are Advanced.
Academic - These courses are designed for students who expect to enter college, university, or other post-secondary institutions.
Open - Although none of the open courses is designed to meet the specific entrance requirements of any post-secondary institution, individual courses may meet entrance requirements of some institutions.
Graduation - These courses are designed for students who wish to obtain a graduation diploma with a view to proceeding to employment or some selected area of post-secondary study.
The SUPPORT option of an academic course is designed for students who may experience difficulty in an academic class. Individual student needs may be met through variations in pace, classroom organization, homework and evaluation.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

This (german) article was about a study showing that even the forenames of children in grundschule have an influence on their grades because some names like Kevin or Jaquelin are considered to be typical working-class names. I read a lot about studies that show what a major impact the parent's social affiliation has on the educational future of the children. If I have time tomorrow I will try to find some.
And yes, it is outrageous.

God Jesus Christ. The article you posted highlights subconscious grading behavior. Very interesting and something teachers have to be made aware of.

But that Kevin is a name overwhelming more used by the worker-class is an assumption out of thin air and not supported by the article. Also we were debating if people get permission to attend Gymnasium because of their background, which remains nonsense.
How grading behavior is influenced is another matter. But still pupils don't get better notes because daddy has a high income

Additionally I'd like to quote the article you linked:

Ob Lehrer ihre Schüler aufgrund der Namen auch ungerecht behandeln, lasse sich aus ihrer Untersuchung nicht ableiten

Translation: "If teachers also unfairly treat pupils because of their names can not be determined by this study."

 

[aelf]

I suppose if a country lacks the educational grounds to compete (no offense intended, I am aware that Singapore is not third world or anything) a focus on elite-building is a wise thing to do.
But the German school-system can not even be defended as being elitist. Heck the American system which has virtually one branch is more elitist with all it's private schools. Our system is like the try to combine elite-building and fairness. But it is a poor one and countries like Norway seem to lead the way in doing it right.

But I'm not actually defending the system. Whatever I said was sarcastic. In fact, I'd say that lacking the educational standard to compete is partly due to this system. When you perpetuate social divisions that way, you become more and more reliant on a small pool of people, while the range of talents increase when there is a bigger pool of well-educated people. Think the aristocracy, for example.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm not sure what you're all talking about, because from what I know, a gymnasium is a really big room where you do exercises and stuff. Does this mean only the smart kids are allowed to do physical education?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

@Aelf
Still if it is Singapore's aim to match Western know-how, would they stand a chance when trying to involve the entire youth?

I'm not sure what you're all talking about, because from what I know, a gymnasium is a really big room where you do exercises and stuff. Does this mean only the smart kids are allowed to do physical education?

Absolutely. This way dumb kids are fat and die as early as possible.
Germany - Stimulating natural selection since WWII

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well the only thing I saw is that it was on a higher level.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

The best translation would probably be the British Grammar School. It's school for German students who want to achieve a graduation enabling them to attend university and starts right after elementary school. Well this is not entirely true but I don't want to go too much into detail.

 

[aelf]

@Aelf
Still if it is Singapore's aim to match Western know-how, would they stand a chance when trying to involve the entire youth?

It depends on what you mean by know-how. If you're talking about technical fields, I don't think we're a lot more inferior than Western countries. In fact, in some areas I can probably say that we're roughly on par.

In terms of social sciences and the humanities, though, we're definitely far behind. However, I'd say that this is in fact a consequence of the small range of talents that the system creates. I mean, if a country's only got so many people in whom it's disproportionately invested, a vast majority of these people are going to go for what they think are lucrative, leaving only a small number who would go to other fields. And the sad state of arts and culture in the country, for one, can speak for this.

This only works well as far as people and the government are able to consistently predict what fields would be best to go into. I think we had a glut of engineers and such technical people a while back. You can imagine what effect that has on their wages. I think we've definitely gone too far in trying to match or surpass Western standards in some fields while neglecting others.

 

[PiMan]

I'm not sure what you're all talking about, because from what I know, a gymnasium is a really big room where you do exercises and stuff. Does this mean only the smart kids are allowed to do physical education?

It throws me off every time I read it, but you should try to completely ignore what you know of gyms in English speaking countries. Gymnasium seems to have been really poorly translated, and the poor translation stuck with us.

EDIT: Looking further, we both have a correct but incomplete translation from Ancient Greek, where a gymnasium was for both sport and education.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

If it were true this were totally outrageous in deed. But it isn't.
Truth is that if parents push hard enough they can overcome the teachers school recommendation (or influence it beforehand) and thus can send virtually any child to Gymnasium. That Walter from the doctor's office makes more use of that than Uwe from the factory can not be blamed upon the teacher. It again comes down to how much effort the parents make.
To even suggest what you have makes my hair stood on end.

In theory everybody can go to gymnasium no matter his marks since the teacher's recomendetion is not binding, but that's probably one of the reasons the system got so broken in the first place. Imigrant parents might not know the german educational system very well nd trust the teacher and a lawyer or engineer will not accept anything other than a gymnasium recommendation. If have read several studies about this and I'll try to find some online when I have time.
As I remember there were tests where children were made anonymous and teachers didn't even know their names. They were selected purely by grades and the correlation between a high educational level of the parents and a recommendation to gymnasium was much smaller than average in Germany.
Of course the teacher will not tell a parent to his face that working class children shouldn't attend gymnasium and the teacher might not even be consciously aware of his bias but it is still there.
It's no secret that university students in Germany are mostly children of university graduates despite our relatively low and in many states still nonexistent tuition fees and it's not only because educated parents palce more emphasis on educating their children.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I'm not sure what you're all talking about, because from what I know, a gymnasium is a really big room where you do exercises and stuff. Does this mean only the smart kids are allowed to do physical education?

In Germany, Gymnasium is their word for what is roughly the equivalent of high school and the first 2 years of college in the US. But not everybody gets to go. Those who are not selected go to the equivalent of a trade school instead.

 

[mitsho]

I wouldn't blame the fact that children of academics have a higher attendance of higher education on the teachers in the Gymnasium. It is a fact though. But it has more to do with the parents helping the children out at home with homework or paying a "substitute teacher" to do it for them. A little blame can of course be put on the "academic parents" to be more convincing to the local teachers to grade them "better" than usual. In my opinion though, the difference lies really in the following example:

A Family walks through the park on Sunday, the kid being really really young. The Mother/Father points to a Tree on which a raven is sitting. The "Uneducated"/Unambitious Mother is saying "Look, there's a Bird." while the Academic/Ambitious one says "Look, there's a black bird, this one is called a raven."

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Should in fact homeschooling be allowed?

Of course! As long as the kids also get a proper education in real schools.

It's not that homeschooling isn't allowed, it's: "refusing to send their children to school" which is not allowed.

This is a dangerous authoritarian attitude which we defeated in WW2 and the Cold War and its showing its face again.

Utter rubbish.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I wouldn't blame the fact that children of academics have a higher attendance of higher education on the teachers in the Gymnasium. It is a fact though. But it has more to do with the parents helping the children out at home with homework or paying a "substitute teacher" to do it for them. A little blame can of course be put on the "academic parents" to be more convincing to the local teachers to grade them "better" than usual. In my opinion though, the difference lies really in the following example:

This explains why academics sire academics in most countries.
It doesn't explain why the correlation is stronger in Germany than in many other european countries although university education here was almost free until recently.

 

[mitsho]

Oh, I don't know, I'm not particularly familiar with the German Case ;-) But the education being "free" has not much to do with it. The effects of the "costs" of Higher Education are pretty much unimportant: The money the universities get from it are in the 1 % range, meaning insignificant in budgetary terms, the costs on the other hand keeping people away from studiying are not necesseraly the study fees but the costs of living. Nevertheless, the study fees can break it, but we are of course speaking here of a clear minority. Still, fees won't make it better if this is what you are hinting at...