5 Ways How The German Educational System Sucks

[teyla]

1) Time
It takes forever. I'm 21 years old and I wasn't held back. I reached the highest school qualification possible in this country at just-about nineteen, after thirteen years of school. After that, I spent one year not doing anything educational, which was of my own choosing. However, considering that I always was one of the youngest people in my class, and considering that every German guy has to do either nine months of military service or nine months of some sort of community service after school, I'm still very much in the average age group of German uni-newbies. I started uni at 20, and have now finished my second semester. I still have eleven semesters to go, and that's only if I manage to pass every big exam on my first try. Which means I will get out of uni at 27 at the earliest. I will not yet be a specialized doctor then.
Seeing tli, who lives in the UK and is a couple of months younger than I am, picking an uni for her Master courses and looking forward to getting out of uni at 22, 23 years makes me green with envy.

2) Screwy Qualifications
In Germany, you go to elementary school for 4 years. You're 10 when you finish it. After that, depending on your grades you get to pick either Hauptschule, Realschule or Gymnasium. Hauptschule will be another 5 years and will get you no job afterwards. Realschule will be another six years, and the chances of getting a good job afterwards are almost equally slim. Gymnasium, at least when I started it, goes on for another 9 years and will give you the highest qualification Germany has to offer. Best you can get is a 1.0 average, the worst is 4.0. This qualification is only worth something if your average is better than, let's say, 3.0. If you can't manage better than that, you would have been better off choosing Realschule, because you get out quicker and the job chances are equal.
Meaning that in Germany, you're either really good, or you've lost.

3) Lack of Specialization
Everybody has the same subjects in the first 4 years of school. Then, if your grades are good enough for you to go to Gymnasium, you can pick your kind of Gymnasium: there are some that specialize in science, some in language, social studies, music, art etc etc. You're ten when you get to choose. Who the hell knows where their talents lie at ten?? So you usually choose the school on factors like location, reputation, and whether your siblings and parents went there or not. Me, I chose a language Gymnasium, which, as I came to realize a few years later, was a big mistake, since I suck at languages and am good at sciences.
Anyway, then, when you're at Gymnasium, you take the same subjects as everyone else until grade nine. You do maths, physics, languages, German, geography, biology, all that stuff. In grade nine, you get to choose between 2 new subjects - with the language school I was at, it was either French or ancient Greek. Other schools offered French or chemisty, or French and Latin, etc etc. Now, everybody's got the same subjects save one.
This goes on for another two years, until you finish the 11th grade. Now, finally, you get to choose two major subjects. But not anything fancy like Drama or Photography or anything like that. You can choose French, English, Biology, Maths, Physics, German, Latin, Chemistry - essentially any of the basics. If you're very, very lucky, then there are enough people in your year interested in music or art so that an art or music major course is formed. There are also a lot of compulsory subjects in the last two years that you have to take at least as a standard class - History, RE, PE, Maths, German, at least one foreign language, at least one social studies subject etc.
You get through the two last years and then take your finals in your two major subjects and in two other subjects that you get to choose yourself according to certain parameters that usually don't really leave you much of a choice. And then you're done, and you have no idea how to specialize, because you never got the chance to really find out where your talents lie.

4) Lack of challenge
Due to the fact that there is no differentiation of less talented/more talented students after grade 4, Gymnasium is faced with the impossible task of getting the less talented students through those nine years and not boring the more talented ones to death in the meantime. Meaning that if you're even half-way smart, a bit creative and a little inventive, you can get through Gymnasium without ever really doing anything. Which is not a good preparation for uni, because school is as much about learning how to study as it is about studying itself.

5) Attitude
Students in Germany hate school. School is not something anyone takes seriously. The least effort you invest in it, the better. Anybody who takes school seriously and tries to participate in class and tries to actually learn stuff in school is considered a loser. Of course it's juvenile, but when you're fifteen, you prefer being juvenile to being a loser. I was always baffled when I came to countries like the States or Canada where people actually seemed to be enjoying school and were honest about that. Because in Germany, that is so not on.
Teachers in Germany hate school, too. If you're working with a bunch of completely indifferent teenagers, you're bound to lose your enthusiasm pretty quickly. Young teachers are full of enthusiasm but inexperienced, and older teachers simply don't give a fuck. The teacher I had in my English major class during the last two years opened the course with the words, 'I'm retiring after these two years. I don't plan to put any effort into this course, so don't even try to give me shit about it. I won't listen.'

How the hell is anyone supposed to learn anything in a system like that???