Shitshow

More about schools in Germany. Right now I am blown away. We have been visiting several comprehensive schools for Girl9 and the local school does not have chalkboards anymore. They have interactive whiteboards. Have you seen those before? I haven’t. If you are old like me think about the computer scene in minority report. Here is an educational video about those things. I am probably even more blown away by the fact that this is not advertised at the school at all. It is so normal for them they don’t think about that as something special (I assume, right?).

At first I talked to some 7 grade girl who casually showed me what those things can do while my jaw was slowly hitting the floor. “Oh yeah, we all have those, here is the USB port, we have a document camera for school words here we can do this and that”. When I got a hold of the principal he casually showed those as well. He was like, oh yeah we have them in every class and showed me how that board could transfer written lines to regular text and change color and what not.

I mean that was my old school. Back in the day we had a TV on a dolly and every once in a while we had some media at school. Nowadays internet integration and interactive whiteboards is a realiy for every class. Mind blown. This might be because the principal is also the IT-Teacher. I mean the other school we looked at was 100% chalk based. So there is that.

What I also found fascinating was that the school offers bilingual classes. In essence these classes would be doing all subjects in English and German. As Girl9 is good at English maybe this is something for us. She is not generally super good at school because she has a lot of trouble with concentration but yeah, that still seems interesting. If she is really motivated she can learn French and Spanish as well. To be able to get Abitur, to be eligible to study you need to learn at least 2 foreign languages here.

In grade 5 all kids have to take a technical class (woodworking and stuff) as well as cooking classes which I think is really interesting in at least getting them to try out different stuff and develop their own tastes. They also do not have homework. Homework is typically done at school during certain timeslots so the only things you would do at home is stuff you did not finish for being lazy / slow.

The local school also suprised me by being absolutely barrier free. There were elevators everywhere as well as automatic door openers and even a height adjustable hotplate for cooking classes. Kids at those schools have 3 days where they stay till 4 pm. They also have acces to a cantina and the food looked pretty good.

From the 2 schools we saw we will very likely choose the local one. They have the interactive whiteboards, no swimming lessons (Girl9 is sorta hydrophobic, but working on it, next swimming lessons this month) and we save 1000 Euros on buss tickets per year. She can also simply bike to school and is earlier at home as well.

Personally I managed to burn myself durng a science experiment, I pissed off some mother by making fun of Waldorfschulen (”now we can finally learn to dance our names” which is really a thing, a thing pissed off mum defended...) and I marveled at young teachers running around in short skirts in winter (god bless).

We are currently in the process of finding a school for Girl9 and we will have to get Boy5 into school as well next year so I think it might make sense to write down a summary. I did not research anything this is just the stuff I know so “grain of salt” applies here:

Germany as compared to say Sweden is still a country with a whole lot of Stay-at-home parents (mostly mums to noones surprise). However things have been changing. In a relative recent ruling everybody on here has a garanted kindergarten slot. This applies to kids as young as 1 year old and I think they have to garantee to take care of them even after noon. As we started kindergarten with 3 and the wife is a SAHM I am not 100% sure about that.

I think compared to kindergartens in other countries it is dirt cheap. The costs you have to pay are coupled with the salary you make and I think we payed at around 100-200€ a month and the last year is free. At age 6 kids start with primary school here. Primary school is free and mandatory. Homeschooling is illegal. So in really bad cases it can happen that police are taking kids to school.

After 4 years of primary school there is a prognosis for the following school. This is where Girl9 is right now. Generally speaking there are 3 tiers of school after Primary school. From best to worse it is Gymnasium, Realschule and Hauptschule. There is also a system were all 3 tiers are done via a course system in one school called Gesamtschule.

After visiting the loca Gesamtschule we got some interesting numbers. Apparently at that school 48% do better than their prognosis, 46% do as expected and 6% do worse (mosty because of external circumstances). Years 5-6 are seen as orientation years, meaning that after year 6 teachers can suggest you enter the nixt higher / lower tier of schools.

The most you can get out of these is Abitur or Fachhochschulreife which simply means you are allowed to study. Gymnasium is the most direkt here. After 13 years you are done and well, you can study if you want  to. Interestingly the other tiers all offer a way to be able to study as well.

For Realschule the most you can get out of that is “Fachoberschulreife mit Q-Vermerk”. This one takes 10 years and simply means you are allowed to take the final 3 years at a Gymnasium. You need to have good grades for that. If you don’t you can use your “Fachoberschulreife” to join a secondary school, which is exactly the route I took. I went to a Berufskolleg (job-college) and attended Höhere Handelsschule (higher trade school) coupled with an apprenticeship in a trades related job you are able to study trade related stuff.

In my case I did 2 years of trade school and 3 years of an apprenticeship of an Informatikkaufmann (IT-Salesman, not what it sounds, you learn trade stuff and IT stuff, not a salesman for IT stuff). The company did hire me for one or two years and when I was out of a job I started to study Computer Science. As I got a good job offer at my second week of university and I at the time was about to marry and start a family chose a job over studying. I don’t really regret that.

The worst tier school, Hauptschule can still offer you a chance to study. Because, if you are doing well you can get the 2nd tier (the Realschul qualifications) with good grades. So you could still go to higher trade school. If you do not have the grades, you can go to regular trade school and after one or two years you are eligible to join higher trade school. So yeah, no matter what you chose in grade 5 at the end if you do well, you can still study. You are not really required to study to get most jobs though, Obviously you won’t be a lawyer but a craftsmen does not really need higher education.

Some words about costs, school is free and the bus ticket is free as well for the closest school that is available. We looked at a school in a different city for my daugher and the bus fees for one year would be around 1000€ for a school that is about 20km away. University over here is free however there are tuition fees that are about 600€ a year here. If you are not able to pay for those I think you can apply for a credit called BaFög. However you are only eligible for that credit if your parents earn less than a certain amount.

We are currently looking at getting Girl9 into a Gesamtschule which can maybe translated as comprehensive school. These include all 3 school forms. The way it works is that there are regular courses and advanced courses. With the right amount of advanced courses and grades you can achieve the desired degree. After year 10 for the ones with good grades they have 3 years of Gymnasium to reach the tier one degree Abitur.

The Joys of having kids.

Translation:

Can we still squeeze Girl9 into the baby hatch?

So my daughter decided to have her birthday party in a medieval castle. This was more museum than castle and what the kids were doing felt more like school than something I would have liked as a kid but folks did really like this. Museum was also great. I love that painting at the end. It symbolizes dead aiming at you with a crossbow. The arrows are labeled, there is one on the ground that says yesterday, one in his quiver that says tomorrow and the one in the crossbow of course says today. Watch out people!

Before and after.....my trip through Europe is coming along nicely. Also hit the 96 kilos. I have been falling from the bandwagon again but been doing more recently so that is a good thing.

A local festival. Highlight for the food enthusiasts was the “Street Food Festival” which was named that way in German, too. So yeah despite all of the interesting things happening I want to talk about fries.

Not sure you know, but when it comes to fries I am a little bit of a snob. I mean, in theory fries are not hard to make but I feel like many people who prepare fries do a whole lot wrong. Obviously personal tastes are different but my personal nightmare are the average McDonald’s pommes. Often limb instead of crunchy, luke warm and with those pre-packed shitty sauce it is just bad.