Reconciling our 3c’s with the German education system

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The summer holidays have nearly started. With it comes the inevitable talk about schooling. The education system in Germany is completely different from that in the U.S. and the U.K. so it is not easy to draw comparisons. I am making my way through understanding it one step at a time.

At this stage, we are considering the pre-school and U.S. elementary equivalents. There are two big themes that always form part of the discussion – at what age do you start the children in elementary and what concept of pre-school and elementary are you seeking?

Elementar kindergarten  in Germany is for children ages 3 and 4. At age 5 children go to vorschule.  Then only at age 6 do the children start school, which would be 1st grade in the U.S.  However, the interesting difference is that children whose birthdays fall between June and December can opt to start school one year later, at age 7. The idea being that children may need more time to be more socially mature to start school. Staying in the vorschule one year longer allows them to be the older ones in the class and develop their emotional maturity.

I like this approach better than the British or American system that has more strict cut off date of say 15 September. This allows parents to make the decision based on the development and support needs of the child. After discussing this with many parents with older children as well as his teachers, we have decided that our son will stay longer in vorschule. We believe it will help build his confidence to be the oldest child in the class and give him more time to improve his language skills. He gets extra speech and language help in vorschule that he would not get in the 1st class in schule.

The second topic is always about the concept of schooling. In Germany there is no nation-wide standard curriculum, rather the education systems varies on the state-level. Additionally, there are different concepts for schools, from those that focus more on the arts, maths and sciences, or preparation for high schools that are better feeders to university. Concepts can include anything from the ‘open concept’ at Kinderwelt (where my daughter is in pre-school) which focuses on confidence building through learning, to Motessori and Waldorf schools.

Through our discussions with German parents, I have come to realize that culture plays a significant role in the attitude towards education. For example, some people favor more structured and disciplined aiming to bring children to certain levels of testable learning. In this way they can compare their child’s performance with that of their peers. This is similar to the UK approach. Others take a more holistic approach focused more on individual learning, which at the extreme falls more in line with home schooling. Still others prefer more creative, lateral learning which gives a fairly deep schooling in many subjects. This is where I would say the Germans are in their view on primary and secondary education.

This has all been new for me. I never thought so much about it. I asked my mother if she had ever thought so much about. Her response was simple, she and my father wanted us to develop an interest in learning and apply ourselves to topics and excel. The goal was for us as children was to find a stable career and live a fulfilling life.

Talking to my mother helped me to think about what we want for our children. I felt I needed to have some sort of guide or barometer to making appropriate decisions for our children’s education. After some thought, I can now simplify our ambitions for our children down to 3c’s: confidence, curiosity, and consideration.  We want them to develop confidence in their skills, abilities and in making decisions. We want them to build a lifelong curiosity about the world and learning so that they stay engaged. And, we want them to be considerate – of family and friends, of their things, other their society and of their environment.

As we go through the maze of education both here and where ever else we may end up along the way, I hope we can give this as a consistent basis for our children. Currently in Hamburg, there is a much debate on changing the system with the first referendum vote failing to pass last year. Who knows what we face even just staying put.

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