Retooling German Schools?

During our discussion on Thursday, Hüseyin made no effort to hide his frustration with the German education system.  After all, how can you put kids through 10 years of school and not have them speaking decent German by the time they finish?  Germans, he says, are quick to blame it on Turks themselves, arguing that Turkish families don’t do enough to support their children’s education and even discourage their children from learning German.  While no one denies that many Turkish migrants have low levels of education and might not appreciate the importance of reading at home or putting kids into kindergarten, it’s important to remember that many of them are strapped for cash and face limited options.  But suggesting that Turks don’t want their children to do well in school and excel in German is just baloney according to Hüseyin.  As he put it, who wants to see their child fail?

Hüseyin used a business metaphor to explain his perspective on the educational attainment of Turkish-background children in Germany.  Turks represent a consumer base with a distinct profile and particular needs.  But when Turkish children go to school, are they able to find educational products that correspond to their needs?  No way.  Instead, according to Hüseyin, German educators produce the same goods for all and then get upset when certain customers are dissatisfied.  He said it’s like a factory owner getting mad at customers for not liking his products.  Instead, the person should be retooling the factory to produce goods that people want and need.

I know it’s not a perfect metaphor, but it’s instructive to think in terms of what products and services could be offered to Turkish children that better reflect the way things are.  We didn’t go into too much detail on what those might be, but I suggested earlier that some creative German-as-a-second-language curricula would be a place to start.  (Update:  Such programs do exist; more on these later.)

Another possibility is to increase formal support for what Hüseyin did on his own to help Turkish children get into universities.  He lived in a section of town where his Turkish neighbors often told him to forget about going to the college-prep high school, that’s just not what Turks did.  He ignored them, and once he made it into that high school he volunteered to help tutor other kids who might have faltered without some kind of mentor.  All of those kids, he said, made it into university.  As far as I know there are mentoring and scholarship programs like this underway, but I have no idea how prevalent they are.

Let me just add that education is not my specialty and so far I’ve only encountered a limited range of opinions here in Berlin.  Each morning when I hear kids on the playground next to my apartment speaking German and Turkish I think I should visit the school and try to talk with some of the teachers to get a first-hand account.  I’d also like to hear your thoughts on this issue.  How do you think it compares with the education situation in urban America or other settings you know about?  What other issues are related and need to be included in the debate?