Talk:Education in Germany
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The section on universities seems to be almost entirely a comparison with the United States - this doesn't help for those of us who want to understand the German HE system and ...um... don't come from the US (yes, we exist, shocking I know).
Universities want moving to List of universities in Germany, which is actually a shorter list atm, which is very silly. Morwen 19:31, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Details about college taken (with curtesy) from www.stormarnschule.de ly 14:30, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Can we have a word about the new bachelor degrees - unfortuantely I have no info on hand... THANKS. Michael
____ of course there are scholarships in Germany, but they are not as frequent as in the US, as education is still free and therefore you can finance yourself by working -another reasons why it takes so long to get a degree --Yak 13:49, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)
What is the difference between Gymnasium, Fachochschule and Kollegschulen? Clear definition of Kollegschulen would be great...Thanks, Jo
- I can't tell you much about Kollegschulen, but a Gymnasium is sort-of equivalent to a high school (plus perhaps 2 years of college), while a Fachhochschule rather corresponds to a college, maybe also to college + grad school (M. Sc.) -- while "real" universities rather provide a broad theoretical background, which (afaik) does not exist in this way in the US education until you do a PhD.
- If you let me know where in the text you'd like a better explanation/differentiation between Gymnasium and Fachhochschule, I'll be glad to do it -- but being german myself, those things are so familiar that I probably don't see missing parts in the article.
- best, --Pinguin.tk 22:09, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
[edit] chosen languages
"Achievements in the subjects... the chosen language, mostly English, French or Latin"
English is no chosen language but a normal subject every student has to achieve (in all states as far as I know) -Phil-
- Unless they changed rules in that aspect since my Gymnasium time, students have to take a first foreign language in 5th grade and a second one in 7th grade. A third one is usually offered as a choice, starting in (I think) 10th grade. In most schools, there is no choice of the first language, and in most schools the first language is English. However, this was not universally so even in state schools - some Saarland schools close to the French border offered French, and I think some schools in the former GDR offered Russian as a first language. For the second language, the normal choice is between French or Latin. But again, some schools offer English (if not first foreign language), Old Greek, Russian, or Spanish. Some non-state schools have an even wider range. --Stephan Schulz 01:16, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
-
- As far as I know Saarland is the only state with French as fisrt language. I still go to school and where I come from - in Thuringia - there are some differences between the schools. The Gymnasium I used to go to taught English as first language from Year 5 on, and in Year 7 you had to choose French, Russian or Latin as second language. Now I go to another Gymnasium, which offers two languages from Year 5 on (English and French) but also one language in Year 5 (English, French or Russian) as well as from Year 7 on. In Year 9 you can take Latin, and from Year 11 on you can start with Latin, French or Russian. --slg 17:03, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- At my Gymnasium in Baden-Würtemberg we could chose between English and Latin as the first language. A friend of mine picked Greek as his second language and never had English at school. Markus Schmaus 19:24, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Template:Education infobox
I created a template, Template:Education infobox which can give a quick at a glance demographics table for education articles. See its implementation at Education in the United States and feel free to help improve the template.--naryathegreat | (talk) 01:00, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] University rankings
The ranking of german universities by the Shanghai Jiaotong University is pretty pointless. This ranking was mainly research focused (even biased towards life siences). Typically high-class research in Germany is not carried out directly in the universities, but rather in the institutes of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Most institutes cooperate with local universities on research and training but are not included into to ranking. I suggest to remove the comparison or explain the ranking in a separate article.
- I think the focus on a specific ranking usually calls for a bias, and there should be a more comprehensive overview of the German university ranking among the world.
On the other hand, several of your claim are inaccurate conceptually: (a) A research-focused ranking is not "pointless" by itself, but rather points out the lack of Humboldt forschendes lernen (learning by research), which coincidentally was uncritically claimed to be the heritage of German universities. (b) The ranking is not "life science biased", but science biased – which is not necessarily a bad indicator, since this would too be a departure from the Humboldt vision, if German univers-ities only performs well in the humanities. (c) You might have noticed the similarly poor performance of German universities in teaching-focused rankings such as by "The Times".
Somebody might correct me, but my perception is that these rankings are taken more seriously by the German higher education administrators than maybe the comment above implies. — Ylai 11:34, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Timetables
Hey, these timetables are very wrong... I don´t know any school where Astronomy is theached...
- The timetables do not come from me and I cannot easily verify them completely, but e.g. in Bavaria, there are actually astronomy classes in schools. — Ylai 11:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] general
1. I work in a German Gymnasium (as a Fremdsprachenassistentin), and a lot of the (minor) things stated in this article just don't happen here. For instance, the students go around from room to room to a teacher, not the other way around. This is minor but I think the article may be well-served to point out early that the staying-in-one room model is more traditional. 2. I have cleaned up a little bit of the spelling & grammar, but honestly to me it seems that portions of this article were translated with the help of an online translator, or the like. This makes the article very difficult to read, and of course, reduces credibility. Also, with a community like Wikipedia, I feel that it's just not necessary. 3. I put the cleanup on here - not sure if I did it right - because this article is poorly written and confusing and I feel that some of the information is outdated or incorrect. I will try to fix up what I can, but I am no authority. Mirandom 07:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
"The FH Diploma is roughly equivalent to a Bachelor degree."
That's just wrong. It may be true that some international companies are badly informed about the German Education System (maybe they read this article? ;)) But judging from time spent and courses involved the Dipl. (FH) more accurately matches the Master than the Bachelor. It lacks some courses in topics like "Interculutural Communications" but includes more courses in Higher Mathematics etc..
They implementation of the Bachelor/Master system is currently starting to gain momentum in Germany as more and more Universities and Fachhochschulen start do drop the traditional "Diplom". This process should get an own part in the article.
Considering personally experience and reports from people who had their degree beeing recognized in the US, a Magister oder a Diploma translates to a Master and not to a Bachelor in the US system. Thorben 10:55 19 August 2006
[edit] Editing Education in Germany (History)
Hi There, I am just tying to clear up some grammar issues, and attemting to make the article more readable. I have no knowledge of german education, so if someone could just make sure that everything is okay (I didn't really change any of the content but I sometimes had to guess at some meanings). If no one has any major obections I thought that I would do the rest of the article as well. Really interesting article, though! --DO11.10 23:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
- I moved the section "History" down, just to let the reader start with the as-is situation and the history later. MikeZ 13:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] POV problem, "correspondence" 13th year
The description of the German educational system has at some places a strong German POV, meaning a significantly lack of critical view and even reasoning of what is being claimed. The English Wikipedia really should not have a more problematic German POV that actually the German Wikipedia.
One POV problem is Humboldt's vision of university. Sure this is the German heritage of the university structure, but this does not mean heritage traslates into real, contemporary resemblance. Reading any set of current texts discussing German universities published in Germany (take e.g. Der Spiegel or Die Zeit), you will easily notice that nobody is claiming that the typical today's German university is that Humboldt-like.
As another POV problem, I move the following, I think really controversial sentence here:
- The german school system has an additional 13th year, which means that the first couple of years at a US college corresponds to the final years of a german school.
There are two problems:
- The 13th year is not common anymore. Many Länder have already or are going to abolish the 13th year.
- I am aware that this view of "correspondence" is shared by a lot of people in Germany, but I neither think the "correspondence" is plausible from another (e.g. the US) POV, nor is it correct.
Since the US college curriculum strongly varies in their depth, you cannot categorically compare the German 13th year to "the" US 1st year in college. For example, it is very far fetched to claim that any typical German Gymnasium would have 13th year courses comparable in depth to the freshman/sophomore humanities requirement of anyone of the Ivy League universities (maybe except languages). This is not even considering the majors.
Otherwise I would be glad if there could be some proof that the Lehrpläne of either of the Länder curriculum is on par with a US research university in the Carnegie classification (since these are the ones considered as "accredited" by the German Hochschulrektorenkonferenz). – Ylai 10:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Recognition of German exit exams in other countries?
Hi, how are the German exit exams recognized in other countries like the US? Example: The American High school diploma is seen as Mittlere Reife by the German institutions. This means you can't study with a High school diploma in Germany. Can one who has got Mittlere Reife (meaning he went to a Realschule or dropped school after tenth year of Gymnasium) take the SAT test and study in the USA?
Someone vandalized this page and wrote "OMG free college" in the article. I deleted that instance but there may be more instances that I didn't see.
- I tried to apply for UK universities with my German Abitur and that was easily possible. I think that also works in most other european countries, although individual universities might require that you have taken certain courses at school already. I don't know how it looks like if you have a lesser qualification such as Mittlere Reife, that should still be enough to apply for vocational training though. --Ewok 30 January 2007, 23:47
[edit] Grades
This articles makes many references to grade years. Are these terms actually used in the German education system? Even if they are it would be far more helpful to provide references to ages to help people from non-US countries understand how the system works. Dahliarose 15:25, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Overview - Imagesuggestion
I'd like to see an image like the following in this article: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Deutsches_Bildungssystem.png (from article de:Deutsches Bildungssystem). Maybe in a simplified version, the "Sekundarstufe II" is indeed a very complex system. Moreover is this image buggy. After a "Duale Ausbildung" you can directly move to a "Fachoberschule"; the image lacks this possibility. Additionally the "FOS 13" is sometimes called "BOS" for "Berufsoberschule" (roughly "upper vocational school"), f. e. in lower saxony. -- 91.4.77.141 00:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Schedule
It is not true that there are 5 minute breaks between the periods and I've never heard about that. Next time you should have a German write an article about Germany, not somebody else. Plus, There is no shuch thing like an enforcement of teachers smoking on school campus, neither is there one fore students
- I went to a German school for 13 years and in each of those years we had 5 minute breaks after 45 minute lessons, even for "double lessons" (90 minutes). So I don't think you got that right there. As for smoking: There are different regulations in different schools and Länder, ranging from a total ban of smoking for everyone (including teachers) to seperated smoking areas for students that are 16 and older (and sometimes for the teachers as well).--Ewok, 30 January 2007, 23:41 CET
[edit] Odd comment
,There are usually no security guards at German schools' Where on earth are there security guards in schools?! Surly most schools have a prefecting system, It seems odd to point out something like this as something that they specifically don't have! MHDIV ɪŋglɪʃnɜː(r)d(Suggestion?|wanna chat?) 12:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
- Seems like an US-biased notice to me, the US is the only country I heard of where there are security guards at schools. --Ewok 30 January 2007, 23:44 CET
[edit] Model timetables
These timetables are not very useful since school in Germany almost everywhere starts at 8.00 o' clock. Here would be times from my school: (some school do not have the 15 minute break after 6th period, but these times are much more acurate than the ones starting before 8 am... I never heard of a school starting before 8 and if it exists in Germany, than it's an exception! meta:User:louisana
| 8.00-8.45 |
| 8.50-9.35 |
| 9.55-10.40 |
| 10.45-11.30 |
| 11.50-12.35 |
| 12.40-13.25 |
| 13.40-14.25 |
| 14.30-15.15 |
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.205.4.73 (talk) 21:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC).
My gymnasium started at 7:45am every day. There definitely are differences between individual schools. TrACE666 13:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
