America’s German Envy Misplaced

Campus Report ^ | October 3, 2007 | Heyecan Veziroglu

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America’s German Envy Misplaced

by: Heyecan Veziroglu, October 03, 2007

It might surprise some education policy analysts who look enviously at the German method of education as a model for the United States to learn that at least one Teutonic intellectual admires the American system. “The U.S. has an inspiring climate for thinking,” Ingo Rollwagen who is Senior Analyst at Macro Trends Deutsche Bank Research said at an American Institute for Contemporary German Studies Conference.

He noticed that studying abroad brings a more refined understanding of learning processes to ensure persistence of learning. Thus, in the U.S., qualifications and credentials matter more and U.S. institutions attract more students.

There are new teaching standards in the U.S. while in Germany schools have the oldest teachers, and this is a problem. In the U.S., there is a lot of investment in information technology, and a lot of gaming and simulations in learning.

When he emphasizes team work, he states that in German schools, there is no indication of team work. German Schools do not have teachers’ team teaching but the U.S. system has team work.

Life-long learning is also prevalent in American education. Germany has to progress in science education. The Americans and German people could work together on different perspectives.

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The US has the best and most technologically advanced educational system on the University/College level in the world. The issue is when it comes to public high school and pre-high school where the system is weak in particular in the public school system and it is due to accepting low standards rather than lack of funding or technology, at the contrary the funding of the public school system is much more than needed despite all the cries of liberals to waste more money on a broken system that accept mass incompetence among students and teachers.

[mad puppy]

E. D. Hirsch: “The Schools we need”.

You might not agree with 100% of what this guy has to say, but he clearly identifies and details many of the problems with K-12 public education in the US.