[wonders]

Thank you both.

The Pisa study indicates the early separation of students into homogeneous groups as a prime cause for the failures in the German educational system. I went to Swiss high school (started in Bezirchschule) way-back-when, and the Swiss had a similar system. It was decided by the time a student reached our equivalent of 5th grade whether that student would go on to Bezirchschule, then on to a prep school type high school and finally to college, or whether the student would have less academic preparation similar to high school, or even just go to trade school. In Switzerland, back then, it was basically divided into three tracks: (1)the college-bound who would end up as professionals, (2) those who would go on to a less academic sort of high school and become white-collar office workers and (3) those who would go to trade school and work mainly in the service sector.

I wondered whether reunification had had a negative impact on the German education system. You indicate the problems in higher education pre-dated reunification, Torie -- is this true of the low quality of their secondary education system, or do you think this could stem from incorporating old East Germany into their system?

One of my bosses was a wise and learned man from Hamburg, and his wife came from fine old German family which escaped East Germany. She did much charitable work in her family's old home town after reunification (founded medical clinics for the poor, etc.), but ran into some very difficult and communist attitudes there. I learned much from both of them about the economic aspects of re-unification, too.

Anyway, I wondered whether reunification caused them to "dumb down" their schools to accomodate students from the former East Germany, thereby dragging down standards in all secondary schools across the board.

[Torie]

I don't know what caused it. Someone here at FR from Germany said it was because the German schools abandoned standards and went into PC self esteem feel goodie stuff under pressure from well, you know what, the educational unions. I suspect the malaise is deeper than that. I suspect the German culture no longer puts excellence as a primary value. But I don't know. What is really odd is that the Germans themselves are not in a state of panic over this. They should be. If their youth are not productive, and highly productive, given German demographics, the elders will be eating dog food in the not so distant future. For some reason the German culture is not very apt at introspection. I don't know why. It is foreign to the very fiber of my being.