Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Reflections on Teaching Abroad by Friedrich Spoerl

The following is no official statement, it highlights my four years of teaching at the "Deutsche Schule Athen", one of the many German schools abroad financed by our government.

 

1. The general concept of these schools is 'meeting the host country culture'. Pupils can choose between the German and, say, Italian or Spanish secondary education exam system, with German and Portuguese children participating in the same lessons. Students can choose between universities in Santiago de Chile and Stuttgart regardless of their nationality. In all countries but one this concept enhances friendship between hosts and guests.

 

2. In Greece, however, it is frustrated, foiled, for several reasons, the crucial point being a) that pupils of Greek nationality are by law subject to the rigorous state syllabus if they want to study at a university in Greece, and b) that they are required by law to compete in a national university entrance exam after finishing secondary education.

 

3. These tenets result in two schools in one, with a German department which is attended by pupils of German or both Greek and German nationality on the one hand, and a Greek department with mostly Greek nationals on the other, the latter following the rigid Greek syllabus.

 

4. The German syllabus, both primary and secondary, relies heavily on exemplary teaching, on teaching how to study independently, and on transfer of acquired skills and knowledge. The Greek syllabus by contrast depends mostly on note learning, on memorizing hundreds of pages and solutions to mathematical problems. The stock joke: Tell a German and a Greek pupil to memorize a telephone book. The former will ask, 'What for?', the latter, "When for?"

 

5. The result of this fundamental discrepancy is that pupils of the two departments have no understanding of the others, worse, Greek pupils come to hate the German School, German teachers, Germany. This fact is brought out in bold relief: they enter a school with a good reputation (and relatively small fees!) full of enthusiasm and proud of having passed the entrance exam.

 

6. Greek officials do not appear interesting in changing this unsatisfactory and frustrating situation. German officials cannot speak unison because education is a prerogative of the individual states (Laender)

 

 

^ Top

« European Primary and Secondary School Education by Yannis Baslis | Report about Teaching and Learning at the German School in Athens (DAS): Intercultural Learning - Reflections and Proposals by Irene Vasos »