There are two outstanding facts that come to my mind thinking about the US education system. The first is you provide school to everyone, but like in the health care system, if you want quality, you leave the public responsibility and move to private schools. Even more, education beyond high school again is a matter of wealth. Tuition can be so high, that only a very small group is able to pay for those schools. Yes, there are scholarships granted, but again they depend on the good will of the rich. There is not a public guarantee to everyone meeting the university entrance requirements to be able to study according to ones ability. Private people having the money, take in the decision on whom to protegee and whom not. So you depend on the good will of the privileged.
The second thought is about what you educate. Accepting the fact that my personal knowledge of US high school a over 40 years old. I still do hear similar statements from exchange students about US high schools. So what is the basic idea on how to learn, and what to learn.
Now there is a big difference in where you are within the US, but looking at the entire country. What is taught reflects what is thought in that area. So you actually have people going along with the idea that evolution and science is not real. And this is to be taught in school. Having a president who denies the climate change and the impact human behavior has in it, you allow a wide range of opinions, no mater if they bare any truth.
The US being a place of immigrants, that fled their countries, because their ideas were not allowed in their home country, made the US to a melting pot of people with extraordinary ideas. In consequence, giving those people a new home, you have to except their specific points of view and make sure they can live the way they think is right.
On the other side, the US feels deep down in it’s soul white, so this is all true to white men philosophy, but hardly includes people and their living circumstances from other heritage. But that is a different story.
Back to education.
I found school in the USA being about learning facts, accumulating knowledge rather than building a personality and learning critical thinking. In Germany school is a lot about questioning the given Ideas and verifying statements. You will have to look at a subject from many different angles and point of views, especially in social and political ways. Something that I found very little practiced in the US high school. It’s not, that this approach is not possible in the US, but it is rare and not politically wanted. You are not supposed to question your system in the US, while that is something students in Germany do daily. Maybe because German students are surrounded by so many different political systems.
There is the USA with it’s capitalism and USA first mentality, on the other side our next door neighbor is Russia with a complete opposite political Idea. Than China is not out of the world. On the other side you have Europe, a political system just at the beginning to establish it self. So to Germans, it simply isn’t just going the way we have always gone, but looking around for the best parts of different possible systems. It’s about seeing advantages and disadvantages and deciding which way to go.
Even though we do not always meet our expectations, to Germans education has to be free to everyone, up to any level. It should not be a mater of income, what academical level one can reach but a mater of brain. And this is something the government has to provide. Not relying on private wealth or corporation money. These subjects are of public interest and there for must be public financed.
Again we see that the government is expected to rule and run things of public concern. It is not left to private initiative. This is a more socialistic approach, to have the government responsible for daily maters of public interest. To Germans it is the duty of the state to run maters, and not only to govern but also to act on behave the people.
To be continued…
and on we go
The fascinating thing about the US, that what ever I state here, you can easily find the exact opposite within the US, just because the country is so big and divers that you will always find people with opposite attitudes. So yes I do realize, that what ever I’m talking about, it is not solemnly true, but just a basic approach.
Anyway some thing that has always fascinated me and still seems to thrill exchange students, is the unbelievable ignorance, the gigantic lack of knowledge about other countries throughout a large part of the people. I am not talking about, not being able to pin down a country like Mali on the map. But people asking if Hitler is still alive in the 70’s, if Germans have own cars and so on. So, you are asked things, that show how little people know, care and think about other countries. Often it seems the rest of the world does not even exist. All these people know is their geographical surrounding.
I would put this aside as, well there are always people being utterly uneducated, but since I experienced this in the 70’s and still hear those stories from many exchange students, to me it seems a bigger problem. The lack of knowledge about the rest of the world.
To me, that is a very dangerous situation. If the people of one of the most powerful countries in the world, are in large numbers uneducated and not able to understand the complexity of life in the 21th century. How can these people make dissension that have great impact on the rest of the world, like voting a president that is able to destroy the world on his own account.
As I stated before, the US being a huge country with very few borders, to many people foreign countries are like far away planets and have no part in their daily lifes. But should it than not be of a major interest of the government to ensure that it’s people know what is happening in the world outside the US, to be able to live up to the self given position, of being the ruler of the world. This is basically true for all governments I can remember in the US.
Only right now it seems, that not only do many people within the country have no knowledge, but also the president of the US is ether unable or unwilling to understand the way this world is functioning.
The idea of America first, and so many people actually believing this is the only way to run the world, is a threatening sign to the rest of the world. Besides it has always been the mechanism week leaders have tried to gain power, by separation and declaring an enemy outside the own country. It shows how little the complexity of the world in the 21th century is understood or cared for, which would be even worst, meaning to willingly harm the world for private interests.
On the other side you have Germany, with it’s thrive to create a European union, and the dream of Europe being one large political and economical one. With so many countries around, that all have the same problems, it does make sense to unit and strengthen their position within the world. European countries have experienced, what it means to be be kept hostage between the two powers USA and Russia. Nether political or social system is suiting Europe. So international relations is a major subject to Germans and Europeans, it’s there daily life. This and of course Germans do travel around the world and plenty within Europe in large numbers, so we all have learned and experienced different cultures.
Coming back to where we started, what is the difference between USA and Germany, with a focus on handling the covid 19 pandemic.
To be continued…..