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  3. German’s Education System [A]Germany invented the modern university but long ago lost its leading position to other countries, e

German’s Education System [A]Germany invented the modern university but long ago lost its leading position to other countries, e

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问题                         German’s Education System
[A]Germany invented the modern university but long ago lost its leading position to other countries, especially America. These days the land of poets and thinkers is prouder of its " dual system" for training skilled workers such as bakers and electricians. Teenagers not bound for university apply for places in three-year programmes combining classroom learning with practical experience within companies. The direct benefit is superior German quality in haircuts as well as cars. Dual training "is the reason we’re the world export champion" , says Mrs Schavan, the education minister. Azubis(trainees)acquire not just a professional qualification but an identity.
[B]But the dual system is under pressure. The number of places offered by companies has long been falling short of the number of applicants. Almost as many youngsters move into a " transitional system" , a grab-bag of remedial education programs designed to prepare them for the dual system or another qualification. Often it turns out to be a dead end, especially for male immigrants. And given that Germany produces far fewer university graduates than many comparable countries, some wonder whether the dual system is producing the right qualifications for the knowledge-based professions of the future.
[C]The system is governed by a consortium(协会)representing almost everyone who counts: the federal and state governments, the chambers of commerce and the unions. It regulates access to 350 narrowly defined trades. You can train to become a goldsmith, or if you want to manage a McDonald’s you learn Systemgastronomie. Baking bread and pastries(糕点)are separate disciplines. Schools outside the system may not train Azubis for a reserved trade.
[D]It makes sense to combine theory and practice, says Heike Solga of the Social Science Research Centre in Berlin, but the dual system is rigid and discriminatory. And because the trades are so specialized, getting a job at the end can be hard. In 2005 more than a third of graduates were unemployed a year after completing their course.
Once a scholar, always a scholar
[E]The type of secondary school a German attends, the degree he obtains and the exams he passes classify him for life. The differentiations are made earlier and more rigidly than in other countries. Many children are typecast(定型)at age ten, which is when most German states decide which of three kinds of secondary school he or she will attend. Traditionally the Hauptschulen, the lowest tier, were the main suppliers of recruits to the dual training system, but they gradually became dumping grounds for children who could not keep up. Upon leaving(sometimes without passing the final exam), nearly 40% of these students find themselves in the precarious transitional system. The dual system now draws its intake mainly from the middle-grade Realschulen, the traditional training ground for white-collar workers, and even Gymnasien(grammar schools), the main route to university.
[F]The state bureaucracy acknowledges four career paths: the simple, middle, elevated and higher services. Bureaucrats in one category can rarely be ambitious to careers. Teachers in Gymnasien enjoy a higher status than those at other schools, and have their own trade union, the grandly named Philologenverband. A Meisterbrief, the highest vocational credential(证书), is not just a badge of competence but in some trades a keep-off sign to competitors.
[G]Germans are now asking themselves whether this way of doing things is fair, and whether it is working. Although income is distributed relatively equally, opportunity is not. " Germany is one of the most rigid among the relatively advanced societies," says Karl Ulrich Mayer, a sociologist at Yale University. But social exclusiveness has not produced excellence. The 2001 " PISA shock"—a set of OECD figures which revealed that German 15-year-olds scored in the bottom third among schoolchildren from 32 countries in tests of reading and maths—has not worn off. Overall, Germany’s performance remains mediocre. More than a fifth of 15-year-olds cannot read or calculate properly; 8% of teenagers drop out of school.
A war of ideologies
[H]There is " no consensus on the content and goals of education" , says Mrs Schavan. The arguments extend from primary schools to universities and are as much about tradition and status as about learning. Many Germans are to scrap a system so closely identified with the country’s economic and cultural success.
[I]A controversy now raging in Hamburg, a port city and one of Germany’s smallest states, illustrates the strife. In 2008 the Christian Democrats, normally champions of the three-tier high-school system, formed their first state-level coalition with the left-leaning Green Party. The Greens won agreement for a radical school reform, mainly by extending primary schooling(and thus shortening secondary schooling)by two years. The idea was that if streaming children by ability is done later, the slower ones will have a better chance of doing well and the brighter ones will at least fare no worse.
[J]Middle-class parents of Gymnasium-bound children rebelled. The " Gucci protesters" collected more than enough signatures to get the reform put to a referendum. The parents fear that their children will be dragged down by academic laggards in the name of social justice, although such evidence as is available points in the opposite direction.
[K]Almost any education reform offends somebody. In a move to strengthen federalism in 2006, the federal government was banned from investing in areas reserved for the 16 states(including education), which makes serious reform even harder. Progress is halting but the direction is fairly clear; the system is being streamlined, schools are being made more accountable and the hierarchy is becoming less rigid. As with so many things in Gexmany, change proceeds by skills of hand.
[L]The 2001 PISA results, which not only compared Germany with other countries but individual German states with each other, put state education ministers under pressure. Both states and the federal government are sharpening their instruments for measuring schools’ performance. Starting in 2005, the states for the first time submitted to binding quality standards for secondary schools.
[M]The universities are embroiled in a row of their own. They have given up the revered Diplom to comply with Europe’s Bologna process, which mandates(mostly shorter)bachelor’s and master’s degrees. This is meant to make German system compatible with others in Europe(and encourage students to move around), and to award more useful degrees. Hard-core traditionalists oppose the reform in principle, but the main objections are its sometimes sloppy implementation and the scant resources available to universities in general.
The aim of the universities reform in Germany is not only to award useful degrees, but make German system compatible with European ones.
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