Tales from Germany

Invigilating my students while they wrote their Business English Exam last Friday, I realised how complacent I have become in Germany. Instead of like a few years earlier standing like a hawk over them, I was sitting at my desk marking. Now in my own defence I should add I was pretty weak and sick on this day. However German students and pupils are absolutely notorious for cribbing from each other and yet I was not going to even try and find out if they did. Unlike Anglo-Saxon countries where one can be expelled from an institution for cheating during an exam, it is by no means seen as an a remotely serious crime in this country. No much worse, most Germans (including my own children) can relate some pretty hair-raising stories of either copying from others during exams or being put under such social pressure to put your exam paper in such a way that others can copy from you. Even my brainy husband did not escape this pressure of others copying from him at his elite Bavarian Gy...

Seldom before in my life have I experienced how from the depths of despair, life can suddenly turn around into pure joy and pleasure and fresh experiences completely wiping away all bad memories that have gone before. The mayor of Florange and our daughter (in white) laying a wreath in France on Remembrance Day 2009 A n ordinary November week started with A., the French exchange pupil we hosted in September , writing to our daughter, saying she would refuse to have anything to do with our daughter Rose once she came to France. It was only days before Rose had to go and stay with this family. The visit was part of a regional Schumann exchange organised by the Education Departments in the four bordering countries and is meant to foster inter-regional understanding. We were aghast by the turn of events . Even more hurtful was watching the toll it took on our daughter. Both we and her French teacher kept on telling her, not all French are like that. So while all her close friends were p...

We are living in the land of Goethe and Schiller and more recently Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass – both worthy Nobel Laureates in Literature. But there is no official body saying that a child should have been introduced to certain authors by a certain stage. Recently an Irish mother told me how her daughter's German class full of 17-year olds, was asked who Goethe was and 75% of them have never heard of him. I am not even shocked anymore by the ignorance of pupils who selected German as their main subject. After ten years at school, my daughter had read one poem by Goethe and one play by Schiller. Pandering to the needs of the youth, some teachers try to read modern German texts that in many cases disappear again after a few years. A nation of ignoramuses is waiting to be let loose on the world. When I was getting worked up about the ignorance about Goethe – my daughter was in the tenth grade and sixty percent of young people never get beyond that grade, my husband admitted that h...