Tales from Germany

It has been a week where I was once again confronted with cultural differences in interpreting core social values. A popular, key Minister in the Cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel is caught out: a great chunk of his summa cum laude doctorate of Law was plagiarised. A scandal! Der Spiegel this week on the plagiarism scandal surrounding Germany's Minister of Defence But what shocked me most is not the fact that his doctorate was plagiarised. What shocked me was how the general German public viewed his plagiarism and how they urged him to stay on as a Minister. Worse still how his popularity rose with each passing day of this scandal week. Der Spiegel article A Facebook page was set up in support of him and it is growing rapidly day by day; the mass circulation red top newspaper Bild seems to support him. And a political survey shows that nearly 75% of the population thinks he is doing a great job, compared to 68% at the beginning of the month, before the scandal b...

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...