kiwi on Nostr: I work in the educational system in Germany but with older kids like 16+ and I’m ...

I work in the educational system in Germany but with older kids like 16+ and I’m always shocked how dependent they are. They are like 19years old and ask me where to write down their task and if it’s okay to use squared paper instead of lined paper. And I’m always like “wtf, I don’t care, don’t even think about that irrelevant stuff”. It’s so sad to see that they just learn random things because teachers tell them to and they need to pass the exams. Actually, the curriculum sounds pretty good in Germany - in theory. Put practically, it’s a desaster. I teach languages and even though most of my classes have a centralized final exam to get their “school leaving qualification”which means I need to prepare them for this exam (so following a specific pattern for their text analysis for example) I always try my best to teach them content-related stuff they’ll need, e.g. our monetary system, current political decisions, critical thinking when looking at charts or reading newspaper articles even though this isn’t given specifically in the curriculum. But as I mentioned, the curriculum sounds great but everything in there is so vaguely phrased that you can basically do anything with them. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers stick to the topics that are given in the school books which is the common propaganda stuff you come across everywhere. I’ve never used text books because most of them are just rubbish.