In German schools, pupils learn the Erörterung, a written argument with a set structure. In the dialectical form, the arguments for and against are arranged in one of two ways. In the hourglass, the essay is split into two halves. In the zipper, pro and contra arguments alternate. The arguments for one’s own thesis go from the weakest to the strongest. Each argument follows the order claim, reason, example. The essay ends with a summary and the writer’s own reasoned judgment.
education
The Fountain Pen License
In many German primary schools, children first write with a pencil. Before they may move to a fountain pen, they must show that they can handle it. Those who pass receive a Füllerführerschein, a fountain pen license. Teaching material for the exercise says the children can prove that they have practiced using the pen. The custom varies from school to school.
Writing by Ear
Lesen durch Schreiben, reading through writing, is a method for teaching children to read and write. Children write words as they hear them, and corrections come later. It goes back to the Swiss educator Jürgen Reichen. In 2018, a study by the University of Bonn found that children taught with the classic primer, the Fibel, spelled clearly better. The study set off a national argument. The head of the German Teachers’ Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, said: Kinder wurden damit zu Versuchskaninchen einer übereifrigen Reformpolitik gemacht. Children were made the guinea pigs of an overzealous reform policy. Meidinger called for a nationwide ban. Baden-Württemberg’s education minister, Susanne Eisenmann, had already banned the method in her state.
The Digital Pact for Schools
In 2019, the federal government launched the DigitalPakt Schule to equip schools with digital technology. In the end, 6.5 billion euros in federal money were available. By 30 June 2021, schools had drawn 852 million euros. The municipalities named the reasons: too few staff in the administration, applications that were too complicated, and supply problems. One percent named a lack of interest from schools. By June 2024, at the end of the program, 97 percent of the basic fund had been approved, and 3.4 billion euros had been paid out.
The Framework Training Plan
A national training regulation for a recognized occupation must contain an Ausbildungsrahmenplan, a framework training plan, which sets out what an apprentice must learn and in roughly what order. Training regulations typically require each company to write its own training plan for each apprentice on this basis. They allow the company to change the order and the timing soweit betriebspraktische Besonderheiten die Abweichung erfordern, as far as the company’s practical circumstances require it.
In Their Own Responsibility
The school law of North Rhine-Westphalia describes the teacher’s freedom and its frame in one sentence. Teachers teach, educate, advise, assess and supervise their students in eigener Verantwortung, on their own responsibility, im Rahmen, within the framework, of the educational goals, the applicable laws and regulations, the orders of the school authorities and the decisions of the school’s conferences. In Hesse, the principal may intervene in the teaching of a fully trained teacher only when a rule has been broken. After the shock of the first PISA study in 2000, the states committed to applying national educational standards from the 2004–05 school year. The standards fix what students must be able to do at the end. They are meant to give schools and teachers greater freedom in choosing and arranging the content.
The Weekly Plan
The Wochenplan, a weekly plan, is a common method in German primary schools. The teacher sets a fixed amount of compulsory and optional tasks for the week. The children decide for themselves when to do them, in what order, and whether alone or with others. The method comes from reform education. It spread through German primary schools from the late 1970s as a way to teach children to direct their own work.
Freedom Within Limits
The Bavarian State Ministry for Family, Labor and Social Affairs gives parents of preschool children a brochure called Freiheit in Grenzen, freedom within limits. The name comes from a parenting program of the same name by the Munich psychologist Klaus A. Schneewind. The brochure sets out three principles. The first is to value the child as a person in every situation. The second is Fordern und klare Grenzen setzen, to make demands and set clear limits. The third is Die Eigenständigkeit des Kindes fördern und das Kind in den gesetzten Grenzen bewusst gewähren lassen, to support the child’s independence and to deliberately let the child act freely within the limits that have been set.
From Dictionary to Rule
On 7 July 1880, Konrad Duden, the head of a Gymnasium in Hersfeld, published his complete spelling dictionary of the German language in Leipzig. In June 1901, a conference in Berlin agreed on uniform spelling rules, and in 1902 the German Bundesrat, Austria and Switzerland put them into effect. It gave written German uniform rules across the three countries. In November 1955, the education ministers of the West German states declared the Duden binding in allen orthografischen Zweifelsfällen, in all doubtful cases of spelling. A private publisher’s dictionary had become the official order of the language. It stayed that way for four decades, until the reform of 1996 broke what Germans called the Duden monopoly.
School Peace
German politics has a word for an agreement not to reopen a school system: Schulfrieden, school peace. In December 2008, the SPD, the Greens, the CDU and the FDP in Bremen agreed to take no initiatives for ten years that would substantially change the school structure they had just reformed. The Bremen SPD chair argued in March 2018: Es war und ist richtig, den Streit über Schulstrukturen zu beenden. (It was and is right to end the dispute over school structures.) In 2018, the leaders of the SPD, CDU, Greens and Left agreed to continue the agreement. The structure was not to be touched in den kommenden zehn Jahren bis 2028, in the coming ten years, until 2028. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the red-green government and the CDU opposition agreed on a school peace in 2011 that was meant to hold until 2023. In August 2026, the CDU group in Bremen, now in opposition, called for a new agreement after 2028: Nicht der Konsens ist gescheitert – der Senat ist bislang an seinem Vollzug gescheitert. (The consensus has not failed. So far, the city government has failed to carry it out.)