This part is mostly traced to the last question about what is successful in the education system, and some teachers, including 4 teachers from Realschule, 5 from Hauptschule and 2 Chinese teachers in rural junior high school, said in the interview that they didn’t know what’s successful in the education system, or right now it’s hard to say something is successful, then they only told what is not successful. Maybe it could mean that teachers in the Realschule and Hauptschule have more concern on something not successful in the system, or they are more unsatisfied with the current situation, and Chinese teachers in rural areas seemingly have more to complain. Some research confirms that teachers who consistently teach the students with difficulties or low abilities in learning can become more disappointed, frustrated or demoralized, which especially can be seen from teachers in the Hauptschule (Hallam & Ireson, 2003).
At first I did interview with German teachers, after half of German teachers only talked about “not successful”, later during the interview in China, I had to add the question about what is not successful in the education system, for it is an interesting topic to see the systems in different ways and is also helpful to further think about the possibility of educational reforms. Here I don’t want to label with the word ‘failure’ to discuss the unsuccessful points that teachers mentioned, I prefer the word ‘disadvantage’, which looks not so sharp or unpleasant, to describe those not very successful or satisfying aspects in teachers’ eyes.
The disadvantages of two education systems in teachers’ opinions:
coding GG GR GH CH CC CR
Problems of education system 1 4 1 1 2
Not enough teachers 2 3 2
Hauptschule 3 1 2
Knowledge-centered education 2 2 2
Big classes 3 1 1
Student evaluation 1 4
Teacher evaluation 2 2
Teaching materials 2 2
Not enough rooms 1 2
Not enough money 1 2
Teacher training 1 1 1
8-year Gymnasium 2
Social background matters 1 1
Parents’ decision on schools 1 1
Comprehensive school 1 1
The Gaokao 2
Early school selection 1
Student mobility 1
School reform 1
Special school 1
1) Problems of education system
It is rare for teachers from two countries to have common opinions on something, but compared with other coding, a quite high number of teachers think the education system itself has problems. As to some German teachers, they think the education system is still the old system like 100 years ago, the society is changing, but the education system has not changed, at school it’s still the same didactic teaching that teachers stand in front of the classroom, and children just sit to listen to teachers and do what teachers want, no one is interested to know what children want, or ask them what’s going on in their minds, so school is very boring for children who don’t want to go to school.
Even though it’s more than 20 or 30 years ago, Phillips (1987, 1992) did stress at that moment that German teachers “stuck to the old-fashioned teacher-dominated approach to the classroom” (Phillips, 1995, p. 256), and “still in general teach their lessons in a markedly formal style: the emphasis is on didactic teaching, and children are expected to learn the lesson and will be asked to demonstrate, orally, that they have done so” (Phillips, 1995, p.66). It is also discussed that German education system, “as it developed, was unable to produce genuine socialization, allowed for little social transparency and neglected the establishment of democratic structures,” in particular, the Abitur has largely reinforced the role of didactic teaching among German teachers especially in the Gymnasium (Hahn, 1998, p.18).
The teacher GRK4M from a Realschule mentioned in the interview that German teachers were trained to just follow the rules of good lessons and follow the system, and if they can follow, then they are good teachers, but they are not the teachers with open minds to help students become satisfied in their life, for they teach just because of the political thing, they get 30 children at the front and they have to give everyone a mark as an answer to find a job later, there’s nothing else.
Rust & Rust (1995) have some similar opinions, saying that German teachers “are in the occupation largely because it pays so well, rather than intrinsic means of self-expression or because they feel a duty to give society something” (p.91), and they
“show surprisingly little concern for the pedagogical aspects of teaching, rather they feel obliged to satisfy contractual agreements and do not worry about dealing with unique problems, satisfying individual needs, helping all children to succeed” (p.92) and so on.
The German teachers think a lot of things are difficult in the system at this moment, which don’t help to make progress in the school education. A teacher GGB5F from a Gymnasium also doubts the system of three-track schools, she doesn’t think it is good for the system to sort children out at the age of 10, and the students at the Hauptschule don’t have a chance to get a well-paid job or have a success after school. PISA 2000 and 2003 prove that German school system is not so successful as many people think, for the system fails to create equal opportunity for all children, and those “children from disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly vulnerable of being left behind by the education system” (Jürges & Schneider, 2007).
Hanushek & Wößmann (2006) have found that the tracking after primary school is more likely to increase ‘educational inequality’ in German society and reduce
‘aggregate performance’ of children (Jürges & Schneider, 2007). The opponents of tracking have also argued that “it might not only create inequalities in opportunity and a bias against disadvantaged students but that it might also be inefficient in the sense that creating a learning environment for weaker children with peers of similar ability will harm them more than increasing the learning speed will improve the achievement of the more gifted children” (Jürges & Schneider, 2007).
Another problem from the perspective of German teachers is the system doesn’t give the time to wait for the slow students, or enough support to students who need help in study especially in learning language, which is also confirmed by Frankenberg et al. (2013), who have concluded in their research that the ‘large-scale educational studies’ show the German education system doesn’t provide the necessary supports for children especially with immigration background to help them succeed at school. When children are not successful in primary school, they will be very likely to end in the track of Hauptschule, then they just get more disappointed to themselves and only have bad experience with the school.
Even though Chinese classes are also dominated by the didactic teaching, most of the Chinese teachers don’t think it’s a problem, for they concern more on other topics. Still many Chinese teachers don’t think the education in China is successful, one big problem is the education is very utilitarian, and the whole system pursues only the short-term effect of teaching, doesn’t take students as individuals but as a whole group, and doesn’t care about the personal development of children but only the quantifiable outcomes or statistical data to meet the administrative measurement and requirement, students are just kind of the carriers to show some results that can be counted by numbers.
As the teacher CRB25M has explained, school education is directed and controlled by the administration of the superior departments who give orders to school, saying, in one class there must be 60 percent of students admitted to senior high school, for example, which is like in a factory how many standard products must be produced, then the school and the teachers must try all the best to reach that target, if a school or a teacher reach that number or even more, the school or teacher will be honored and commended publically among all schools or teachers, which strengthens the utilitarianism in turn in school education.
As a result, in the eyes of some teachers, the school is like a smelting furnace or flow line of the production, teaching all students the same level of knowledge, using the same teaching methods, and pursuing one goal as educational results, even the answer to one question in the exam must be only one, otherwise, it’s a wrong answer, therefore, when children start the school, everyone is different, but when they finish the school, almost all are the same and they have no their own mind or
individuality, which is the biggest disadvantage of education in China (CHH10M, CHL35M, CRB22F).
2) Not enough teachers
The problem collecting the largest number of German teachers from the interview is that there’re not enough teachers in school system. In one class there’re always very good students and very slow ones, the German teachers think all students should be supported in the way that they need individually, and some students really need more support, so, for the big class size at present it would be great to have 2 teachers in one class, so that the other teacher can look after the slow or difficult ones. However, actually in some school for example, because of lack of teachers, a mathematics teacher who doesn’t know how to play a musical instrument has to teach music.
On the other hand, teachers don’t think it can be realized to have more teachers at school, because more teachers cost more money, and the government right now only wants to save money and doesn’t recruit new teachers, for the population of students is becoming smaller. As far as teachers are concerned, they firmly believe that more teachers are necessary, so that every teacher has fewer lessons to do every week, and has more time for the individual student.
When teachers find out among students there are more problems needed to be solved than teaching the students English or mathematics, or there are too many students who need to be taken care of, in the end it’s always the problem of lack of the time because, without enough teachers, one single teacher has a lot to do, and it’s very hard for teachers to help the students. They also believe that, without enough teachers, it’s quite impossible for them to concentrate on the students personally, do individual teaching, or offer students the education in an ideal way.
Take an example, the teacher GGH7M in a Gymnasium has 9 classes in Grade 6/9/10/11/12, and teaches 205 students totally in the subjects of Politics, Spanish, Religion, which is quite a lot especially when concerning to preparing lessons in different subjects for students at different ages. Besides the big amount of teaching lessons, teachers also have to correct the tests and homework, do some
administration and management, or other school issues, there is very little time for them to deal with difficult students, but to make the situation worse is there’re either not enough social workers who can talk with students and help them, in many cases, several schools share one single social worker.
In a Hauptschule where GHU32F works there’re 600 students and one social worker and no psychologist, but they have at least 20% really psychologically ill children with trauma experience, who have been abused in childhood for example, or have very bad experiences in their past, and quite a lot of children there have divorced parents, but the school doesn’t have a psychologist or professional one to help them in a better way, and the families don’t want to send their children to the therapist.
Therefore, besides more teachers, the German teachers also wish to have more social workers and psychologists in the school to work together on students.
3) Hauptschule
A quite number of German teachers from the interview, like GGF7F, GGS5F, GHW2F, GHO7M, etc., think the Hauptschule is problematic and not successful in the school system, and it shows it’s a very very bad school especially in recent years.
30 years ago, Phillips (1987) already found that the Hauptschule designed as the main secondary school in the beginning had already been undergoing some kind of identity crisis, and it lost its main role and had no longer served the most population of the students (Phillips, 1995, p.72). At this moment, the Hauptschule does lose its attraction among parents, and most of the parents are not willing to send their children to the Hauptschule, as a result, the Hauptschule doesn’t have enough students and is facing to be shut down.
One big reason is that the Hauptschule “has become the school of last resort” for students who are not competent academically, “who are the most difficult to handle”, and who have many more problems than the ones in other types of schools (Rust &
Rust, 1995, p.41). Some investigations also reveal that most if not all of students in the Hauptschule come from disadvantaged social backgrounds and have very difficult surrounding, e.g. they have a lot of problems at home, their parents are divorced, or both of the parents must work, who come from foreign countries and don’t speak German at home, thus, the Hauptschule has turned itself into “a
reservoir of social and ethnic minorities that restricts transition to other school types”
(Freitag & Schlicht, 2009).
Teachers in this research describe that students in the Hauptschule are slow in learning and need longer time to learn something, normally they have to start from very basic and little things, they give up themselves and don’t work hard, they don’t do their homework, they talk during the lessons, they don’t behave well, and it’s very difficult for them to keep the rules and learn how to stay at school. Some research proves that students “in lower ability classes tend to have more negative attitudes towards school and often exhibit poor behavior in the classroom which makes them more difficult to teach” (Hallam & Ireson, 2003). This research also confirms what Hallam and Ireson (2003) have found that there’s a “strong agreement from teachers across all types of school that there were more discipline problems in the lower ability classes”.
In the viewpoints of the teachers, from the first day on when children arrive at the Hauptschule, the society tells them that they are not worth anything, they can’t do or reach anything, and as to the children themselves, after they fail to go to the Gymnasium or Realschule, they don’t have any self-confidence, they are depressed and have no motivation in learning, they don’t know how to read or write, they don’t learn enough for the jobs afterwards, so they “often end up in a series of active labor market measures without a chance to enter an apprenticeship or stable, non-precarious employment”, which means they cannot find well-paid jobs, they won’t be really good workers, they won’t meet the expectation of the society, and they cannot be successful in their life (Jacob et al, 2009).
In the experience of GHW2F, she doesn’t feel good about so many stereotypes on the students of the Hauptschule, which she thinks is unfair, because they are just normal kids, who sometimes have problems, who might have some difficulty at learning, and who sometimes are a little bit rougher in using language, but they are really beloved children. Forman and Mccormick (1995) think that the situation can also be caused by big miscommunications or “misunderstandings between teachers and students” when they don’t have the same or “similar cultural or linguistic background”, and the “misunderstandings can result in students being inappropriately taught or even misdiagnosed”.
It’s undeniable that children who don’t speak the German language can also be smart, which are mostly seen on the children with immigration background, but the problem is, because of “communication difficulties or emotional reactions to acculturation”, they “may be misdiagnosed as exhibiting language impairments, learning disabilities, or behavior problems”, which teachers usually respond to by reducing the academic demands of teaching, then the children just become more bored in study and alienated from the school (Forman & Mccormick, 1995).
However, it cannot be only one or two factors causing the present situation of the Hauptschule, which can either not happen in one night.
4) Knowledge-centered education
Some Chinese teachers don’t think it’s successful or correct to pay too much attention to the knowledge teaching, however, in the education system of China the Gaokao is the final goal of all the efforts, which is an exam only about the text knowledge measured by the scores. Therefore, due to its importance, the school is led into knowledge-centered education having no concern on the development of children individual as a whole person, and students’ school life is only about learning knowledge.
The fact turns out, as the Chinese teachers have in their classes, that there are quite a few students who can get high exam scores but have poor abilities necessary and important for life, who lack the abilities of imagination, curiosity, creativity and critical thinking in particular, and not many of them have their own opinions or thoughts. In the opinion of the teacher CRB6M, the phenomenon of ‘high score and low ability’ exactly describes the students in present situation of education in China.
Due to the more and more fierce competition among students, many teachers have confessed in the interview that they have to do the intensified exam-oriented training on the knowledge covered in the exam according to the instruction of examination outline, but as to the knowledge that will not or seldom appear in the exam, it is not important for students to learn and can be put aside, which don’t make some teachers feel well.
The teacher CHL35M call upon a new national policy that could have the orientation and consideration on the all-round development of children, and he believes that it’s good for students to learn more basic knowledge, but paying attention to the knowledge shouldn’t mean that students study only the text knowledge in the textbooks and have no chance to take part in activities for the development of other abilities.
5) Big classes
3 German teachers and 2 Chinese teachers think big class size is a big problem in the education system, e.g. in one class of a senior high school there’re usually 70-80 students, which might be a big reason that individual teaching/learning is not a topic in the minds of Chinese teachers, and teaching in China is teacher-centered. German teachers strongly appeal for smaller classes, because they want to do individual teaching, but one class with more than 20 students now is too big for them and they cannot reach every student, for them 20 students are enough for one class, and 15 will be very lovely.
It is true that in a big class a teacher cannot pay attention to each student, but whether the class size crucially influences or decides the student performance on study or not has been a topic intensively discussed in recent years by many
It is true that in a big class a teacher cannot pay attention to each student, but whether the class size crucially influences or decides the student performance on study or not has been a topic intensively discussed in recent years by many