I am two days away from my return to the US. I've been thinking since the beginning of this visit that it would be appropriate to post some observations on childhood and schooling here. After all I have been living with a second grader, helping her with her homework, seeing her off on to the bus (not a school bus, but a city bus) in the morning, listening to her talk about school. I have also been around nine year old twins regularly, watched children and parents all over the city, and, where the language permitted, done my usual quizzing of parents about their children's schooling. So what have I found out?
Nothing earth shaking, but some interesting points. Childhood here certainly seems more, well, "childish" and pleasant than it is in the US. There is not that underlying fear of something bad happening that pervades our family life these days. Eight year olds travel on city buses with their friends, and then walk up cobblestone pathways to school. No one thinks twice about letting the two little girls wander down by the river with their dolls and a snack after school, with instructions to be home by six. And sure enough they turn up and one heads up the street in the dusk to her own home.
As for school, I've just had a little window into how it goes. I've been helping my neice with her homework, especially her math homework. She has a math notebook, which is graph paper. She carries an elaborate pencil/pen case with many different kinds of colored pencils and markers, and, of all things, a fountain pen. She does all her math work with this fountain pen. She is not, by German standards, a neat worker. But to my eyes, her work is amazing. Problems worked out in the little squares of the paper, all in pen. A mistake is carefully crossed out (using a ruler) and then the problem is worked again. She gets about 15 problems several times a week to work, and the curriculum is much more systematic and makes more sense than our American math curriculum for second grade.
But - and there is a big but here. She has a mean and intimidating math teacher. A woman who yells at the children, writes nasty notes on her papers, and generally undermines her feelings of interest and confidence in math. And also she has entered the world of timed tests - faster, faster, faster, and bad things will happen if you cannot finish all the problems! This is a child who is thinking mathematically in two languages and so she is not yet fast, and why should she be? She knows how to figure out the problems, which is what is important. So in some ways life has slowed down here, but in others it is not so different, especially in the classroom.
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