Back to School

Today I went to German high school. I have not been to high school for quite some time, so this was an adventure for me.

I Went to German Class Here!

It came about because a family friend was kind enough to invite me to tag along with her, to watch a German class she teaches for non-native speakers. The German secondary school system is more complicated than the American system; there are different types of schools, with different educational goals. This particular school trains students for various trades; it is not an example of the elite German Gymnasium, which prepares students for a university education.

I would describe the building’s exterior as austere, but I often think people in the United States worry too much about their multimillion-dollar gyms and state-of-the-art learning labs and too little about educational quality itself.

Learning can happen anywhere, where there is hunger for it and where it is valued.

I had fun trailing around after my host—through the teacher’s lounge, the copy room, the hallways filled with teenagers, etc. I even followed her outside to shoo smoking students to the other side of the street, away from the school. Almost every student smoking out there was male; this is after all a school for trades.

Near the School, a McDonald’s Menu in German

In the German class itself, gender was more evenly divided. There were maybe a dozen students—from Turkey, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, and other countries around the world. Their German ranged from quite weak to relatively fluent. In some cases I suspected they were hobbled more by shyness and self-consciousness than by their lack of German knowledge.

I thought I was just going to be sitting there and observing, but instead my host had me introduce myself in German, and told the students they could ask me questions. I was concerned at first that they wouldn’t want to ask anything—I am stupidly sensitive to indifference and/or scorn from adolescents!—but we ended up having a lively conversation for the duration of the class, none of us speaking native German but communicating nonetheless with the encouragement and help of the teacher.

We covered many topics, among them how you get German citizenship, the problem of people who live for years in Germany without learning German, the problem of people who live for years in the U.S. without learning English, how much apartments cost in Göttingen, how much they cost in New York, how much people make in New York relative to housing costs (the students couldn’t fathom how people could afford to live in Manhattan), unemployment in Germany, unemployment in the U.S., welfare, and much more.

I really enjoyed it. The students were not unlike students I myself have taught. Also, for the most part I loved high school, so it is fun to see what it is like for others in different times and places.

Downtown Again

Göttingen Really Is Quite Beautiful

Afterwards I went into town for a while, then went back to my family’s neighborhood to visit a family acquaintance (with whom I spoke entirely in German), and then in the evening went back into town, to see a 1973 movie called Die Taube auf dem Dach (Dove on the Roof) at the Lumière Theatre.

The film was from the former East Germany; I had trouble understanding some of the dialect, but muddled along okay.

The filmmaker—a tiny, dynamic, hilarious woman—was present and answered questions at the end. The film had been banned, then lost, then refound years later. It was remarkable that we were able to see it at all.

Weihnachtsmarkt in Göttingen

I passed by the Weihnachtsmarkt on my way to and from the movie. This is an annual Christmas market downtown—with stalls, crafts, rides, alcohol, and happily congregating people.

Very cheery! But cold for this wimpy former Californian.

In conclusion: today was truly an all-German kind of day. It is amazing to have an opportunity to put into regular practice what I have been studying on the other side of the Atlantic.