The German reverence for trade crafts is at the heart of a high-school system considered the best in the world. Students are trained to work, not simply to receive diplomas. Only about one third of German students attend a college-preparatory school, known as a Gymnasium,– the rest go to vocational and technical schools that feature job training and academics. (The three tracks are rooted in medieval Germany’s peasant, commercial and noble classes.) Even students in the less academic schools receive a more thorough education than their U.S. counterparts. “By the time [German students] are 19, they have higher academic skills and higher vocational skills,” says Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy in Rochester, N.Y. “Our 19-year-olds are working at Wendy’s.”
Parents enroll their children in vocational, technical or college-prep schools in fifth grade, though they can switch programs in the early years. The parting of the ways comes after 10th grade, when Gymnasium students start training for the university entrance exams, known as the Abitur, and those on the vocational/ technical track begin apprenticeships.
Under the apprentice system, each student contracts with a “training partner” in industry or business, agreeing to work-for pay-for roughly three years while attending classes. Master tradesmen oversee their work. Each contract is also registered with a supervising authority–a chamber of commerce for industrial trades, state health officials for nursing-that administers qualifying exams upon graduation. “The businesses feel it is their responsibility to train the next generation. They are developing a labor pool,” says Glenda Partee of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, D.C.
Some large firms conduct both academic and professional classes on their premises. But most apprentices do their classwork at vocational schools. GBA Bonn, for example, offers degrees in nine subjects, from restaurant management to metalworking. Its 3,500 students spend an average of 10 to 12 hours per week in the classroom, taking four required courses as well as eight occupation-related subjects in their fields. The school integrates theory and practice. “A skilled worker has to analyze complex contexts,” explains GBA director Gerhard Dohlen. “Every young person has to learn to plan an action, carry it out, control it, evaluate it.” After graduation, some GBA students move on to technical training institutes; many others find jobs with the businesses that trained them.
Students in the college-prep programs must meet more demanding academic standards. Those at Cologne’s Gymnasium Deutz, Thusneldastrasse, must choose two subjects to major in beginning in the llth grade. They must also take about three hours of classes in 11 subjects each week. Twice each semester, there are five hour written exams in at least five subjects. Three Deutz 12th graders who spent semesters at U.S. high schools last year returned to marvel-in perfect English-at their counterparts’ lack of knowledge. “I took Algebra II and we were doing square roots stuff we did in the eighth grade here,” said Tom Rohm, who went to Amherst High in Massachusetts.
Some critics complain that the tracking system is elitist. Only about 12 percent of Gymnasium students come from workingclass families, and reformers in some states have opened up Gesamtschulen–“comprehensive schools”–where students can obtain all levels of certification. But the traditional system lets qualified vocational and technical students switch to the Gymnasium at any point; some Gymnasium students enroll in vocational programs even after passing the coveted Abitur.
That flexibility will be put to a supreme test under German reunification. Traditionally, only about 10 percent of East German students were allowed to attend university-prep schools. Now, many more students from the east hope to enter a Gymnasium. As it expands to incorporate the east’s troubled economic base, however, the new Federal Republic may be in much greater need of students who can leave high school with solid industrial skills.
