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Preschool options in Germany | Education | Expatica Germany "In Germany every child has a legal right to attend kindergarten from the age of three until the age of six, when compulsory education begins. Some kindergartens also accept children under the age of three in toddler groups. The kindergartens are run by local authorities, religious organisations (generally protestant or Catholic churches) or by private associations."
(I guess that's the same link you were quoting from.)
The article goes on to say that the spaces are much in demand. It also discusses day care for kids under 3.
Or, as I've said earlier, if we change high school counseling and curriculum so the technical prep/technical training option is presented as just as valid as the college option, then I think that problem will take care of itself.
Most kids know by the 10th grade whether they want a career that's going to involve years more scholarship rather than learning to do something that will begin paying earlier.
That's tracking, there's big resistance to that in Black academic circles. Evidently they are under the impression everyone can go to college if only the system wasn't racist or something.
Germany provides "free" undergraduate education for less than 18% of their people. I'm sure it does work well when you have 82% footing the bill.
This is not true. Germany provides a dual track system. About 30% of student go to a university, most of the rest participate in a vocational system. Student generally pick the track they are on. Graduation from an accredited secondary school in Germany is generally sufficient to gain admission to a university.
Ignoring the immorality of making your neighbor pick up the tab for your education, who decides "really qualified" and field of study?
P.s. America is broke.
Who decides who is qualified for a field of study now? The answer is no one except for the young themselves.
The kids who have a clear vision of what they want to study and where they want to go in life qualify themselves by producing good grades, the evidence of their engagement and effort. That is how it is now, and it won't change in the future.
The kids who don't have the vision of what they want to do yet will still have the opportunity only college provides in determining the direction they want for their lives. These kids simply have to do the same as the others- make the grades, and go to college. That won't change.
The kids who drop out now have the opportunity in most of our country to go back and finish high school if they realize the limits of the alternative. They can also get their GED, which is only a working kid's alternative to finishing high school.
If they obtain their high school degree or GED with high grades, they can go to college now. That won't change in the future, either.
The kids who drop out and never go further will always be needed. A strong back and a dull mind can still keep a person alive. That's not going to change.
America is not broke. Far from it. We are still the world's leader in both production and consumption.
The only difference is our growing awareness that the United States is no longer the Big Dog. We still inhabit the best part of the richest continent, we are still able to enlarge our population vastly before we face the problem of having too much humanity in our homeland, and we still have a tremendous technological and educational edge on the rest of the world.
This won't last, however, unless we act now with the mindset of maintaining our advantages for those who will follow us. Free college education for all who qualify for it is a potent way to keep the United States the world's leader.
Free college won't guarantee every kid will get to enter college, so we will always have the kids who will only qualify for grunt work for their livelihoods, but it will raise the quality level of our primary education, will keep more kids in high school, and will create the incentives to become educated for all, rich and poor alike.
Even if our kids only got 2 years of free college, that alone would be an incredible boost to our economy. If, after 2 free years, the kids who work the hardest and do the best are offered 2 more free years, we would soon have even more dedicated students.
Our college system would also vastly change as well. If free college was available to all, our technical schools, dedicated to more specific educational paths would provide a very highly capable production base of workers who can put all the advances to work at a much faster rate than present.
A highly skilled worker with a tech degree could become just as valuable to an enterprise as the person in the front office. Such a worker could make as much money on the production floor, and the competition between excellent workers only could bring more and better for all of us.
It's a small risk of investment for the societal rewards free college would deliver. And it would be as great a societal leveler as the opening of the west was 150 years ago.
That's tracking, there's big resistance to that in Black academic circles. Evidently they are under the impression everyone can go to college if only the system wasn't racist or something.
To be sure, that's been a controversy among blacks since Booker T Washington and WEB duBois argued over it a hundred years ago.
But the debate was and is a false dichotomy. It's not "tracking." As I've already said, most kids have in fact already made the decision by the time they are in the 10th grade, and no matter what their counselors tell them, their course choices and performance for their last three years will reflect that decision. It's their decision--not "tracking"--and they're already making that decision right now.
But right now, the deliberate ignoring of that fact by the education system places those kids at a disadvantage by not offering non-scholarly alternatives of equal validity and rigor. So when they make the decision not to go into a scholarly profession, the education path as now designed makes sure they fail.
I'd note, too, that this does reflect in even how subjects are taught in lower grades. Because of the push to prepare for "college prep" curricula in high school, students are often pushed through and out of basic subjects in the lower grades before they've been fully grounded in them. That's going to have the effect of causing more students to decide against scholarly professions than might otherwise.
There is no downside to making absolutely sure every student has gotten full grounding in reading and arithmetic basics instead of just passing them to meet arbitrary school standards.
To be sure, that's been a controversy among blacks since Booker T Washington and WEB duBois argued over it a hundred years ago.
But the debate was and is a false dichotomy. It's not "tracking." As I've already said, most kids have in fact already made the decision by the time they are in the 10th grade, and no matter what their counselors tell them, their course choices and performance for their last three years will reflect that decision. It's their decision--not "tracking"--and they're already making that decision right now.
But right now, the deliberate ignoring of that fact by the education system places those kids at a disadvantage by not offering non-scholarly alternatives of equal validity and rigor. So when they make the decision not to go into a scholarly profession, the education path as now designed makes sure they fail.
I'd note, too, that this does reflect in even how subjects are taught in lower grades. Because of the push to prepare for "college prep" curricula in high school, students are often pushed through and out of basic subjects in the lower grades before they've been fully grounded in them. That's going to have the effect of causing more students to decide against scholarly professions than might otherwise.
There is no downside to making absolutely sure every student has gotten full grounding in reading and arithmetic basics instead of just passing them to meet arbitrary school standards.
I agree, except for the mention a non-scholarly path will surely fail. A young person who becomes dedicated to a manual skill will always find ways to educate himself to advance his skills by himself. Those who do will always do better than those who do not.
Every manual skill is always conceptional first. Every scholastic skill is also conceptional first. Everything else for both paths is mostly practice after gaining the needed initial knowledge, and further knowledge comes from that practice.
There will always be the equal need for those who can envision new concepts and those who can make those concepts a reality.
I believe the present lack in our educational system is the dearth of more technical schools. If we had more local technical colleges, and the credits earned in them would be all transferable to our scholastic colleges, we would see a lot more kids learning the skills needed in our rapidly changing industries and agriculture, and we would see a lot more of them working for a time using those skills, and then realizing they can become the scholastic conceptualizers afterwards, and go back to gain more education.
As it is now, the only paths commonly available for a young person who wants to enter the skilled trades are our unions. They have an apprentice program that qualifies a beginner who wants to become a master of his chosen skill.
There's no reason why this mastership cannot happen within our education system on a wider basis. This is already happening in scholastic fields like physics, where students are getting on the job training during the summers.
All it would really require is a commitment by all of us, and some out-of-the-box thinking to make it the same for young promising technicians. A lot of them find their OJT right now on their own, but I think even more could come from having a complete system that allows everyone to try out a profession at any skill level while young with as few obstacles as possible.
Because learning is only one part of the "college experience", depending on who you ask. If you ask me, I don't think our nation should be subsidizing that experience. I like you your idea and have often advocated personal study. That frightens people because you don't get the paper at the end of the journey... Which should highlight what is really important in the student's mind.
Why couldn't credit hours and grades be based on nothing but tests? Tests could be computerized so no two students get the same test and the student pays $50 for the test. Just tell the students what book(s) cover the material for the test. It is so curious that we are presented with contradictory ideas about testing.
Students that need teachers can pay for their time. The smarter the student the cheaper the education.
I agree, except for the mention a non-scholarly path will surely fail. A young person who becomes dedicated to a manual skill will always find ways to educate himself to advance his skills by himself. Those who do will always do better than those who do not.
Every manual skill is always conceptional first. Every scholastic skill is also conceptional first. Everything else for both paths is mostly practice after gaining the needed initial knowledge, and further knowledge comes from that practice.
There will always be the equal need for those who can envision new concepts and those who can make those concepts a reality.
I believe the present lack in our educational system is the dearth of more technical schools. If we had more local technical colleges, and the credits earned in them would be all transferable to our scholastic colleges, we would see a lot more kids learning the skills needed in our rapidly changing industries and agriculture, and we would see a lot more of them working for a time using those skills, and then realizing they can become the scholastic conceptualizers afterwards, and go back to gain more education.
As it is now, the only paths commonly available for a young person who wants to enter the skilled trades are our unions. They have an apprentice program that qualifies a beginner who wants to become a master of his chosen skill.
There's no reason why this mastership cannot happen within our education system on a wider basis. This is already happening in scholastic fields like physics, where students are getting on the job training during the summers.
All it would really require is a commitment by all of us, and some out-of-the-box thinking to make it the same for young promising technicians. A lot of them find their OJT right now on their own, but I think even more could come from having a complete system that allows everyone to try out a profession at any skill level while young with as few obstacles as possible.
I don't think we have any real disagreements. But with that more complete system must also come the concept of the education system, the government, parents, and employers that the choice of a technical career without a bachelor's degree is an equally valid choice.
Why couldn't credit hours and grades be based on nothing but tests? Tests could be computerized so no two students get the same test and the student pays $50 for the test. Just tell the students what book(s) cover the material for the test. It is so curious that we are presented with contradictory ideas about testing.
Students that need teachers can pay for their time. The smarter the student the cheaper the education.
psik
Because of the poor quality of most test writing. Most tests are poorly conceived to test what the person needs to know.
It can be done, but the process is very expensive.
My brother and I were just talking yesterday about how the state support for the flagship universities in our respective states is now at about 10%-20% of the school's budget. In the "olden days", ie when he and I were in college, it was much higher. The philosophy regarding state-supported colleges has changed.
On the face of it, that stat makes it seem like the states have been negligent at best, and stingy at worst, with their funding. But is it really the fault of the states or the schools?
Even after adjusting for inflation, college budgets ballooned over 300% between 1975 and 2005. A state that was funding its schools at 50% in 1975 and increased its funding every year to match inflation would find itself squarely in the "10-20% of the school's budget" situation by 2005. Is the state stingy, or the school greedy?
I'd say the "change in philosophy" has come more from the university side than the state side. The aforementioned "amenities arms race," along with a substantial increase in the ratio of administrative and other non-academic employees per student, has mushroomed the relative cost of college with no appreciable increase in the quality of the actual education.
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