Learning How to Learn - My Educational Experiences

Hey guys!

Thinking of my education in Germany, there are a lot of differences to the educational system in the United States. To make this comprehensible to you, I first will try to explain what the system is like in Germany.
Instead of going to middle and high school after elementary or primary, in Germany there is just one school you are going to as a secondary school until you graduate. But this secondary school is separated into two to three types of it, that have different aims after and time until graduation. In former times there has been three types of secondary school - one where you pass after nine years, one after ten, and one after twelve. Recently, the states in Germany, which are in charge of education themselves, mostly aligned the first two kinds of schools. 
When I was reading the article Social Class and Hidden Curriculum of Work by Jean Anyon (1980), and compared my experiences to the US system, it struck me, that what Anyon calls a "hidden curriculum" is kind of an open curriculum in Germany. 
Anyon (1980) believes that public schools offer "different types of educational experiences and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes", and tries to prove this with her research. She points out that some schools unofficially prepare their children either for a vocational or higher education e.g. in colleges. In Germany, these selection processes are partly a purpose of school, and explain the two different types of secondary schools. People who want to go to vocational schools only have to absolve the nine- or ten-year-long secondary school. Students that want to achieve higher education go to the other school for twelve years. Although a lot of persons that graduate after twelve years are going to take vocational education, too. Some of these students then go back to school, to college, when they are adults. 
But thinking of Professor X's article In the Basement of the Ivory Tower (2014), it seems like the German system separates the secondary schools with the same ideas like Professor X, that some students just aren't made for college. Besides that, there is a lot of unintentional, but known-of social inequality in Germany, too. This is the case when the students can't choose to which secondary school they are going because of what kind of job they want to have later, but because of what opportunities their parents give them. At this point I can't say which system is better, I just experienced the German one, but I know that independent from the system, we have to fight social inequality!


Remembering my school, the historic 'Roswitha-Gymnasium' in Bad Gandersheim, Lower Saxony, there was no big choice where to go, as we lived in a rural area. If you had good enough grades, or your parents really wanted you to go, you could only go to one school in your district, which provided a degree after twelve years. During my studies of Early Childhood Education in Hamburg, a big city in Germany, I have experienced different things, but that's what my school was. We had round about 700-800 students, 70 teachers, and my graduation class was a big one of 130 students because that was the first year where this kind of school in my state graduated after twelve and not 13 years so that we actually had two classes in one. If I tried to describe the school with a characterization Anyon (1980) uses, it would probably be the 'executive elite school'. The curriculum for at least the last two years was a common one for the whole state. However, the practices really depended on the teacher. As our principal pointed out at our graduation ceremony, the main aim for us should have been to learn how to learn. That would have been what a student needs to go to college. For me, that worked, and I am close to graduate from college, absolving my last semester here - abroad. For others, 'though, it didn't, and that is where both educational systems fail.

If you are interested, I could gladly illustrate this more.
Until now, thanks for reading my thoughts!

Yours,
GermanGirl.115

References:
Anyon, J. (1980). Social Class and Hidden Curriculum of Work. Journal of Education, 162(1).
Professor X (2008). In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/06/in-the-basement-of-the-ivory-tower/306810/3/