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The fact that German infrastructure is so bad is not due to education. It's a political issue. The state doesn't build telecom infrastructure because we keep voting for old politicians that don't give a toss about technology. And telecom companies don't do it because they would rather wait for the state to do it with public money. The only solution is for the state (politicians) to realise that telecom infrastructure have become as basic and necessary as clean water or electricity. Telecommunication, transport and healthcare should be in the hand of the state, and they should be provided without the aim of profit.
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I definitely agree that Germany has an acute education problem. Especially the 3-tier system is problematic because it assumes that you can make an informed decision about a child's future at age 10.
However, your idea that advancement in technology will be achieved by letting school students use electronic devices instead of writing by hand as well as advanced calculators is utterly wrong.
The basic building blocks of knowledge are mathematics, electronics and algorithms, and you don't need electronic devices to learn those. All you need is your brain, paper and a pencil, and only if you master those abilities will your brain have the ability to develop more complex things.
When I went to school in the early 90s, we learnt programming on paper using only pseudo code. The basic principles of algorithms (conditionals, loops, subroutines) are older than computers. When you understand those perfectly without a computer, there is no limit to what you can do when you're given one. -
@acz0903
Yes you dont need a pc to learn.
Just like you dont need anything exept a stick and sand to learn geometry. -
Also: your marks heavily depend on your teachers. The first few years on Gymnasium I had really bad marks (I had to prey to pass the years). I was learning all day and what not.
So after 3 years of pure frustration (my parents and teachers even decided that I should go to a psychologist) I switched school. From then on I had good grades and finished my Abi without learning morr than like 20hrs in those next 6 years.
What did we learn from that: school is garbage. Maybe there are people who need school to learn but for me it was a waste of 13 years of my life. Maybe the first 4 years before decising on what tier school I should go were more or less useful as I learned how to write and stuff. But most things in my life I learned though interest, curiosity and just trying and failing a lot. -
@syentix well I decided I wanted to do something with computers like cs when I was like 8. So that was my main goal. In the first 3 years of gymnasium there was no possibility to do cs. The school had a pc room with pcs that took like 40minutes to boot. When I decided I had to change school after 3 years I obviously searched for schools offering cs. So I found a nice one like 15km away. Although we only had cs during the last 3 years it was definitely better than the other gymnasium. I did written Abi in CS, Maths, English, and Physics.
As I wrote my Abi just a few months back I'm going to start studying at Uni next semester. -
related https://youtu.be/h2NNrH2aMZc
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About the "Kompetenzen": While I agree with you that schools have to the knowledge, not teaching "how" to do things will also get problematic, especially at uni.
The problems with the missing CS classes have to be taken differentiated: Many pupils have zero interest in CS - I know persons who finished Abi hardly knowing how to save a file, and not even wanting to learn it. Those would also slow down any class teaching programming or similar.
I disagree with the calculator: The 'better' ones we HAD TO PAY BY OURSELVES COSTING 80€/UNIT (anybody relying on ALGII had bad luck) from TI are - compared what technology could offer - shit. Many had defects, randomly losing the content from the flash, including the operating system. They were slow as fuck (400 MHz CPU).
After you get used to them, one hardly does anything by hand anymore, and are quite nice to work on - still they are not worth the price.
Even worse: One could now legally play Doom during math classes...
While you are complaining about the 3 tier system, you want math theory - for everyone I suppose? How is that going to work, practically?
And for most of the jobs, this is also not needed at all (like statistics, lyrics analysis, music / art, calculus... are also not needed) which leaves us back to competencies and a general foundation for later study or an ausbildung.
Something has to change: Proper CS classes (with algorithms and data structures, not just learning 'Borland Delphi'), proper technology (computers, internet) - still many schools have holes in the roof.
The 3 tier system mainly benefits the better ones, but the concept of a general high school in Gemany also didn't work out that well. I'm not sure which consequences to draw out of that. -
@syentix 400 mbits? Luaghts in Swiss 1 gbits fiber optic connection.
We so have a lot of the same problems though. In our national parlament there are 246 legislators. As far as I can tell 1 of them is competent when it comes to IT (on commune/state level it sometimes is different though). Our education system basically too knows 3 tiers, however they are at the same school usually and mostly you can be in tier A for maths but tier B for languages and that stuff. At about 15-16 we have to decideon a Matura (Abi/A-levels) or an aprentiship, however there is still the option of a "Berufsmatur" and later "Passerelle" to get the full Matura and go to university. Some schools habe some basic IT stuff, but there's no real concept. You can't take CS during school.
Rant about a german problem in english
I think we as the people should just sue the german government for neglect of progress and neglect of the education system. If your not familiar with the state of german IT we have worse internetspeeds than uganda or the notoriously shitty australia, our neighbourstates look at us in disbelief while laughing in optic fibre. Our school system seperates all students after 4th grade in 3 tiers, the lowest one gives you the future perspective as a social security case. The second and highest tier require masses of useless knowledge, so called "competences"(Kompetenzen) which are totally useless skills with no real world application because they are derived from real skills, a median ground between all possible applications of that skill. And while doing that they terribly insist on doing everything the "proper" way, meaning handwritten. Most people you would expect to have basic computer literacy, meaning age 40 and below, are incapable of using basic functions of a non-smartphone computer and do not understand the slightest of what they are actually doing or supposed to do. And I mean nothing technical. Germans are the reasons they still put word as a job requirement for devjobs because this disqualifies half of our population. This leads to many people having the archaeic "we versus the machines" mentality, thinking that if they ever let the computer do parts of the job, they will then lose all of it to the machines. Thats why you never strive past basic mathematical principles in mathematics, which is a big misnomer because you never do actual mathematics, only calculating and basic calculus and statics. If you get to use your calculator, its some basic casio with no actual functionality then standard operations. And even using that is shunned upon. How is this country ever supposed to become something more than it was in the 90's, if we teach people nothing of use and kill all progress in its root.
rant
its been a long fucking day