Roads to Safe Places

So the only way you can get into a university is to graduate from the Gymnasium? Can't you do a self-study or take classes to make up your Arbitur?

Lots of people in the US seem to take courses after they've started work. High school (hauptschule, realschule and gymnasium rolled into one) drop-outs study for their high school equivalency diploma, college dropouts study to finish a degree, people with one degree study for further degrees and so on.

We have a cultural mythology here that children of immigrants are *expected* to get more education than their parents; and even among the general population, children are expected to get more education than their parents did. I grew up hearing stories of great-grandma who didn't finish high school, grandma who went to a "finishing school" for a couple of years after high school, mom who got a college degree. I should have gotten a Masters I suppose, but I never did.

Anyway, that's the mythology I grew up with. I don't know how or if the statistics bear that out.

As for teaching language, total immersion at a young age is the most effective. But of course that assumes that the course work at the lowest grades isn't that difficult and is easily made up. I'm having trouble imagining that a child's grades could even matter before the age of 10 or 11, other than simply as pass/fail.

But then, US schools vary tremendously in quality. Since I attended a German Gymnasium 13th grade after graduating from my US small town high school, I know for a fact that my US high school education was not Gymnasium level -- more like Realschule.

In the US, I'd say the biggest problem with students who don't speak English as a first language are those students who can't speak English by the time they reach junior high school (7th grade, around 12 years old) or high school (9th grade, around 14 years old). Because by then it can be pretty hard to learn a language and keep up with your course work at the same time.

We do have stories of parents who have to get their kids into the "right" pre-school so they can get into the "right" kindergarten so they can get into the "right" so and so forth. But I see that as parents who are overly concerned (IMHO) with getting their kids into the very best university. And you don't need to be a graduate of Harvard or Yale or the like to get a good job.

Hmmm. Sounds like Germany has better overall quality of education, if you speak German, but the US has more flexibility.