German Politics Thread

Considering that politics is one of the required courses at the gymnasium and political discussion rounds are still watched enough that there are multiple of them, I would say that we are - overall. A lot of Germans naturally are disinterested in politics, but I think there are more who pay attention at least during the important elections.

Bavarians are voting for a party that oversaw the development of their state from one the poorest to the wealthiest region in Germany (and one of the wealthiest in Europe). How shocking.

Meanwhile people vote in NRW for the SPD although NRW has seen a significanz decline and some cities that are bastions of the SPD are near bankrupt. I wonder who are the stupid ones.

Don't remind me.....

That's the case here too, but compulsory education isn't actually very good at introducing the political process since it often takes the extremely simplified and, frankly, borderline fictional portrayals of political parties instead of looking at the platform that party is currently running on. It becomes less about voting record and more about what kind of ideology you put on the party's Wikipedia page, even in cases where they've wandered so far from it it's not even funny.

The problem is the usual conflict between perceived difficulty of material and the actual capabiltiy of teenaged children (which is what I presume you mean by gymnasium.) They're capable of handling difficult, challenging material, but the Cliff Notes version is usually all they get because the people running education departments think they're idiots.

edited 24th Mar '17 12:48:07 PM by math792d

Germany has three kind of schools...Gymnasium is for pupils which are headed towards university, meaning they get the most challenging material under the assumption that they are smart enough to handle it. In my case, the lessons consisted of a lot of explanations how the EU works, including an excursion to Brussels. I have also visited the courthouse twice during my education, in order to get an understanding of how law actually works in practice.

Not to mention the emphasis on political connections in my history lessons, especially when it comes to how the Third Reich actually worked and what lead up to it. Studying the Speeches of Hitler in order to take about how they work is pretty much required reading, as is the famous counter speech.

edited 24th Mar '17 3:07:38 PM by Swanpride

This is sorta how it works here too, only we have different gymnasium branches. We have STX (which is the standard form most people take), HHX (which only takes two years but requires you to have taken 10th grade in primary school, something not everyone does) and a school specifically geared towards finance/economics, with a bit more of an emphasis on that for people who want to go into law/business and want a head start. If academics aren't your thing, there's trade schools as well, though they've been having trouble attracting people lately due to a lack of apprenticeships.

Here it's also tiered according to the individual class you attend. For instance, I had A-level English (meaning I had that for all three years instead of the mandatory two) and B-level political science.

And I remember C-level political science (i.e the first year of political science everyone gets) to be mind-numbingly tedious and completely unrepresentative of the actual political process, not to mention extremely limited in the actual material it covered (pretty much just a surface version of how the Danish version worked.) B-level poli-sci was topics like the EU and Turkey's relationship with the EU (before they completely shit the bed), international parliamentary democracy, hooligan culture and the immigrant/refugee experience. Stuff that's very much dynamic, challenging and relevant.

There was also a political bent to our history class, though we skipped Nazi Germany and the War in favor of doing a study of postcolonial Africa and post-Maoist China. The only WW 2-relevant 'big' piece we did was analyzing a 2003 speech by then-Prime Minister, using a World War 2-era historical argument to justify the Iraq War.

edited 24th Mar '17 3:57:04 PM by math792d

It's not quite the same because German schools differentiate much earlier...we get four years of basic schooling and then a recommendation which kind of school will be the best suited (though you are not forced to follow it, it is usually spot on). Gymnasium is eight additional years and only if you finish it you are eligible for university (though you might be able to visit a specified college, like one focussing on economics or trade). Hauptschule is the "lowest" form of schooling geared towards pupils who aren't academically inclined (less politely, it is for the dumb children who are better served in learning a job which allows them to work with their hands or do something which doesn't require too much thinking). Realschule is somewhere in the middle. It is possible to change from one kind of school to another, but doing so upwards isn't that easy because you have to catch up on a lot of stuff.

Ah. Here, everyone has ten years of basic schooling (from 0th to 9th grade) and then you have your pick of the secondary education I mentioned above. Any of them besides trade schools give you access to any university degree that you've completed the necessary courses for (for example, in order to study psychology I needed B-level math, A-level English and Danish, as well as B-level poli-sci.)

We have tried this system with the different level in the so called Gesamtschule, but it doesn't really work out because generally speaking the students which finish the Gesamtschule tend to have a lover level of knowledge than the ones from the Gymnasium. There is something to say for forcing students to learn even stuff they don't like on a high level.

You have mandatory high-level subjects, you just get a little bit of freedom to organise certain subjects differently.

Does mandatory means that you have to take them or that you have to succeed in them? The German education system forces you to do at least decent in everything - you can afford being bad in one subject or two, but too many and you get held back a year...and if you do really badly you get a polite recommendation that your child might be better off on a lower level school. (Yes, it is very success oriented...had its downsides because it doesn't necessarily encourage creativity).

You technically don't need to pass anything, but if you get too low degrees it's useless to go to a higher education level.

See, Denmark has no private universities with high enough quality education to get state-certified - all higher learning is public. And the system essentially works like this:

University A has 150 available 'spots' for aspiring doctors every year. They get 1.000 applications. They then take the 135 people with the highest high school grades and let them in. The remaining 15 seats are carefully selected from people who don't have the grade requirements but may have helpful practical experience, like nurses.

So your high school grades can be a determining factor in your future choice in higher learning.

It's worth noting that none of these are set artificially except teaching. It's all supply and demand.

For the universities it is similar over here...what you can study depends on the so called NC, which is the average of all your marks. But we have the option to wait it out so to speak...meaning, if you don't have quite the right average, you wait a year or so (you can do a social year or learn something else in-between), and eventually, you have the fitting grade. Medicine is an exception though, for that one you need the grade and you have to pass a test to get admitted. It's not a bad system because this way if someone really, really wants to study something but struggled slightly in school, he still has the option to do it eventually.

.. It's not entirely supply and demand - some degrees have demand far exceeding supply. In particular, things like programming and some types of engineering. But those courses can't just take everyone that applies, because, well, that just leads to sky-high drop out rates. So a few courses of study has an entry requirement like "Decent grade in math, and we dont give a fart what the rest of your transcript looks like".

This system does have some hilarious side effects. In particular certain subjects have very limited slots but a whole lot of.. well, romance? to them, which means the average student of that subject ends up being a waaay above average student. The forestry service for example, educates a single digit number of people per year. All of whom have essentially perfect grades. That's the requirement to get in. You also have to be a far more accomplished highschool graduate to become a midwife than to become a doctor which is just.. silly.

edited 25th Mar '17 3:22:14 AM by Izeinsummer

Psychology is another weird one. There are four universities that offer the course, and if you plan to study at Copenhagen University, you do literally need perfect marks in everything in high school. And it's not an issue of quality, it's purely because of demographics. The vast majority of the population lives on or near Zealand (the island where Copenhagen's located), so the requirements are higher.

It's extremely silly.

Russian's caught trying to manipulate the Saar elections

But stay out of the hashtags, the Af D is in full Farage mode.

Edit to avoid double posting:

As of 20:00 the Saarland vote shows as:

40% CDU (up 5%)
30% SPD (down 1%)
13% Left (down 3%)
6% AfD (First timer)
And leaving the Landtag/Not getting in again:
The Greens with 4% (down 1%)
FDP with 3% (actually up nigh 2%)

So we're getting 4 more years of the same, ie Grand Coalition

edited 5th Apr '17 8:30:45 AM by 3of4

Germany to crack down on foreign child marriages:

https://www.thelocal.de/20170405/germany-cracks-down-on-foreign-child-marriages

Germany's cabinet on Wednesday plans to agree a ban on child marriages after the recent mass refugee influx brought in many couples where one or both partners were aged under 18.

Took them long enough. I just hope that judges will in the future also be willing to enforce this. We had recently one case in Freiburg where a 15-years old refugee girl was married to her 27 years old cousin (and pregnant!) and the judge refused to allow the authorities to rescue the girl. Thankfully they appealed and the higher instance acted on that but still... .

...I wish I hadn't just eaten before reading that.

@3of4 What's the party in 2nd place?

SPD

Fixed *blush*

Honestly, I get that certain things take its time in our system, but there are things which are not worth discussing long and should happen pronto!

I dunno, man now she's a single teenage mother without a father to provide. At best she might be forced to be a refugee from the other refugees.

It's iffy, but you gotta be pragmatic and not cause a family disaster in your efforts to help. Not unless you're ready to go all the way for this girl.

Please don't go Iraq on people.

Being separated from a family that married her off might be the best solution in this case. It has been reported that her family has put a lot of pressure on her to accept that marriage even when they were in Germany. She is better of without those guys.

Of course it would also be great if we could prosecute the ones responsible, because what they did to her was not only illegal by German law, but also in Syria.

We don't marry underage girls off to her rapists so that they can provide for them. Just thinking about it how she lived with the guy together even in Germany just sickens me.

edited 5th Apr '17 10:37:17 AM by Zarastro

So you think it's okay for an underage rape victim to stay with her rapist so that he can in theory provide for her?