Amok Mama: Thou shalt not send thy kid to private school

Comments

• German schools

  http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/briefing-papers/submission-un-human-rights-committee-review-germany?utm_source=Open+Society+Institute&utm_campaign=6f35ef5018-justice-20121018&utm_medium=email

  Posted by Jacinta Nandi October 21, 2012 22:36:09

• let the other children suffer...

  I agree with your parents - all three of them (they sound like fun) - its a cop out to send your child to a private school in this case. You can't beat the system by opting out and paying for a better one for your child. If you send him to the local school then you can get involved in making the place less racist for all children. As it is all you are doing is supporting a two tier education system.

  Posted by Bree McKilligan October 07, 2012 18:00:45

• Rico's school

  is really PC, anti-racist & that. It's just like the school I went to when I was growing up....but yeah, I do think a bit that the more you pay, the whiter you become, even in Germany.

  Posted by Jacinta Nandi October 03, 2012 11:49:27

• Education - right or commodity?

  I wonder, Jacinta - if your argument is for private schools on the basis of some form of racism in the public ones - whether it's the Anglo-Saxon attitude "I deserve better if I pay for it" that drove your decision. If racism comes on the plate of private schools, too, will you send "it" back to the "kitchen"?

  Posted by Mike October 03, 2012 10:43:38

• private decisions

  I think i would send my kid to the local multi-kulti state school, if I didn't suspect the German state school system of being racist. I think I WOULD, I think I'd send him to the local state school in England. I was feeling really guilty about sending him to private school, but when I went to register him at the local school - you have to register them at the local school first - I went into the office and was filling out the form. A dad w. Migrationshintergrund came in, he was looking for his kids, his German wasn't perfect PERFECT perfect. After he left the room, the secretary goes to the Hausmeister: "Teilweise sind die Araber noch schlimmer als die Turken." There was me in there, filling in the form, there was a group of kids in there, and she said that. I am not saying the teachers and staff at my primary school in Britain weren't racist - but if they were, they generally kept it to themselves (the ones who weren't about to retire, that is.) I think I'd trust Rico to be bright enough to do well at a school w. loads of "problem kids" if I trusted the teachers and the system but I used to teach at primary schools around Berlin - I used to be a classroom assistant and after that I did Frühenglisch - and the teachers are openly racist. There's open racism, there really is. And I don't even care that much about his academic progress, I just don't want him having his, you know, spirit stunted. But I do actually think my parents are right. I think the decision I've made is unjustifiable. I can't justify it. It's not okay. It's totally unsolidaric, even though, unfortunately, that's not a real word.

  Posted by Jacinta Nandi October 03, 2012 10:12:06

• local schools

  re Laurie Taylor's comment- of course where to send your kid to school is a private/personal decision but isn't the personal the political and the two often meet when making that decision. If English schools were nearer or cheaper than I'd do as Jacinta but it's almost certain that my eldest will go to a local school. I'm not that worried as the kita my kids go to is overwhelmiongly 'foreign' and to be honest the scary families are the white trash Berliners and not the Turks, Arabs or Yugoslavs. Among my aquaintances though there are many families who decided (perhaps mistakenly) to send their kids to a posh kita (white, middle class) and they are now terrified that their kid will end up in a school with 80% 'non-German' kids. I can sort of understand their fear of the unknown but what is it they and Jacinta and her friends are concerned about. Are the families that send their kids to local schools too foreign, too poor, too brown, too stupid? Aren't these the same people you bump into in the supermarket or the park. Like I say if I had the opportunity I'd do as Jacinta so I claim no moral high ground I'm just puzzled and perturbed by peoples' attitudes to these things.

  Posted by Dwight Yoemans October 03, 2012 00:30:03

• amok mama

  jacinta, as usual, your writing is funny, true and a poignant report from Out on a Limb. I appreciate your family's views, but our children and their education is a really " private" decision, and you made it with love.

  Posted by Laurie Taylor October 02, 2012 19:01:13