School meeting

On Friday I asked B if the kids could stay at their place Saturday afternoon while we went to the meeting and he said it was no problem (they have kids the same age to play with). We dropped the kids off and drove up to the school. In the note we got we understood that the meeting was supposed to start at 3pm but when we got there it was already underway (I later found that it started at 2pm) so we had to walk in while they were discussing something and all eyes were on us as we found a place to sit down and then people asked us to sit in several different places. We finally ended up sitting next to F who helped translate for us. We filled out some paperwork for joining the group (it is legally organized as some kind of "club") and handed in the paperwork, then they announced that we were joining and held a vote to see if we could join. We passed so that meant that we could then vote. The first part of the meeting after we arrived discussed that they had just achieved some kind of status with the government and could start receiving money from the province now, and there was an audit of their finances. The next point was to vote to release the council from legal responsibility for their decisions for a year and that all members would share responsibility, at which the headmaster objected and it did not pass. They took a break and then we got on to the big issue. Six of the parents had written a letter to the province government that their kids were not learning enough in school and there was a point on the agenda to vote on that the headmaster was not doing his job correctly and a call to look for a replacement. Then there were separate points for each of the teachers. The teachers said that they agreed with the headmasters philosophy and if the first vote passed they would quit with him because they did not want to work in a school that the parents of the children were against. Then the long drawn out part of the discussion began. Essentially it was a public humiliation of the headmaster and teachers. There was a call for parents to say what they didn't like and a few volunteered, one said that he worked in a garden and if he built something and it didn't work he took it apart and rebuilt it (this would seem like a reference to the school staff but he was referring to the children) then another guy said he ran a business building/repairing ships and a team either worked well and built things quickly or were slow and need to be fired. Then a couple of parents talked about how their kids handwriting was not good enough (what is this obsession in Europe with handwriting?), and they have been worried about it for years. My opinion on this is kids are not machines to be taken apart and rebuilt, nor to be taught as quickly as possible, and it is our job as parents to also teach our kids, especially if we are concerned about something (and especially since in Germany the kids are only at school for half a school day compared to many other western countries). I have worked hard at home teaching my kids after I get home from work, why can't these other parents also do this. Furthermore, I really like the self directed teaching style the school has. Most of what I really learned I learned on my own, not at public school. If we force kids to learn a list of subjects on a given schedule then they will learn to be told what to do and not think for themselves. If we encourage pursuit of their own interests, they will learn to learn on their own. Of course their is a balance between extremes, but the public schools (in Germany and the US), in my opinion, are not anywhere near this balance. Also, as parents we all have different skills, backgrounds and training, why can't we volunteer teaching the kids at the school to help out the teachers and give more topics to be available. Anyway, they went on and on about this and then a lengthy session devoted to changing the wording in the resolution so that it was stated and restated in front of everyone how bad a job the teachers were doing (which is also a political trick done in the US media, something is repeated many times until the majority of people believe it), then there was a call for each of the parents in turn to say what they didn't like about the teachers, which fortunately did not pass. (There are plenty of German public schools around, if they want their kids trained in that manner why not send them to the public school instead of destroying this one by making it more like the public schools and removing the option for everyone. This school was a/the major factor in us being able to stay and live and work in Germany.) Finally we got to the vote, which was called to be by secret ballot then there was a big drama as they wrote the results out on a presentation board then covered them to be unveiled officially the next minute. Both V and I voted but we were in the minority and the resolution passed 38 to 14, with some abstainers. At that point the headmaster and teachers left the meeting (there was no point in their staying) and V and I walked out with them.

The kids were very sad when we told them the outcome. Two of them have been wonderful with T helping him adjust to living here, after the first year with the public school and M is very fond of one of the teachers. They will stay to work until the end of the year but then all new teachers and a headmaster will have to be hired for the next school year.