Education
Teachers’ Association: Remove English from Primary Schools
Eliminating English classes isn’t the only way to improve primary school students’ core education, according to the teachers’ association. photo
© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa
The reading literacy of elementary school students is a concern. The President of the German Teachers’ Association has a suggestion: cut English lessons and instead spend more time on the basics.
The President of the German Teachers’ Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, has spoken out in favor of doing without English classes in elementary schools.
“We believe that English lessons can actually be dispensed with and that you can switch to reading lessons, for example,” he said in the ARD “Morgenmagazin”. “We have to pay more attention to the basics in elementary schools, i.e. reading skills, writing skills, arithmetic,” he explained.
The background is the international primary school reading study (igloo) presented in May, according to which one in four fourth graders in Germany cannot read properly. Internationally, elementary school students in Germany perform worse in reading skills than their peers in many other countries.
At some schools, English lessons could also make sense, explained Meidinger. “But we also have classes, there we have 70, 80, 90 percent of children with an immigrant background who hardly have enough knowledge of German,” he emphasized. Because you set the wrong focus with the English lessons. The knowledge that primary school students are taught is sometimes so different that in secondary schools “almost everyone starts from scratch anyway,” said the teacher.
Eliminating English classes is not the only way to better teach core subjects to elementary school students. Meidinger pleaded for more pre-school support. “And of course we have to take measures against the shortage of teachers. Otherwise we will never get the problem under control.”