My family members have taken different paths through the German educational system. To offer you more insight, I interviewed my cousins and my brother. In my first interview, I’m speaking to my cousin Thorsten, 26, who went to school in Germany and Canada. He thinks schools should offer a broad-based education to further society’s cohesion.

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During my studies I had several periods of teaching practice where we worked in state schools as language teachers for four to six weeks. I dealt with both a gymnasium, where mostly talented pupils study, and a typical school on the outskirts of my city. So, I can compare them and share a couple of my ideas about what I saw there.

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Kathrin’s recent entry mentioned Simon, whose worries as a pupil made me think about something relating to education beyond universities. A favorite topic among those getting ready to graduate: the gap year.

As I understand, it’s quite popular in Western countries. A spare year is open to you; it allows you to broaden your horizons while learning something new or doing some part-time work – or simply travel. One of its aims is to give you some extra time to plan your future. It’s natural that your interests may lie in different spheres by the end of school – so I think it’s good to take some time to think them over and decide where you want your path to lead. But for some reason, this positive phenomenon is practically unknown in lots of countries, including Russia. Why?

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Recently, Emmy wrote about the effects of and potential for e-learning in Kenya. In Germany, the Internet has changed the way educational content can be accessed and how it is taught at schools.

For instance, I use a lot of websites to look up words or study vocabulary. Each week in Spanish class at my university, another person uploaded the most recent vocabulary to the website Vokker. All of my classmates could then access them and study at home.

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We’ve got warm weather and sunny skies right now in Germany. Most kids here are now going to open air pools, looking forward to six weeks of summer holidays. But some are also afraid of the end of the school year. Their grades aren’t good enough to go on to the next class level or to stay at their school. I talked with one of my mom’s friends, Gaby, about such worries.

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I was having breakfast with my parents on Sunday. My mom is an English teacher, and she was grading papers. She asked me to take a look at some writing by her students.

“Do you think I’m being too demanding? This is for CAE [Cambridge English: Advanced] level,” she asked.

I pondered several things and exchanged ideas with her. It was during this conversation that I recalled how exactly I came to write in English as I do today.

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After reading Emmy’s entry about Kenya’s system of education and its impact on young people’s choices, I’d like to talk about the same issue in my country.

Things are set up differently in Russia. Our schools use a 3-5-2 system. The first two steps are: primary school, which usually takes 3 years, and secondary school, which takes 5. Both are compulsory. Then there’s a choice between attending high school for 2 more years and getting the right to enter a full-time university or leaving school and doing a vocational training program.

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I ran into some friends from school at a birthday party this weekend. A lot of my friends studied humanities or social sciences – some of them were able to find jobs rather quickly; others needed more time. I myself participated in my first assessment center (AC) with a big German company last week as part of my job search.

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Last year, I finished my degree in American studies, political science and communications. That means I’ve completed the long journey through Germany’s educational institutions: elementary school, the Gymnasium (high school) and the university are all behind me now.

I think I’ve had a lot of freedom, especially starting in the 11th grade. That’s when we’re able to start choosing some courses that we want to focus on and like the most. But when we think back to our time in school, we remember the people more than all of the studying.

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