University of Bremen: Demand for Abitur reform: All languages count!
In addition to learning a second foreign language, a successful language test in any language should also be recognized for a high school diploma. After three years of work, this stimulates a research and development project on transnational mobility at the University of Bremen.
“Learning a second foreign language in school or passing a language test in any language – that should be recognized as a requirement for the general university entrance qualification.” Dita Vogel put together the core of a reform proposal that is being worked out in a project at the University of Bremen and is now being presented to a broader public. Young people who grew up multilingual would benefit from this change. Most of them currently have to study French, Spanish or Latin as their fourth or fifth language if they want to study. Children growing up multilingual often make up half of all children in large western German cities.
How better to deal with the mobility prospects of children and young people?
The proposal is one of several suggestions from the research and development project “Transnational Mobility in Schools (TraMiS)”, which was financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for three years. Researchers from the University of Bremen, in cooperation with twelve committed schools and with the advisory support of the Education and Science Union (GEW) and the Freudenberg Foundation, researched how schools can better deal with the diverse transnational references and mobility prospects of children and young people.
Pupils, parents, teachers and school administrators discussed brief case histories and described what they find problematic and what could be better regulated. The researchers also visited schools abroad to look for ideas for transnationally inclusive schools. Good examples and new ideas were worked out, discussed in the professional world, illustrated with free downloadable comics and illustrated handouts and used in teacher training.
School should not only prepare people for a life in Germany
“If schools only prepare for life in Germany, they will not do justice to the diverse transnational references of today’s children and young people,” says project manager Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, professor for intercultural education at the University of Bremen. How knowledge and attitudes would have to change in schools in the immigrant society, how colleges can expand multilingual and multi-professional and which alternative paths could be taken when accepting immigrants are shown in impulse papers and clear handouts.