Sixth Former Oliver Jantz, of Newport, RI, and Munich, Germany, addressed the School community at Church Assembly on Thursday, April 7. Oli spoke of how grateful he is to have left the German school system and come to Portsmouth Abbey for his high school education, a decision that initially terrified him. The full transcript of Oli's talk follows.
Imagine a place where your GPA in fourth grade determines what you will do for the rest of your life. Growing up in Germany, I never realized how cruel, but brutally efficient, the German school system is. In fourth grade every student is tested and then all the students are split up into three different schools, called Hauptschule, Realschule, and Gymnasium. It's like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter: your school is your future and your fate. The top third of the students, those with the highest scores, are permitted to attend Gymnasium, beginning in fifth grade. Gymnasium is the college-prep track, and unless you have gone to Gymnasium you can't move on to study at a University or pursue any career which requires an advanced degree. In other words, when you are nine years old, the German government decides whether you'll ever be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or other professional. The middle third of students who are sent to Realschule go on to be trained craftsmen such as electricians, plumbers, or welders. I'm going to leave it to your imagination what the lower third of students, the ones who are sent to Hauptschule, go on to be later in life. Put it this way: in Gymnasium students can take Ancient Greek. At Hauptschule you don't take Greek; instead, you take a course called "Introduction to the World of Work," and your education ends after ninth or tenth grade, when you are between fifteen and seventeen years old.
Luckily, I managed to make it into Gymnasium. However, once I started attending Gymnasium I spent more time horsing around with my friends than applying myself. I slacked off, and my grades definitely reflected that. I was content with C's, never thought about my future, and wasn't motivated to better myself in any way. I thought I would just coast through school and figure things out later. Then my parents made a decision which would change my life.
The summer after seventh grade, I attended a hockey camp in the Czech Republic. When I got back home, my parents wanted to talk to me. They told me that they were getting a divorce and that I had a choice to make. I could stay in Germany with my father and continue at Gymnasium, or I could move to America with my mother and enroll in school here. I was terrified that I had to make a decision which would so greatly impact the entire rest of my life. But I decided to go ahead and try something new and unknown. So it was Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland and Hello, United States of America.
What surprised me most on my first day of school in the US was the relationships each teacher seemed to have with every individual student. In Germany the teachers are very formal and detached. There's hardly any interaction between teacher and student. The teacher walks into the classroom, presents the material in a lecture straight from the notes. There's no discussion, and since there are thirty or forty students in a class a seminar wouldn't work, anyhow. When the bell rings the teacher stops lecturing and walks out. German teachers couldn't care less whether you pass or fail—that's your problem, not theirs. There's never a Conference period and no offer of extra help.
I used to dread going to school. The German school day is long and relentless. I usually had eight classes every day: Math, German, Latin, Physics, Geography, History, Religion, and Art. Classes ran straight through except for a twenty-minute morning break and twenty minutes for lunch. Once a week the school day was extended and didn't finish until five or six o'clock in the evening. On other days, after classes I would have to rush home and then be driven across the city to play club hockey, because in Germany schools don't have athletic programs or team sports.
The German school system is rigorous, that's for sure, but I ask myself every day how it is that I am learning and understanding more here at the Abbey than I ever would have in Germany. It's simple. The teachers and atmosphere at this school engaged me and made me realize the importance of education. Here I can take English with Mr. Pag and only twelve or thirteen other students. It's like learning with a friend—Mr. Pag makes the subject interesting, wants us to like it, and is happy to help us. English used to be my worst subject, but now it's my best. Here, the door doesn't close on your future when you are in fourth grade, and the teachers don't turn their back on you when you are nine years old, or twelve, or even eighteen. They believe in your potential. They believe anyone can make a new start and change his ways. Which is a good thing for some of us sitting in the Church this morning.
I don't have any profound lesson to impart today, just this: I will forever be thankful for the chance to go to a school like this.
Thank you.