A VERY interesting concept!!!!

Ok, I promise you that this is not turning into a school complaint blog. It has been a big transition for me sending Bailey and Camden back to school, and I find so many things so irritating about our school system. As I ponder all of the different worries (ie. why does my 8th grader who is taking 2 high school classes never have any homework, but has straight A's, yet my 6th grader spends all night EVERY night doing homework, only to find out that his test that he studied very hard for and got an A on, is equivalent to a homework grade?), I got to thinking about my second grader... It all started when I was quizzing Camden weekly for his spelling test. Yes, you remember those spelling tests (they haven't changed a bit from when we were kids - it is the same way it has "always been done.") I got to thinking, Mia never had a "spelling test." Last year, her teacher would every once in a while announce that they were having a surprise quiz in class, but there were never any lists or anything to prepare with. She always did perfectly fine on them. Today was the first time she has ever come home to study for a quiz. Her quiz is actually a dictation. She has an entire paragraph to study with; correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. In German it is extra tricky, because all nouns are capitalized (so you have to understand what a noun is too).  It is her first month of school, never had spelling lists or anything, but can form a paragraph, in beautiful cursive, with correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. I always wondered how the German kids by 6th grade can learn 3 languages, biology, religion etc.. I think it might be because they combine things that seem to take us forever to master (instead of focusing on a single word, they learn the entire concept of writing and sentence structure at the same time). Instead of learning to print and then write in cursive, they learn a denelian-like print, and then they can easily combine the letters in cursive. I always say, "work smarter not harder", and this seems to be true. She has basically only had a 1/2 a year of school (because they only go to school until 11:00 or 12:00 each day, and they don't learn any academics in kindergarten). Why does our system not look at some of these other societies? Another VERY interesting concept is that Homework is not considered part of the grading in Germany. I was told that it would be "unfair" to count homework in the grade, because some (more educated) parents would be able to help, yet other parents would not be able to help at all. It would be socially unfair. It is also the responsibility of the student to study, not the parents. I thought that was very interesting as well - just another big difference. O.K, again, thank you for listening, and I promise you I will try to curb my school complaint posts from here on out :-).