Every Tuesday is a school day.
Maybe that’s nothing special, but for a 4-year-old boy who has recently moved to Germany, it’s actually quite unusual here.
In Germany, children don’t start school until they’re 6. Before that, they don’t go to preschool, but to a “Kita.”
(A few months ago, I thought that word was really silly, but as we all know, you get used to everything, and now I find myself saying it more often than I’d ever like. “Kita” is short for “Kindertagesstätte.” And that, in turn, is a very long way of saying “Kindergarten,” as it was still commonly called in my day.)
So, childcare.
Not school.
They can play to their hearts’ content there. Make friends. They can climb, romp around, learn songs, wash their hands together, eat together, do crafts together, and look at books together. Every week they go on an “Ausflug” (a short outing to the woods, one stop on the S-Bahn, or just to the next new playground—no matter how small or short the outing is—for kids, it’s a big adventure). Sometimes they even have an intern who can sing Dutch songs, because she grew up there for part of her life. All of that is possible.
At least, it’s possible at our daycare. Which I’m very happy about. Where the groups are small and everything is fairly straightforward. Where the parents know each other well and get along easily. Where every child gets personal attention, because there’s time and space for it.
And yet, and yet—wouldn’t it be nice if Max could just start learning some letters too? Sit still in a classroom? Be given tasks and assignments? Things he’d have been doing for a long time now if we’d stayed in the Netherlands?
Well, it turns out that’s possible. On my search for Sinterklaas in Berlin (and he does exist—more on that in the next blog), I stumbled upon a fascinating link via the Dutch Embassy’s website: The Dutch School.
So it really exists. In Berlin. And it’s exactly what it sounds like: classes for kids ages 4 to 12, with Dutch teachers, a schedule, field trips, Queen’s Day, report cards, and even the CITO test.
You can’t go there every day, though—just a few hours once a week. So now, every Tuesday, Max travels pretty much across the entire city to be taught by Ms. Marion in a beautiful old red school building. In Dutch, with other German-Dutch children whose parents, too, once wanted an international relationship—and all those boys and girls in the classes are the result of that.
The school guide says they learn letters the Dutch way. One per month. And after Max’s first “lesson,” I already noticed a clear difference from daycare. They had clapped out syllables. And then had to write down how many syllables they’d heard. Or underline the first word in a sentence.
Unthinkable at German daycare. Germans abhor the idea of children “having to” learn something early on. Because that’s how they see it. Children should stay little for as long as possible. Here, children learn letters relatively late. And slowly. In recent years, the government has been trying to encourage children to start school as early as age 5. But most parents hate that idea. And they resist it. They regularly ask for a one-year deferral.
Max thinks it’s great. As far as I can tell, since parents aren’t in the classroom, of course. As soon as he walks in, he puts his workbook on the shelf designated for that purpose. He has a pencil case with his own pens and a pair of scissors. And he automatically places it next to the other children’s. He sits down in a chair. Slides up to a table. And listens to the instructions.
I’m not exactly sure yet how he’s doing it—whether he really draws all the lines on the worksheets himself or colors in all the circles on his own—but I think he does. After just three classes, I’m already impressed.
And Grandma and Grandpa back in the Netherlands will be too, if we can just show them a Dutch report card at Christmas. From a Dutch school. Even though we live in Berlin.
Sometimes the world is just absolutely amazing.
