Note: Trystan, super cool guy that he is, is going away on a little vacation, so he’ll be gone for a week or so. While he’s away, I’m going to fill in for him and start his first letter, if that’s okay. (Who is the “I” in this, you ask? It’s Ms. Waldner!)
So I’m excited that we’ve been able to pair up with another class of students who’ve already learned a lot about Canada and even our own province of Saskatchewan. My first question to you would be why? Why are you learning in German high school about a province in Canada?
In our ELA class, which stands for English Language Arts, by the way, we’re studying a Unit on Equality. All the literature, stories/poems/essays/films are about that topic and meant to help the Gr 10s think of new ideas or look at old ideas in a new way. I’m asking them some pretty tough questions, too, like whether they think Affirmative Action is a good thing in our society. So I’ll ask it of you? 🙂
Affirmative Action likely exists in Germany, too. It’s in many democracies, for sure. It’s a practice or policy used in hiring people for jobs or to allow openings for training of skills where a certain number of spots for a job/training are left open for people of a certain background. An example is that the University of Saskatchewan, one of our province’s two Universities, just announced that they’re about to create room in the College of Medicine for people who come from lower income backgrounds. It’s easy to understand how people with privilege and money can be successful in school and go on to medical school, but lots of young people are very bright/smart in school but don’t have the funds to try to become a doctor. The university wants to help those people.
Now the argument is – what about the rest of us? If I’m a bright person who tried hard in school and want to go to medical school, but can’t afford it, how would I feel now that I hear someone less fortunate than me gets to “because” of that less fortunate circumstance. Why can’t I get a shot to go for free? Is it fair? Is fair the same as “equal”?
You see how I ask tough questions of these Gr 10 students?
What do you think? Do you have anything like Affirmative Action in Germany? What types of things could you see it being used for, if anything?
Trystan will be back and he can take over, but I’ll exchange ideas with you for now. (You can brag about how cool it is to have a teacher for a penpal. Don’t deny it – it’s the most cool of all the penpals there were to pick from!)
We look forward to hearing from you!
Hello Ms. Waldner
For your first Question, it was actually my idea that we make something with Canada because I like the American English more than the Britain one. “Why Canada and not USA”? Nah I don’t know but I don’t like the USA for some reasons, there Weapon law is a good example.
Second question: Competence counts. Whoever is better (example: working) suited for the job should be taken.
Now to your last question… …well… …that is a really hard question that I can’t answer because I can’t figure out how this feels.
Hi Elias,
I didn’t realize you had the honour of making that decision to study Canada. I hope you were happy with your final choice! The reality is that Canadians are very similar to Americans in many ways. If you met one on the street somewhere, it wouldn’t be obvious right away whether you were talking to an American or Canadian, but once you hit on certain topics it would become much more clear. I don’t know if you have American Satellite channels in Germany, but Canada only has a few made-in-Canada channels or show, whereas nearly everyone in Canada has cable or satellite and it’s mostly American media we engage with. Song artists, movies, tv shows, etc – America really pushes it out. But then there are aspects of our values and treatment towards other people that, I think, Canadians are a bit more kind and open about. That’s not to say some American’s can’t be as open-minded as Canadians or there aren’t also some Canadians who are close-minded like an arrogant American.
I heard something startling – about a young Jewish boy in Germany who was beat up by other students, Muslim students, once he’d mentioned aloud in class that he was Jewish. Had you heard about that? And there’s recently been other attacks and events happening in Europe this past week. Does it make you nervous or do you become immune to it all? In our class here, one student was saying in class that he was nervous to go out, go to a city, in case there was violence. It’s hard to find the balance between fear and trust, isn’t it?
But, you have to continue living your life. We don’t want to hide away and live in fear.
Anyway, hope you’re well there! Looking forward to hearing from your class again soon.
Ms. Waldner
Hello Ms Waldner,
To be honest I thought that people from Canadian and USA are pretty different. I hope I didn’t offended anyone, theoretically I sad that I don’t like you and I`m sorry if I did.
But in Germany it is the case that the people from the federal states are almost completely different. The biggest difference is the speech every state got his own dialect.
English: Potato
German: Kartoffel Bavaria: Erdapfel
Swabia: Grombiera
Thuringia: Grundbirne
Bavarian people are mostly like “I don’t care” and sometimes grumpy.
People from Swabia are very calm and you can have a nice talk with them
Thuringia people although are very clumsy but always funny.
That’s just a few differences in Germany and Germany isn’t even a big land I mean it`s not small but still.