From country to country school systems vary. Today I, as a German exchange student, want to share some differences I have noticed. First of all, a huge difference between Germany and the US are the classes. While in Germany everybody has the same classes on the same level and little or no opportunity to choose, you have a huge variety of classes you can take in America. The possibility to choose on your own and take classes that don’t even exist in your country back home is something many exchange students enjoy about the US school system. Physics, math, French and Spanish: these are typical European classes while forensics, ceramics, creative writing or broadcast media are not offered.
Back home in Germany my schedule changes every day, and I have way more classes in total compared to here. Another difference I noticed is the teacher student relationship. Here teachers and students have much friendlier relationships with each other. Teachers are really understanding here while I would describe it way more authoritarian in Germany.
A area you cannot avoid comparing these countries in is the food. My German school has a concession stand for our little 20 minute breaks that we have after the 2nd and 4th period and serves Italian inspired food in the big 1hour break that we have after 6th period if we have longer school. Of course nobody is required to have it. Students are more likely to have the cafeteria food in the younger grades. As they get older more and more students start to go outside during the big lunch break and get food at the local supermarket. The food also switches from school to school depending on which cafeteria service they hire.
Americans are always surprised when I tell them that school sports do not exist in Europe! It is crazy to think that sports and the school spirit play such an important role here. But no: European schools don’t really offer sports. To go to school means exclusively going to classes to learn something. After school many participate in club sports that are nonschoolrelated or, when students get older, they are more likely to have a gym membership. Regarding how different schools are it is so interesting to go abroad and experience another school system. I hope you had fun reading this article and learned something new!
