Your mom is very wise and sympathisch

These very young Kids always know who belangt too us and who is important  to them. And granny does always a lot for the little ones

Your mum is so classy, just like your charismatic self. Thank you for this heart warming video! Have a delightful time together, such times are so precious! ❤

Your mum is amazingly supportive and it’s so lovely that she lets you live your life in Germany and appreciates the life you have created!🥰 Also from England and just to say, very rare you would find a house with a basement and we mainly have washing machines in the kitchen, which I know a lot of people find strange 🫣

In Germany, you have smaller windows because of energy management. As glass is very bad at insulating, you lose more energy (warmth) if you have bigger windows, and during summer, it will get hot inside more easily (with you having to find a way to cool down the place). Also, if you look at it from a historical point of view, glass was very expensive for a long time, and only rich people could afford big window panes. That's why you will find really small windows in old houses that are not, let's say, castles or palaces.

The pressure comes from the parents. Many roads lead to Rome! 2nd path of education
There is a shortage of trainees in Germany.

About the school system - like your mom said, not every child is academic. True words that very few parents keep in mind. If your child isn't meant to be a professor, which is totally fine, don't push him/her to the limit! Fourth grade shouldn't be torture. Some kids (like I was back then) find it a huge relief when they can finally leave the slower kids behind and really start working in 5th grade! It was heaven for me and I never had to study at all. If your kid is like that and everything is easy, great, go for Gymnasium. Otherwise let your kid live a peaceful life in other school forms and don't turn learning into pure horror. Nowadays you can become wealthy with any Schulabschluss! Seriously, I remember a boy from primary school, who came from a family with very very low education, pretty terrible, criminal people. Poor too, and nobody thought he would go anywhere. He got into the lowest school (Hauptschule) - and guess what, only a few years later I read an article about him being the youngest entrepreneur ever in his field! Totally amazing. If I had a kid, I would keep the stress away from him as much as possible, that's the best thing you can do and a real gift.

I feel a little teary. As my daughter finishes school this year and heads overseas I am about to have to go through what you and your Mum go through being apart. Enjoy every minute of having your Mum there. 💞

Hello MUM so good to see you again SO WELCOME to my country Now i am 63 years old and I still today love my kindergarten time where there where nuns and we were dancing playing wild singing with the nuns we had a great time.I just loved it

Have a great time together ❤️!  Your mom is very nice.

Dear Antoinette, I’m soooo happy for you!!! I’d watched the last video with your mum and seeing her again now just put a big smile on my face ☺️
My own parents live with us in our house. I can’t imagine being separated from them most of the time. It’s great to see you guys together again! Liebe Grüße aus München!

Enjoy every minute, the both of you!

And don’t stress over the school thing. My boys are now in 12 ( writing Abi now)and 10 and what I learned is that there are sooo many paths. It looks scary and restrictive now but I have first hand witnessed a huge majority of the kids I know switch schools up, down and sideways because they find their strengths ( and I’m not speaking about grades)which lead them to the right path for them and so to the correct school.

I too got all stressed back in 4th grade not only for my first but again two years later for my second. And now I think, all that wasted energy! So I can relate to how you and your daughter feel and I also know that only  going through it will alleviate the pressure but just remember, no path is a dead-end with set limits. I promise!

Now enjoy your mum! I look forward to seeing more vlogs!

Windows are smaller traditionally because the winters are long and cold and the coldness come easier through the windows.

Hey Antoinette. It's so great that your mom can stay for over 2 months with you! :) About not having built in wardrobes or closets in Germany, from what I've heard it might be because of building codes. In the US a built in closet is not considered an extra room, but in Germany I believe they are. And that raises the amount of taxes you'd have to pay. This is what I remember seeing in a YT comment several months ago anyways. I'm currently living in a home in the US with very poor storage as well. No closets downstairs and my bedroom closet is very shallow and useless really, so I use a separate clothes rack to hang my clothing. And no linen closet either lol.

You couldn t deny that you are Mother and Daughter. So simular and nice to see.

Lovely Mum ♥ Hugz & kisses from Germany!

Your mom is so adorable!  ♥
Enjoy this PRECIOUS time together!🥰

I enjoyed the video and I am very impressed by your mother traveling the world on her own! That is so cool!

What an interesting conversation! I really do like to hear this 'view from the outside'.

Here's yet another German commenting on our school system, but I think my view is unusual and hopefully interesting.

The main reason why our school system is as it is, is that this is what it has evolved into historically. The Gymnasium dates back to a time when most of the population could not afford to study at all. Boys who wanted to study had to switch to some kind of private prep school to prepare them for the entrance examinations. Some of these were known as Gymnasium. So from a historical perspective, it is great that this school form is so widely available to day, and completely free.

An education system always has conflicting goals. Some of them even affect every teacher and every class. What is the relative importance of academic knowledge, academic skills, social skills, and pupils' school-life balance during childhood? Are you trying to guarantee minimum thresholds,  maximum exceptional results, or optimize the average?

From the point of view of average outcomes, our system is not catastrophic but is significantly worse than some systems with no separation. Average outcomes are stunningly good in Finland, and ever since the first international comparisons came out there have been attempt to make our system more similar to the Finnish one.

I haven't got any numbers, but I would assume that our system is actually better when it comes to high achieving pupils. Supporting them properly is actually a social justice problem because in a way it's a form of special needs. Gifted pupils are easily bored and have been known to do exceptionally poorly in schools that disregard everything but minimum or average levels. But of course it's not more important than the special needs of other pupils. The real reason to support gifted pupils and high achievers is that they are a small but essential element for a thriving society.

It's different in more rural areas, but in big cities the school separation leads to severe social problems in the schools that don't prepare for university. Without the separation, these problems wouldn't be so bad, but they would also affect Gymnasium far more. So the separation improves the results for higher achievers while throwing the lower achievers (at least in cities) under a bus. It also makes things a bit easier for teachers in all school forms.

Here is why I think switching our school system would be dangerous. The separation, with its built-in biases and discrimination against not just less talented pupils but also pupils from a lower socio-economic background, is part of an important compromise that works very well. The German education system is theoretically completely democratic. School is completely free if you don't choose  a private schools. Private schools are relatively rare, not really better than public schools, and aren't allowed to charge astronomical fees. University is completely free and of very high quality.

The elites in every industrial society want to provide their offspring an advantage in life. As these elites ultimately control the politics regardless of how people vote, systems with free university are not usually stable. Even in Germany there were attempts a few decades ago to introduce tuition fees. Fortunately the only thing they managed to push through was punitive fees for very long-term students, students collecting many degrees and non-EU students, and even these punitive fees only exist in some of the states and are significantly less than regular tuition for domestic students in English-speaking countries.

I think the reason we didn't get tuition fees for everyone is that the interest of the elites to push them through wasn't sufficiently high. And it wasn't sufficiently high because their offspring gets enough advantages in the school system simply from not having to worry about the situation at home, having parents who want them to get grades and are prepared for private lessons if they are struggling, and if necessary will put them into private schools that specialize on pushing low achievers through the system.

Without the school separation, important elements of this hidden method of preferring elite children would break down. A radical school reform would most likely result in universal tuition fees for universities, which would gradually increase to become very substantial. That would be catastrophic for German society because it would remove a major mechanism of upward social mobility:

Every German pupil who is sufficiently talented has a very good chance of studying. They just need to get Abitur (the exam after 12 or 13 years of school that provides entry to essentially every field of study). If they are very talented, the only thing that can go wrong (and sometimes does) is the desire or necessity to start earning an income as early as possible, which can prevent them from going to Gymnasium. But most of the really talented students will pass this hurdle. Because universities are free and you can even work on the side (reducing your studies to part-time if required), they don't need their parents' support even if they don't get a scholarship. They just can't support their parents while they are studying.

We can't afford to lose this upward mobility, and therefore we can't afford radical reforms of our school system that would remove the hidden preference for elite children.