What did we learn from this blog?

First of all I hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as we liked posting for you. The last question I try to answer is” what did we learn from this blog”, mainly to give you a short conclusion from all the posts we made.

For NRW we can conclude that the guidelines say that they want the pupils to be prepared for a life in a democratic society, therefore they shall learn how the economy works, what the political system looks like and what are the social differences and similarities between different groups of people. But as our own experiences showed the reality is sometimes very different from the guidelines, e.g. that most of the teenagers don’t know what the tasks of Bundestag, Bundesrat and Bundesgerichtshof are. In the NRW elections most parties want full-time schools and community schools and abolish student fees, what shows that most aren’t satisfied with the school system as it is now and want a clear change.

We concluded for NRW that the politic lessons aren’t the only reason for the low participation in elections and that factors like parents as an idol and politic as something “boring” make it hard for young voters to decide.


Comparing the guidelines from Germany with Texas we found out that in America the own history plays an important role for the curriculum, whereas in Germany we only do it in history lessons. What the pupils learn about economy, industry and ecology is almost the same in Germany as in Texas. Striking is the fact that they also include religious aspects in Texas, whereas in Germany we have no topic dealing with that. The main aims like making the pupils critical and active citizens of a democratic state are the same.

The politicians seem to be much more active in Texas than in Germany as we saw on the example of Ron Paul, who visited a college student to talk to him. In general the whole campaigning aspect seems much more important in America than in Germany. That may also be a reason for the young Germans to be bored by politicians, isn’t it?

The young voters of Texas think that it is their duty when they are older and often they don’t have a clear personal political belief. As I have also concluded for Germans the Americans are strongly influenced by parents, family and friends, what makes it difficult to build an own opinion. Striking is the fact that the Texans feel too much influenced by politicians that campaign in their schools, whereas I’ve got the impression that Germany would like that to get in contact with politics.


I hope you learned as much as we did by researching and posting and think about how important it is to show pupils how they can become active voters. Especially for us that want to become teachers it is a task that we have to fulfil.