This research examines the United States and German public-education systems. The plan of the research will be to set forth overviews of the American and German public-education systems, and then discuss how each system differs from its counterpart on one hand, and overlaps and converges on the other, with a view toward dispelling misconceptions about each country's system and evaluating the extent to which schools are satisfactorily achieving their goals and enabling or hindering student potential. For purposes of this research, the primary focus will be on free public education, which is available to both American and German pupils who have not yet reached college age.
Overview of US Public Education: Background
Education has been a feature of community building and nation building in the United States from the earliest period of European settlement of North America. Yet the educational system of the United States as an organized, unitary, and institutional structure having the official sanction and support of government did not appear in the American culture fully formed. For more than a century after the first Europeans arrived in the New World, a variety of educational structures existed in North America that reflected the specialized backgrounds and experiences of those who had emigrated.
The settlement of Massachusetts Bay brought with it the Puritan version of English norms, which mandated that children be educated within the family. As Johanningmeier (12) points out, formal institutional schooling eventually replaced in-home schooling of children. In 1642 the Colony passed the family law, whereby parents were given responsibility for educating children to be useful and pious citizens. Parents were reminded "that it was the duty of parents to bring up their children so they would know how to read, how to understand and obey the laws of the country, and how to understand and live by the principles of their religion" (Jo...