The educational problems of foreign children of different nationalities in West Germany

Abstract

According to the latest available statistics (Kultusministerkonferenz, 1984), 831,339 foreign children were registered in German schools in the autumn of 1983 (7.8 per cent of the total school population). Most of them were children of labourers who have come from Mediterranean countries in the course of the last twenty years. Thus, among 831,339 foreign school children, there were 436,151 Turks, 89,503 Yugoslavs, 88,141 Italians, 55,670 Greeks, 27,990 Spaniards, and 19,683 Portuguese. Most of these children have spent their infancy in their home countries, which have different socio-cultural backgrounds. They come to Germany with little or no knowledge of the German language, and must attend school here because of compulsory education in Germany. It is to be expected that the children of different nationalities in West Germany have to face different educational, social, and emotional problems, due to their different linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds. To study these differences, class teachers of 901 foreign children of different nationalities were requested to give individual information upon each child with the help of a standardized questionnaire. Among the children for whom the information was obtained were 111 Yugoslavs, 253 Italians, 218 Spaniards, 37 Portuguese, 114 Greeks, and 155 Turks. The questionnaire contained questions on the school and language achievements of the foreign children, their classroom behaviour, their social integration in the class, their personality traits, and their family. The inquiry was conducted in Remscheid, Solingen, Wuppertal, and in nine other towns in the surrounding areas of Bergisches Land and Western Ruhr District. This area is a part of a highly industrialized area of North Rhine-Westphalia, where the proportion of foreign labourers is comparatively