The steady erosion of academic rigor in German schools

German teachers are a privileged species. Most of us enjoy the status of a Beamter, a tenured civil servant. We can be dismissed only after a serious criminal conviction, we are exempt from social-insurance contributions and even our mortgage rates are lower. Such comfort discourages dissent. Yet, after more than 25 years as a pampered Beamter, I find myself overwhelmed, not by the teaching load or the students, but by the accelerating erosion of academic standards.

Having taught English, history and Latin at four different Gymnasien, I have learned that challenging students is now frowned upon by both bureaucrats and politicians. Nearly all my colleagues agree that standards have plummeted. A mathematics teacher tells me that assignments he set 20 years ago for his older students would now be beyond even the brightest. One thing is certain: the children are not to blame.

The decline began in 1964, when philosopher Georg Picht published The German Education Catastrophe, calling for a drastic expansion in the number of college-eligible high-school graduates. Until then, only those who graduated from a Gymnasium, the equivalent of a selective high school, qualified. Picht’s alarmism found ready ears. In 1960, 7 percent of students left school with college-level results; today, more than half do. The inflation of academic credentials accelerated with the 1999 EU Bologna reforms, which dismantled the traditional and rigorous European degree structure and replaced it with the Anglo-American model. Only medicine and law escaped. The effect has been the slow death of Germany’s once-superb vocational system. Many small- and medium-sized businesses no longer offer apprenticeships but almost anyone who has finished high school can find some comfy course at college. More than 70 German universities now offer degrees in gender studies. It’s dumbing all the way down.

As college places were massively expanded, the Gymnasien had to lower their entry thresholds to keep pace with the demand for more and more students. Since 2002, in my own state of North Rhine-Westphalia, parents have had the right to choose their child’s secondary school, regardless of their teachers’ recommendations. Children deemed unready for the Gymnasium are admitted and, once enrolled, bureaucratic obstacles prevent them from being moved to a more suitable high school.

The deterioration has been striking in my subjects. Since 2007, students have been allowed to use dictionaries in English exams, which discourages them from memorizing vocabulary. That same year, the Zentralabitur – a centralized state exam – replaced teacher-written finals. Previously, each school designed its own papers, tailored to what had been taught. Now, vague, homogenized curricula require little factual knowledge. History was replaced by the nebulous goal of “intercultural communicative competence.”

Objective grading once relied on the Fehlerquotient (number of grammatical errors per hundred words). This was derided as “too rigid,” replaced by an imprecise points system designed to boost marks. Marks are awarded for trivialities, such as “structuring” a text. Students quickly learn the formula: use a few stylistic devices – enumerations, metaphors, repetitions – and you can be seen to analyze anything. Teaching to the test has replaced teaching to think. Real objectivity would require blind marking, external examiners and anonymized papers – none of which exist.

When I attended a Gymnasium in the 1980s, advanced English students were required to study an entire Shakespeare play. Later, this became selected scenes, then scenes from film versions. In 2023, the Bard was dropped entirely, replaced by the study of “questions of identity and gender.”

Since 1970, North Rhine-Westphalia has had only eight years of non-leftist control over education. Progressivism now permeates every level. Among teachers, Green sympathies are disproportionately high. Of the 17 newspaper articles used in exams between 2020 and 2025, not one came from a conservative source. The Guardian and the New York Times dominate.

Behind all this lies the creed of “competence orientation.” Grammar, spelling and factual knowledge are dismissed as obsolete. It is enough to “communicate effectively.” Why, then, read Shakespeare? Why learn a soliloquy by heart? In biology and geography, exams no longer test knowledge but the ability to interpret pre-packaged “material” – charts, graphs and snippets of text. A colleague who marks geography papers believes anyone with common sense and patience has a decent chance of passing.

Latin, too, has been softened. Translation from German to Latin is banned as it is “too difficult.” Lessons are increasingly padded with Roman culture and history.

When the state exam was introduced, most teachers welcomed it because it meant less work. I realized something had gone horribly wrong when I graded a history paper by a gifted pupil who provided precise dates, facts and definitions. The new state syllabus allowed only limited marks for such content. I only managed to salvage her grade by awarding her full points elsewhere.

Across all subjects, measurable trivia has replaced genuine learning. Multiple choice has supplanted multiple perspectives. Today’s “competence orientation” manufactures compliant consumers who consult Wikipedia or ChatGPT for ready answers. To criticize “competence orientation” is near-heresy; every mainstream party endorses it. It was introduced in my state under a Green minister, continued by a Liberal and remains untouched under a Christian Democrat. For the left, it serves egalitarianism; for Liberals, it produces plentiful but pliant employees. The Christian Democrats’ acquiescence is harder to fathom. But the result of all this is clear enough. In 2011, a student of mine wrote at the end of a Shakespeare exam: “Students don’t have to learn any more facts. Studying in this way is boring. Students will die of boredom.” If only I could have given her full marks.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.