Linh couldn’t believe her eyes. As light and white as feathers, thousands of little flakes were drifting down to earth. It was the first snow she had seen in her life. A lot of things were new to the 17-year-old schoolgirl from Hanoi who arrived in February 2009: the airliner to Germany, the journey by high-speed train and learning in a multicultural class. Linh belongs to a group of 65 school students from ten nations who were able to improve their German for three weeks at the Goethe Institute in Freiburg. The language course in the university town in Breisgau is just one of many enabling young people from around the globe to get to know Germany this year. Young people like Linh, who are travelling at the invitation of Goethe-Institut, are among the best German students and come from schools that are already successfully integrated in the Pasch programme. During their stay the scholarship holders visit successful businesses, cultural and sports events. They join in discussions on topical subjects with scientists, journalists and politicians. The idea is for them to build long-term, stable relationships with Germany, helped by individual teaching in small classes designed for their language skills, and intense contacts with the country and its people. This is the key objective of Schools: Partners for the Future (Pasch), an initiative launched at the beginning of 2008 under its patron Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The aim is to develop a world-spanning network of 1,000 partner schools over a three-year period. Alongside the Central Agency for Schools Abroad (ZfA), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Educational Exchange Service (PAD), Goethe-Institut plays a central role in implementing the programme.
Roland Stumpf, head of Goethe-Institut’s language department in Hanoi, has both the mission and the desire to awaken interest in German. “We gained a very reliable partner with the privately run Lomonossow School and its forward-looking director Nguyen Phu Cuong. He was the first to immediately grasp the opportunities offered by the Pasch programme and clear away any obstacles.” Nguyen, who headed the International School in Hanoi for many years, recognizes the great value of foreign languages. Since the autumn of 2008 his school has been teaching not only English, French, Chinese and Japanese, but also German in class at the sixth and the tenth grade. The state school system only schedules two lessons a week for the second foreign language. “But of course, that’s not enough for early, intense foreign language acquisition,” explains Roland Stumpf. He says that, providing the authorities agree, the head of the school is planning to offer additional German lessons as early as first grade beginning this autumn. Linh is one of the 2,500 children being taught in 88 classes at the Lomonossow School. She belongs to the first generation of children learning German at the school from the tenth grade on. But things can be tough at times. Her teacher Trinh Thi Chau encourages her. She knows how it feels when you’re gradually getting to know a new language and an unfamiliar culture. She studied German as a foreign language in Hanoi. Now, as a teacher in the Pasch programme, she’s attending Goethe-Institut in-service training courses in the theory and methodology of teaching. Meanwhile, Linh’s experiences in Germany are unforgettable, and she wants to study there later, thanks to her positive impressions, and not just her memories of snow.
Roughly 3,000 kilometres to the west by air from Hanoi, 13-year-old Bhavya Bandaru is holding her exam results in her hand. “95 points out of 100,” she says, beaming. Bhavya has been learning German for four years as her third foreign language at the Delhi Public School Noida (DPS Noida) in the Indian capital, New Delhi. She is in the eighth grade, and until now she has had two to three German lessons each week. When she moves into ninth grade after the holidays, she will have seven lessons a week. Her parents also pay for her to attend private evening classes in German conversation to support her in her school work. “German isn’t a difficult language if you have good teachers,” she says.
German teacher Jayashree Balaje explains that up to the eighth grade there isn’t much time in two lessons a week to practise speaking freely. For this reason the DPS offers its students an annual German-Indian exchange which has existed for many years. “That’s why this school was chosen as one of the very first Pasch schools from around the globe,” says Eberhard Weller. The head of the language section for Goethe Institutes and Goethe Centres in Southeast Asia is responsible for the financial coordination of all these facilities in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The DPS Noida belongs to the Delhi Public School Society, a private school association of 150 Indian schools of excellence. 375 out of the 3,800 students learn German here. Pasch enables them to learn in the so-called “German Room”, fitted out with modern furniture, multimedia equipment and maps of the German-speaking region. The programme also finances new textbooks and in-service courses for teachers. Eberhard Weller, who qualified in business studies, has already reached the target of integrating over 60 schools in the whole of the southeast Asian region into the Pasch programme. Now he’s concentrating on ensuring that there are enough Indian German teachers qualified for the coming generations. A cooperation agreement has been signed for that purpose with the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNU), which already offers distance learning courses for teachers.
