The Paderborn mathematics professor Bernhard Krötz has his very own view of things when it comes to the performance of German students and many politicians will not like it.
By comparing the performance of German and Indian students, Krötz has shown that German students of mathematics and natural sciences would hardly be able to pass the 6-hour tests that are customary in India. This must be successfully passed in India in order to be able to study mathematics, physics and chemistry at a university at all.
During the tests, the Indian students have to solve, for example, demanding tasks from the areas of trigonometric functions and their derivatives and inversions under great time pressure. Dealing with complex numbers also needs to be learned. In comparison, German students are mathematically illiterate even after university bridge courses, the Paderborn mathematics professor complains.
The curricula have different priorities
Professor Krötz sees one of the main reasons for this development in the constantly relaxed requirements of the curricula. In India, the 36-page draft of the “Mathematics core curriculum for upper secondary level” in the version of January 23, 2023 for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia can only be laughed at, it is so undemanding.
Anyone who carefully reads which special qualifications are to be promoted in the classroom and bears in mind that we are talking about the subject of mathematics here can easily understand why Bernhard Krötz says that “ideologues are at work” with this curriculum.
“As part of the school’s general educational mission, teaching mathematics supports the development of a mature and socially responsible personality and makes further contributions to interdisciplinary tasks in school and teaching, including among others
- human rights education,
- values education,
- political education and democracy education,
- Education for the digital world and media education,
- Education for Sustainable Development,
- gender sensitive education,
- cultural and intercultural education”