The article “Merkel offen fuer tuerkische Schulen in Deutschland” (Merkel is open towards Turkish schools in Germany) talks about how chancellor Angela Merkel met with Minister-President Erdogan in Turkey this past week. They discussed the topic of Turkish schools in Germany, stating that schools in which Turkish is taught already exist in Germany. This offering […]

Similar to the United States’ “Teach for America” program, Germany’s “Teach First” organization focuses on improving the education of challenged, mostly low-income schools.  Graduates from elite Universities who wish to give back to the community are placed almost as (it seems to me) communication teachers – bridging the gap between the students, mostly from multicultural […]

German-born children of foreign parents will have to choose between citizenship in their birth country and their parents’ country. The article on immigration talks about three German states that proposed to allow German-born children of foreign parents to keep dual citizenship, but were denied. Chancellor’s conservative position on immigration is in line with her earlier […]

This article highlights the growing wage gap between women and men in Germany. According to this article women on average earn about 23% less than their male colleagues. This number is 5% higher than EU’s average, and somewhat higher than that of last year. This article suggests that many believe that reducing the gender pay […]

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was approved for the borrowing of 80.2 billion Euros ($109 billion) for 2010, making it the highest borrowing figure in record. The government blames this accumulating debt on the global downfall of the economy. However, there are plans to reduce the budget deficit and a bill known as the “debt brake” […]

Pawel was a neo-Nazi skinhead until his skinhead girlfriend found out that both she and he had Jewish roots. Now they are Orthodox Jews raising their two children in a Jewish home in Poland. In Dan Bilefsky’s article “Changing Face in Poland: Skinhead Puts on Skullcap”, Pawel’s reaction reminds me of Lois’ reaction in the […]