German law students get F in German

They don't use letter grades here but numbers, but the results are the same.

For the "the world is going to hell in a hand basket" crowd, the last week in the German media has a couple of welcome bleak observations about the young generation.

The first one we saw was an article by some returning German ex-pat waxing lyrically about how his growing up with a local dialect had made it so much easier for him to learn Danish.
Now that he is back in Germany, he deplores that dialects are being used less and that current German kids speak a sort of bland, homogenized German interspersed with lots of English.

Which is similar to complaints by various philosophers about the youth of their day a few thousand years ago.

Then there is the law professor who felt that her students were increasingly showing insufficient language skills. She put them to the test and was stunned, she said, to find that the situation was even worse than she thought.

To be honest, the examples given in the article are not encouraging.

On the other hand, that's what learning is for. The last time we checked, the education levels of your average five year old in all major countries do not leave much room for optimism. None of the five year olds we know has an inkling of what the basic legal textbooks say.

Something almost miraculous seems to happen between age 5 and age 25. Of course, for some people, not much happens.

But, a problem identified is a problem solved.

Apparently they managed to do it for med students who used to flood patients with Latin and Greek words before telling them to take two aspirins a day with lots of water.

The use of Greek and Latin medical terms makes it a joy for French people to see a doctor in Germany. Lots of German doctors forget at some point that everyday French uses these terms, elevating your average Frenchman in the eyes of a German medico.

We have witnessed it, it is such fun to see.

It really does not matter that much how great the German skills of your average German law student are. Average folks forming a team can do pretty well.

We are still so attached to the image of the Renaissance man from the days when all you had to do is get on a boat, and there were new lands to discover no matter how abject your navigation was.
The days when knowledge came in books and you had to keep lots of facts in your head. What good is knowing German really well when it is used by, say, lawyers fixated on describing Jews as inferior or declaring the end of the family if women get the vote?
Go check it out. Those guys knew German really well.

Egghead alert: can somebody point us to studies that research to what extent personal self esteem and social esteem is tied to education and jobs in different cultures?