No Child Left Behind -- the German version

Cynics say that any economic fad out of the United States will make waves here in Germany after about five years of appearing in the U.S.

The bad news is: it is true.

The good news is: you can be the first to make money off of that in Germany.

The really bad news is: the internet has shortened the five years to a few days in cases where you can make this happen in the K-Land without setting up a business.

Lesser known but equally true: politics are affected, too, but often not in the exact same way. Did we mention that the huge welfare reform in the early 2000s in Germany seems to us to be a copy and paste job of Clinton era reforms?

The other day, we saw "Kein Kind zurücklassen!" and groaned. No child left behind, that's what it says, word for word.

Would Germany take the Bush era standard testing fiasco and replicate it?

We clicked through and were happy to see something different. The pilot projects started in 2012 in the old industrial heartland of the Ruhr are a comprehensive, multi-agency, multi-stakeholder set of projects to support families from pregnancy to the child's first job. Education is only one aspect of the package.

Germany has often been called a sort of nanny state, cradle to grave type deal for the citizens.  While this was not completely true in the past, the current version of the German nanny state is much more like an unforgiving, abusive nanny than the benevolent if stern version of TV.

So, the German "no child left behind" sounds much more like a modern version of Project Head Start than the bushy test'em 'til they drop.

Eventually, we found an English flyer on it. The file name of the brochure is very honest: ImageFlyer.pdf. The title of their English version is: Leave no child behind!

It sounds more like an evacuation instruction than an education strategy.

We do not know if the translator was painfully aware of what "no child left behind" had come to stand for, or if he or she took the easy translation. The American motto's choice of phrasing imparts a "done deal", "mission accomplished" sort of feel, the German is a more open ended "don't leave any behind" feel.

Both undertakings were well-intentioned, and we'll hear more about the German projects soon, before the next big election, we'd say.