Language Minority Education Policy:
Turkish Immigrant Pupils in Germany
Anne Crutchfield
Introduction
As an exchange student in Tübingen, Germany from 2001-2002 I observed an
obvious segregation between Germans and Turks in the community that I belonged to.
The Turkish people that I came into contact with seemed to be torn between two cultures
and exposed to two sets of prejudices at the same time. Later, as a teacher in Germany
from 2004-2006, it became even more apparent to me that the Turkish population was
very much disadvantaged in society. My experiences prompted me to investigate the link
between language policy and the integration of Turkish minority group members into
German society.
In this paper I will survey the historical and political circumstances that have
contributed to Turkish and, in particular, language minority (LM) students being socially
and educationally underserved in Germany. I will also assess the impact of current
language policies and classroom practices on LM students. Finally, I will advocate for
recognition within the German school system of the language and educational rights of
LM students, the promotion of curriculum that encourages linguistic and cultural
diversity, German as a second language (GSL) instruction and bilingual education
initiatives grounded in theory and research, and increased collaboration between German
schools and the Turkish community.
1
Linguistic diversity in Germany
The official language in Germany is Standard German, sometimes referred to as
High German or Hochdeutsch. Unlike in the United States, where there is no official
language policy, Standard German is by law the medium of spoken and written
communication is virtually all public sectors of society.
Considering Germany’s official language policy, it might come as a surprise that
the majority of native German speakers grow up speaking a regional or local dialect at
home and in the community and are first formally exposed to Standard German once they
enter primary school and are taught to write. Throughout the country there are 16
dialects that exist in spoken form only. For the most part, they are not mutually
intelligible and many could be considered languages in their own right.
In addition to an official language and 16 dialects, Germany is also home to
numerous minority and immigrant languages. Seven percent of the 82 million people that
make up Germany’s population speak a language other than German as their first
language (L1); the most widely spoken minority language being Turkish, with 1.8 million
speakers (Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland, 2006).1 In order to understand how
Turkish has come to represent the largest population of minority language speakers in
Germany, it is necessary to consider the historical and political circumstances behind
Turkish immigration movements to Germany.
1
Followed by Italian (550,000 speakers), Greek (300,000 speakers) and Croatian
(230,000 speakers).
2
Turkish immigration to Germany
After World War II Germany was destroyed; the country lay in shambles and had
to be completely rebuilt. Moreover, a large percent of Germany’s eligible workforce had
been killed. This created a high demand or laborers, so the Germans recruited migrant
workers from, primarily, Southern Europe and Turkey to come to Germany as
guestworkers. The term guestworker is intended to denote a person who temporarily
immigrates to a foreign country to work and earn money with the understanding that once
the work is finished and the demand for outside labor is no longer needed the
guestworker will leave and return to his homeland. When huge waves of migrant
guestworkers came to Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s, most Germans did not
imagine that half a century later, these men and their families would still be in Germany,
with grandchildren and great-grandchildren deeply rooted in German society.
In any case, the Turkish men who came to Germany and rebuilt the country were
very much a part of the German Wirtschaftswunder, or “economic miracle” (Henderson,
2002). This so-called miracle refers to the substantial turnaround that the German
economy underwent as a result of “a currency reform, the elimination of price controls,
and the reduction of marginal tax rates” (Henderson, 2002, p. 1) carried out in 1948 and
in 1949. Henderson explains:
“At the time, observers [of the post-war economic condition] thought that
Germany would have to be the biggest client of the U.S. welfare state.
Yet twenty years later its economy was envied by most of the world”
(Henderson, 2002, p. 1).
In 1990 the economic situation in Germany changed drastically when East and
West Germany reunited to become the Federal Republic of Germany. The reunification
3
and the fall of the Berlin Wall marked a major turning point in the history of Germany
both politically and economically. The former Soviet occupied East Germany was
impoverished after 45 years of communism and the economically prosperous West
German government took on the responsibility of bringing the East out from behind the
“iron curtain” and back up to Western standards. This created a severe financial strain on
the country.
As result of the reunification, German’s economy crashed, leading to serious
unemployment problems. The unemployment rate was close to 25% in the former East
and about 12% overall at its worst, in 2003 (Federal Statistics Office Germany, 2007).
With the number of available positions sinking rapidly, Germans and immigrants found
themselves competing for the same jobs; jobs that would likely be considered
substandard or blue-collar jobs by many Germans. This gave rise to animosity and
discrimination between Germans and Turks, eventually developing into racism and
xenophobia on both sides.
This process of anti-immigrant sentiment evolving out of a country’s economic
instability has been observed in other contexts (Dicker, 2000) in which a nation’s
working class feels threatened by a minority group. The tendency in such cases is for an
increasingly negative perspective of foreigners to develop as well as movements that
promote language restrictionism.
Although one might expect that the Germans would show more tolerance and
acceptance toward minorities, considering the country’s history of genocide and extreme
forms of xenophobia, this isn’t necessarily the case. It could, however, be argued that
Germany’s Nazi past does feed into the negative discourses about Turkish people in
4
Germany. Many Germans feel that the government, having already paid billions of euros
in reparations to the Jews, expresses too much regret and apology for the past, and that
this is actually preventing German people from moving away from its xenophobic
mentality. They feel that as long as the government continues to subordinate to the
Israeli Jews, Germans will continue to be confronted with shame and remorse over
something that most of them (i.e. those who were not alive at the time) had no
involvement in. In the meantime, German taxpayer’s money goes toward funding the
Israeli-Arab conflict. Even though most Germans deeply disagree with the ideology of
this war, they cannot openly undermine Jewish involvement in it in any way. Therefore,
unable to adequately deal with Germany’s Nazi past and move on as a nation, German
society seems to project its anger and frustration over the situation onto other foreigners
and minority groups. In a sense, the Turks end up as the scapegoats in this regrettable
situation, which might help to explain why today there are nearly two million Turks
living in Germany yet no real attempt to integrate them into society.
Turkish integration
When the results of the first Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)
were released in 2000, the blow to Germany was colossal. The PISA study measures the
reading, math and science literacies of 15-year olds in industrialized nations around the
world. In this international comparison, Germany achieved a score in the bottom third in
each area tested. Most alarming for “the land of poets and thinkers” were the exposed
deficits in reading: one in five eight-grade students (22.6%) demonstrated only
elementary-level reading abilities (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
5
Development (OECD), 2007). This prompted German officials, educators and parents to
look for answers to the question: Why are German pupils’ test scores so low? The
undisputed explanation was that the immigrant pupils and their insufficient language
proficiencies were dragging the test scores down. This assertion ignited sentiments about
a major social issue in Germany: Turkish integration into society.
The three-tiered German school system
The place where many Turkish immigrant children’s initial contact with the
German language takes place is in the German school system. At the age of six, all
children in Germany go to primary school, which typically includes grades one through
four. After primary school there are three distinctive educational paths. Fourth grade
students must take a qualifying exam, which, at the tender age of ten, determines whether
they will attend a low-track, middle-track, or university-track secondary school. Each
school offers a different course of study leading to an entirely different educational goal.
See Figure 1:
Primary school
Hauptschule
Low track
Realschule
Middle track
Apprenticeship/
Vocational school
Apprenticeship/
Vocational school
Gymnasium
University track
Technical University
University
Technical University
Figure 1: Three-tiered German school system and educational paths
The low track entails a five- or six-year, quasi-academic, general education leading to
vocational training. The middle track involves a six-year, intermediate academic
education leading to technical or specialized training. And the university-track requires a
6
nine-year, highly academic education that prepares pupils for university studies (Führ,
1997).
Exceptions to this cut and dried categorization of primary school students are
possible, such as the so-called “orientation phase” in grades five and six that allows
students to switch schools in the seventh grade, as well as the “alternative education
path” of attending remedial evening classes in order to move up to a higher school.
However, the German system is considerably rigid, so once a path has been determined,
it is more the exception than the rule that a student changes to a school of higher level.
The German school system dates back to the 19th century, when its function was to sort
out potential scholars and begin university preparation as soon as possible (Führ, 1997).
Its underlying purpose was also to ensure that society’s upper class could maintain a
dominant role in the social class system. In fact, the latter objective is still carried out
today.
One of the biggest criticisms of the German school separation process is that the
bottom-tier, low-track schools become collection points for students with learning and
behavioral difficulties, under-achievers, and, most disconcerting, immigrant children.
Due to developing German language proficiencies, students who speak a language other
than German as their first language (L1), or language minority (LM) students, are often
automatically sent to low-track schools.
The misinterpretation that LM students’ linguistic deficits are indicative of low
academic potential or even mental retardation is not limited to the context of Germany.
Davis et al (2005), for example, reported on the civil rights violations of LM students in
the United States who were disproportionately placed in special education programs.
7
Statistics show that in Germany, 60% of the students in the bottom-tier are LM
students, only 12% of Turkish immigrant children end up in the top-tier schools, and an
alarming low 3.3% of LM students who are educated in the German school system make
it to the university (Young, 2006). Needless to say, this system presents a major obstacle
for students from immigrant families. It establishes socially cohesive communities of
Turkish-speaking children who are generally isolated from German-speaking
environments. This could very well affect their acquisition of German, a clear
disadvantage in a German-only school system. The short-term, quick fix decision of
school choice made on their behalves in the fourth grade can pose very long-term, farreaching consequences for Turkish immigrant children in terms of educational path,
social development, future qualifications, career possibilities and potential income, as
well as integration into German society. Moreover, these consequences carry over into
future generations, further perpetuating inequality of opportunity.
School language policies
LM students in Germany are confronted with school language policies that
disadvantage and marginalize them. First, the medium of instruction in schools is
Standard German. This policy is the byproduct of highly prescriptivist attitudes toward
maintaining a high standard of the German language, as well as language ideologies and
“German-only myths” that, for example, the only way to succeed in society is by
speaking Standard German, as opposed to German dialect or other variation of the
language such as Turkish-German. Further research should be done to investigate how
this Standard-German-only school language policy plays out in practice; that is, to what
8
extent non-standardized language varieties are actually used by students, teachers, and
school administrators.
A relatively new policy introduced in 2006 made English as a foreign language
(EFL) instruction obligatory for all pupils starting in the first grade. This is a prime
example of the effect of globalization and the English as an international language (EIL)
paradigm on school foreign language learning policy. Out of 38,000 schools in Germany,
about 200 schools offer bilingual education programs (Mäsch, 1993). However, the
majority of these programs are German-English or German-French bilingual programs
created to serve political agendas. Mäsch (1993) describes the rational behind the
German Model of bilingual education that was pioneered after the Second World War in
an effort to foster better relations with France. He explains that “the spirit behind [the
German-French bilingual streams] was based on the desire for post-war reconciliation
and better understanding via linguistic comprehension” (Mäsch, 1993, p. 303). Thus,
there is a noticeable mismatch between the current language policy, which supports
bilingual education for political gain, and the language needs of the country: bilingual
education programs that back minority and heritage language learning and teaching.
Classroom practices and realities
By exploring how the aforementioned language policies play out in German
classrooms, some prominent themes emerge. First of all, the German school system fails
to acknowledge the language rights and educational rights of its LM students. The
overarching attitude is that by virtue of the fact that they live in Germany, Turkish
students should automatically acquire and use the language in the same way as their
9
monolingual, native-German speaking peers. Yet, most Turkish speakers in German
schools are most likely bilingual, heritage language learners, who will undoubtedly speak
a different variety of the language and/or codeswitch between the two. Yet, when
teachers and officials observe such forms of language use, they view it as poor or
deficient.
In an attempt to deflect the responsibility for the “poor” language skills of LM
students away from the schools, finger-pointing ensues. For one, parents are blamed for
speaking only in Turkish with their children. There is a discourse operating that
foreigners who live and work (i.e. make money) in Germany are supposed to speak
German all the time, even when they share a common L1.
In addition, the Turkish culture and Islam are attacked and essentialist ideologies
about German versus Turkish, Western versus Oriental traditions and ways of life are
brought into play in classes with LM students. Is has been argued (Onder, 1996) that
Turkish children are isolated in school and treated as outsiders because they are operating
on Islamic norm-value systems. Onder writes that “Germany and German schools are not
a natural environment for foreign children […] as far as their own orientation and
behavior are concerned” (Onder, 1996, p. 20). At the same time, a form of “reverse
essentialism” can also take place in which German teachers believe that, for example, by
wearing headscarves, not eating pork, or not participating in co-ed gym classes, it’s the
Turks (other) who don’t want to belong to the German (self) culture.
This discourse points toward the possibility that Turkish children are tracked into
the bottom-tiered, Hauptschulen based on non-linguistic factors such as race, religion, or
socioeconomic status. This is often the case with African American children in the
10
United States who are placed in lower classes under similar circumstances (Delpit, 2003).
Further research should be carried out that looks at the language actually used by children
of immigrant families in Germany to see if those being held back and essentially denied
academic achievement opportunities are true second language learners who lack
proficiency in German, i.e. LM students, or if they are actually bilinguals and heritage
language learners who speak a non-standardized variety of German and are, therefore,
falsely assessed as lacking the linguistic competence necessary for academic
achievement.
An extreme example of a hegemonic school language policy in Germany that
received national attention came out of the Herbert Hoover low-track secondary school in
a predominantly Turkish area of Berlin. In this school, where 90% of the students have
immigrant parents and a mother tongue other than German, a ban on Turkish and other
languages was implemented, earning them the German National Prize and $94,000 by the
National German Foundation. The school’s director, Jutta Steinkamp, explained that
“this ban [has been introduced] to enable our students to take part in German society
through speaking and understanding the language properly,” and that “knowing the
language is a precondition for successful integration” (Hessler, p. 1). The fact that when
they register their children for school, parents must sign papers that forbid their children
to speak their own language involves powerful notions of linguistic imperialism and the
disciplining of discourses (Higgins, 2007).
11
Teacher education policies
The education system for teachers ignores classroom realities. Therefore, there is
a huge linguistic and cultural gap between teachers and students. University students
pursuing a degree in teaching are required to demonstrate fluency in English and
proficiency in French and Latin. Again, there is an emphasis on scholarly, academic
languages rather than languages that will be useful for communicating with, or simply
relating to the high percentages of LM students that teachers will encounter in Germany’s
schools.
One of the biggest problems in German classrooms is that teachers are not trained
to teach German as a second language (GSL), nor are they prepared to deal with the
challenges of teaching GSL students. The current policy on German education is so that
LM students are in the same German classes as native speaking students; there are no socalled “pull-out” classes. And since teachers have no training in GSL teaching or crosscultural education, the LM students are often treated as a problem and a hindrance to the
native German speaking students’ learning. Turkish students then become scapegoats for
the learning difficulties of German students, a process that further marginalizes them in
the classroom, in the school system and in the wider society.
Proposal of reforms to existing policies
In order to move toward a more integrative and collective learning environment
for all of Germany’s students, the three-tiered system of separating children into different
schools should undergo extensive reformations. Although policy makers in Germany do
agree that the system is unable to provide equal opportunities to underprivileged minority
12
groups, they also concede that “education reform is an ideological minefield in Germany”
(Young, 2006, p. 1). Changing the system to rectify the situation for the disadvantaged
would undoubtedly be met with resistance from the advantaged groups who prosper from
the current system. Nonetheless, schools with diverse student populations in which LM
students’ native languages and cultures are embraced and treated as a resources rather
than problems would be a huge step in the right direction in terms of learning outcomes,
social development and integration into German society.
Working toward the goal of embracing diversity in German schools could be
achieved by bringing students’ first language and first culture into academic contexts
within the school system. For example, Davis et al (2005) used the critical participatory
approach to examine issues associated with language, identity and academic development
in specialized courses for Filipino and Samoan minority high school students in Hawaii:
“This exploration not only aids students in considering a
possible hybrid cultural and language identity, but can also help
parents and teachers value students’ ability to draw on a
repertoire of cultural and linguistic knowledge for appropriate
language use in particular interactional situations. Through
community explorations, students begin to develop
metalinguistic and metacognitive awareness about how language
is structured and used that they then can transfer to
understanding school communities of practice.” (p. 7)
Following a similar approach in the Turkish-German context could be a valuable and
effective way to help students draw from their language and cultural backgrounds to
employ counter-discourses that challenge oppressive classroom practices that treat LM
students as illegitimate members of society.
In his study of Turkish returnees from Germany, Daller (1999) found that
compared to the control group of foreign language learners of German in Turkey,
13
bilinguals who grew up in Germany as children of Turkish immigrant families and
learned German in schools demonstrated significantly higher scores for everyday
language proficiency in German but not in academic language proficiency. This supports
key research findings by Cummins (1984, 1991) that “migrant children reach the
proficiency level of their monolingual peers in basic interpersonal communication skills
quite quickly but need much more time to achieve their level in cognitive-academic
language proficiency” (Daller, 1999, p. 157) and that it takes a minimum of five years
time for LM students to master conversational and academic literacies. Furthermore,
maintenance bilingual education programs that promote L1 literacy development
alongside second language (L2) literacy development are proven to be more successful
than transitional programs that aim to increase the amount of L2 instruction and decrease
students’ reliance on their L1 as quickly as possible. The Ramirez Report (Ramirez et al,
1991), a longitudinal study of 2000 Spanish-dominant primary school students from lowincome families in the United States, revealed that by grade six, students who
participated in late-exit bilingual programs progressed faster than those who took part in
English-only immersion programs or early-exit bilingual programs. Based on these
findings, it is likely that LM students in Germany would benefit from Turkish-German
bilingual education initiatives grounded in second language acquisition (SLA) and
bilingual education research and theory. Pedagogically sound materials and
methodologies that promote their L1 academic literacy and discourse knowledge
development alongside L2 instruction would better serve the needs of these LM students.
Research has found that teachers who do not possess an understanding of SLA
theory and practice have difficulty in pinpointing the sources of their LM students’
14
learning difficulties (Vaipae, 2001). Therefore, in addition to educational reforms and
bilingual education initiatives, improved teacher training programs at the university level
and professional development opportunities for in-service teachers focused on GSL
learning and teaching would help reduce LM student stigmatization and marginalization
in the classroom.
Finally, cooperation with Turkish organizations and associations would help to
bridge the growing gap between German schools and the Turkish community. Herlot and
Young (2005) carried out a minority language education project in Didenheim, France
that entailed parental participation; that is, teachers asked their pupils’ parents to come
into the classrooms and present on their languages and cultures in an effort to integrate
and legitimize the pupils’ minority languages spoken at home. The project proved that
collaboration among teachers and parents can be an effective way of putting the
languages and cultures of LM students on the same level as the dominant language and
culture of the school.
In recent years it has become increasingly popular in Germany for students to
attend after school tutoring sessions offered by Nachhilfeinstituten, or “tutoring
institutions.” Many of these tutoring institutions are Turkish owned and managed and
cater specifically to Turkish immigrant students. This could serve as a forum for
partnership between teachers from German schools and after-school tutors of Turkish LM
students. By working together with a common goal of addressing the language needs and
rights of Turkish immigrant children, the possibilities for improved educational
opportunity for LM students seem highly attainable.
15
Conclusion
Germany’s shortcomings in integrating a continuously growing population of
Turkish immigrants start desperately early in school systems that systematically disregard
these and other disadvantaged children. The country’s history of immigration and the
remnants of its national socialist past have had a direct affect on the disintegration of LM
students not only in German-only classrooms, but also within the segregating school
system and later as illegitimate members of society. Current language and teacher
education policies seem to maintain inequality of opportunity for this underserved
community. It is my hope that teachers, educational administrators, and parents in
Germany gradually begin to improve the situation for LM students by working together
toward raising the profile of minority languages and cultures, acknowledging the
potential of GSL instruction and bilingual education, and, ultimately, fostering tolerance
toward diverse races, religions and languages within a heterogeneous society.
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