Political discussion – Deutschkurs style

(First off, before I begin I want to give a heartfelt shout-out to Jacob Aaron Saltzman, a newcomer to what may be generally referred to as existence. Now it’s only been about 5 days, but it looks like the rookie from Long Beach, Long Island has a promising career ahead here in the field of life. Congrats to the family and particularly to the new dad and my oldest buddy, Jason, who I’ve now known for about ten of eleven elevenths of my own personal existence.)

moving on…

I’m about 2 months and 3 books behind at this point, but since I gotta pick it up somewhere, let’s start about 2 weeks ago with my completion of German A. The process of learning the German language here is quite standardized. I believe there are 3 levels (A, B, and C) each divided into 2 courses (eg. A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2). (I don’t believe there is a D level, but I’m not sure exactly). A couple of weeks ago I completed A2 at the Volkshochschule and so I think some things here deserve some reflection, among which, but likely not limited to, are: the people in the group, the day we discussed politics, comparisons between the 2 schools I’ve so far attended, and the general experience of learning a new language.

I took Deutsch A1 at Die Neue Shule, a private school, with a max class size of 10, where I met some great people, whom I’ve already mentioned some months ago in my early days of blogging when I actually, well… ya know… blogged. (this reminds me I’ve got to remember to shoot some hello emails out to Marco, Cynthia, and Audrey to see what the latest with them is). I enjoyed that group very much. But that’s not why I’m writing now. I mean I wouldn’t mind writing more about that course – there’s still plenty to say afterall – but then I’d really never make any progress in detailing my progress with learning German and my general experience of learning the language. So here the focus is on Deutsch A2 at the Volkshochshule (VHS).

… and like the first, this was a truly wonderful group as well, though there were some interesting differences. The VHS is a wonderful institution run by the state. It’s considerably cheaper than any private school, and many who go there have their tuition subsidized. It draws a lot of people from the huge Turkish population here in Berlin who are doing their best to integrate into the the culture, as well as from a wide variety of other cultures, SES, ages, and general life situations. Some nationalities represented in my class: Chinese, Thai, Ukrainish, Russian, Serbish, Afghan, Spanish, Italian, French, Columbian, Turkish, Kurdish, Pakistani, and I think a few others. Many women were married with children, at least one was pregnant with her first, at least one guy was gay… well, not to go off on too much of a tangent here, but the point is, it was a wonderfully diverse and interesting group.

Unfortunately, this post is going to have to be a bit disjointed, because I’m really trying to sum up 3 months in about as many paragraphs. Every week was interesting, and so many people had such colorful stories which naturally lent themselves to such interesting conversations, but just to choose a single particularly interesting day, a couple of weeks before the end of the course we did a unit on politics. This was basically about learning the words and language to talk about the German parliamentary system (most of which I’ve already forgotten) but, as with every topic, we do a variety of exercises and have open discussions – an important part of becoming comfortable with learning a new language.

So Anke, the teacher, put the question out there about how important understanding politics is in our own life and why. I had a lot of opinions but since I’m a little slower with my German than many others in the class, and since this was such a complicated topic, I thought I’d sorta sit back and observe a little. Some of the Muslim women in the class, along with Kaveem (Pakistan) were quite vocal to start the conversation and some others from Western Europe joined in. I can’t remember specifically what they all said but there was general agreement about, well…, about everything.

With this discussion, as with my total experience here in Berlin thus far, it is the similarities rather than differences I find most striking. I’ll never forget my first day, first month, first time this or that, how anxious I was to do just about anything: (e.g. crossing the street – “oh, they stop on the red and go on the green too”). Everything was alien, and so I naturally adopted the perspective that I was alien to everything. This I think is a better way to approach things than beginning with the assumption that everything is familiar and thus learning the differences.

So it was striking to me how everyone emphasized ideas such as freedom, democracy, justice, empowerment… how important it is to be informed in order to hold those in power accountable for their actions. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was open to it, whatever it was, and it didn’t come, and that was striking to me.

Anke was looking around the class, making eye contact with different people trying to draw them into the discussion, and I had the distinct impression that she was focusing a bit more on me than on others at this point, perhaps to get a US perspective. I had been quiet up till now, but I did want to say something. And so I began (and bear in mind we’re all having this discussion with the pedestrian vocabulary of people at the A2 level) “Politics is important to me because, the politics of my homeland is important to the whole world” … and instantly I could feel everyone nodding in agreement with me, acknowledging the fact that their worlds are so affected by US politics… and I continued… “und die letzte 8 Jahre war sehr schlecht (and the last 8 years were very bad)”… and at this point I couldn’t even look up anymore, it was difficult to continue… but… “und ich weiss was passiert wenn die Leute nicht politik verstehen (and I know what happens when the people don’t understand the politics)”…

…inside I was holding back tears. I was apologizing for what my government has done, for the trust the world put in us and how the current administration betrayed that trust. Even though people in the US have gradually been waking up to the fact that this administration is incompetent and downright disastrous, I don’t think that most people are truly aware of just how much damage has been done to the image of the US in the world, and how important that image is. (I’m half tempted at this point to continue on this tangent which could easily fill many books, and already has, from the manufactured case to go to war in Iraq, to warrantless wiretapping, to suspension of Habeus Corpus, to Karl Rove’s brilliantly evil campaign tactics, to Alberto Gonzales, to redefining “torture”, and the list just goes on and on and on… but I really didn’t mean for this post, nor this blog in general, to be political in nature and I have other things I need to get to. I will, however, recommend the always brilliant Frontline (PBS) with Bush’s War, available online in 10 minute segments, and well worth the time.)

Anyway, class discussion continued, and for awhile about the US. It truly is amazing just how much everyone knows about US politics. I think it was Kaveem (Pak.) who brought up the Florida recounting fiasco and others jumped in to talk about. Sylvie (Italy, pregnant) was involved as well, and she in particular is very knowledgeable in world politics in general (I believe that was her field of study and is her career. I do know that she had spent a few years in Afghanistan either in a political or perhaps humanitarian capacity, not sure exactly).

But that wasn’t the last interesting episode of the day. Then Anke came around to Liu from China. Liu is a sweet guy, at about 6 years or so my junior I believe the youngest in the class. He rides the same train as me for 2 stops on his way home and so we talked frequently after class almost daily, mostly small talk to practice our German together. He’s often smiling and I get the feeling he’s a devout church-going god-fearing Christian. He’s easy to talk to at this level of conversation and so always a welcome subway companion.
Liu responded to Anke that he did indeed think that understanding politics was important. Anke, visibly interested in Liu’s perspective, probed further and asked what he thought of politics in China. He responded in a sorta naive youngish way, “I think the politics in China are good”, and with that you could sorta feel the class collectively groan in disagreement. Anke probed a little further asking some more slightly pointed questions that I can’t exactly remember now, but Liu stuck to his initial opinion acknowledging here and there that “yes, perhaps that is not so good, but in general it is good”. Anke turned to the rest of the class to see if anyone wanted to get involved in the discussion. Paco (Spain) said something to the effect of “no comment”… and with that class had ended for the day.

Walking with Liu to the train after class, he asked me if I understood the topic today (remember, I’m generally translating here. Again, we’re speaking Deutsch like 6 month olds.) I replied that yes, I did and I thought it was very interesting. He then kinda confessed that he really didn’t know much about politics and he just didn’t know what exactly to say (not surprising considering he’s, I think, 25 or 26 not to mention from a country with a communist ruling party which suppresses information from beyond their borders, but mainly not surprising to me because of his age. Sadly I don’t remember having much political awareness at 25 either). So I asked a little about access to information and censorship of the internet and his thoughts. He said simply that earlier it was bad but it’s getting better. I really wanted to talk more but we only had a few minutes before he had to make his transfer and this was a bit of a complicated topic considering our Deutsch skills at this point, and he didn’t seem to have much info to offer anyway.

Anyway, this would be a good point to end this topic, but I did want to also briefly mention a related episode in class a day or 2 later (typically topics in class last a week) when we were doing activities in groups of 3. I was in a group with Liu and Lina (Lebanon). I haven’t had much contact with Lina but she always seems very sweet and friendly and my impression of her is that she’s also quite intelligent. The activity was to discuss with each other the systems of government of our homelands and to ask each other questions. I believe Lina was at least familiar with the names of all 3 US candidates in the running, and some of the basic aspects of the political system such as the names of our 2 primary parties. (frankly, I can’t really explain it that well past a certain point. This stupid super-delegate system that the democrats have come up with is so utterly self-defeating, and ironically undemocratic, and really makes no sense that I can work out). Lina tried to describe the system she has in Lebanon, but she also could only get to a certain point before breaking into a laugh and dismissing it as “kompliziert zu erklären (complicated to explain)”. However, I could grok that it was basically democratic in nature with multiple parties that each have comparable amounts of power currently. Liu then explained as best he could the one party system of China. Lina and I kinda looked at each other smiling, I think thinking the same thing. So I asked Liu, do you think this is good? He said he believes the current leader of the Communist party, Hu Jintao I think, is a good leader, and is good for China, compared to previous leaders. Liu did acknowledge that with the one party system when the leader is good then everything is good, but when he’s bad then the system is bad. Me and and Lina were practically jumping out of our seats trying to ask the next question: well when he’s bad is there any recourse for the people? Liu thought for a second and sorta replied: well, no, not really.

And that’s where the current story ends folks.