Expat kids in schools in Poland

In the last few years I've had at least three students who've spent significant portions of their lives in Germany (and often speak German a little more natively than Polish). And I'm not in a department that would naturally attract them so I'm assuming there's more out there.

The Germanness comes out in different ways, in one it came out in her accent (clearly German in any language) though very Polish in dress and body language while another was super German in dress and body language (but spoke Polish without any kind of accent).

I think you'll find that as far as German/Polish families with kids in school go, that 60km doesn't mean much. Up in Kujawy, parts of Podlasie, Swietokrzyskie etc where there are few outsiders you won't find many families from outside the immediate area and that is reflected in the background of kids in school.

Even by the western border not every community has much real estate for sale and families with school-age kids live in places where they have access to housing or where one partner has roots.

A German's kids would be very much outsiders in most rural Polish schools.

Next excuse?

Another story about expat kids in a state primary school (just a few miles away fom Warsaw, in affluent commuter land, quite a few expat kids) is about the local priest coming to address the pupils. He had a list of the countries that the foreign or half foreign kids came from and proceeded to go down the list saying what he thought was wrong with the people from those countries and why he thought Poland was so much better.

There was quite an outcry in the local community about that one. A guy who used to post here a few years back had kids in that school at the time.

Most likely distorted by Pc crowd and what he actually was saying was along lines that all that PC BS and lack of values is bad for everyone. Boo ho!

Hard to know what you mean by 'pc crowd' or 'PC BS' however the schools' parents were so angry that he wasn't invited back to the school in question, despite being the parish priest. They only allowed his curate to come after that. As far as 'lack of values' is concerned, the school's Director had strong enough values that she apologised to the parents by letter for what the guy had done. Criticising other countries' national diets, other people's physical appearance and countries' (especially Germany's) national traditions, music and literature isn't something that has any place in a school.

no more than a German's kids in mostly muslim schools in Germany... the stories are not edifying... and I very much doubt a German child would be stabbed in a rural Polish school...

Are there many of those?

they exist and tend to be the source of lots of bullying/abuse of German children, if I had German children and had the choice I'd put them in a rural Polish school before puttig them in this dump: bild.de/news/inland/news-inland/islamismus-an-der-grundschule-wassermaus-55213702.bild.html

yes Bild is not the most prestigious newspaper out there, but AFAIK the story has not been discredited, just ignored...

I think not so many in Germany, a country with a very good education system.

when 8 year olds aren't getting stabbed and told to suck it up....

thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11/8-year-old-german-girl-bullied-and-stabbed-by-arab-child-at-school-teacher-makes-her-stay-in-class-until-school-day-ends-video/

In Germany this was covered by Sat1 a very mainstream broadcaster....

I'm sure most children get through their school day without any of your stabbings.

That's hardly the most ringing (or confidence inspiring) endorsement I've ever read...

....at least they won't get spit at for speaking German...

It isn't meant to be. Meanwhile, schools operate, kids get taught, and teachers teach.

because spitting on a bleeding person is bad luck?

Is it? I never heard of that..

So.... now you're re-evaluating your behavior at school?

What?

You lost me here...

Based on other comments about Szczecin being viewed as a modern Polish city and it being so close to the German border, I could imagine that the people and kids in that city have had a good amount of exposure to the German language.

Would you expect Russian and American kids to be bullied in Polish schools as well?

Russian, certainly yes.

American is too foreign, exotic and exciting.

No, not necessarily. Of course, Germany influences Szczecin, but I'd actually say that German is more used in Gdańsk than in Szczecin due to the huge amounts of German tourists visiting. Stettin never really had the same place in the German heart as Danzig did. English is probably spoken more than German in Szczecin, anyway.


American, probably not, as everyone has a fairly favourable view of the USA. Russian kids - yeah, there are issues with kids from the east and Polish schools.

A friend doing his teacher training, who was a Pole from Lwow, was doing his TP in a Polish high school near Warsaw. As soon as the kids heard his accent, they started yelling "go back to Russia". This was a teacher in the classroom. A child in the schoolyard would probably have it worse.

Doesn't surprise me. Polish schools are awful for doing nothing about racism and homophobia.

I remember a kid once used the n-bomb in front of me repeatedly. I sat him down, and explained that I wasn't going to punish him, but that he was going to prepare a report on the history of the slave trade, to be given to me at the first break after the weekend. He smirked, thinking that he got away with it.

We had a nice chat about it in the end, especially when he realised that the situation with Poles being slaves in Nazi Germany was comparable to the black people being forced into slavery in the US. And I got my apology ;)

So the Poles wouldn't have much of an issue with an American kid from a Trump-supporting family?

I doubt the schoolkids would know or care about which candidate the parents support. They'd be more interested in stories about Hollywood, hip hop, rappers and Kardashians.

You might be surprised... IME students from Szczecin are far less likely to have had German in school than in other large cities (I've even had more than one student from Świnoujście who knew not a word of Germany and had never been tempted to cross the nearby border...

On the other hand, some people here are trying to make Polish schools seem as violent and disorderly and anti-German as possible for their own reasons (they're not against immigration but they don't like values-based immigration if those values are European...)


IME Polish people don't much are about Trump one way or the other... they're more....bemused than anything else.

As a primary and pre-school teacher of many years experience my advice to Intermarium is - relax and stop fussing over the potential bullying 'x' years down the road, of children who are presently 1 and 3 years old. Take life as it comes and see how things go when your kids start school, take it a day at a time. Parents fuss far too much over children. As for propaganda, dogma and indoctrination, a child's chief educator regarding values is their home environment.

Totally agree, it is the parents' job to instill values into their offspring. Until you run into some crazy helicopter mums and dads who insist on home schooling, because they fear that their kids are exposed to the evil real world when they are visiting public schools.

Is home schooling allowed in Poland?

Yes it is legal, but its more restrictive than us. Most the home schooled kids ive met back in grade school and high school were educationally head and shoulders above even private school kids, not socially though. Also public schools are pretty good in poland so there isnt much of a need for it. Its more somethinf practiced out in the country so kids can help out.

Allowed, but the kids must pass a test that covers the entire curriculum each year, or they're returned to school. It essentially acts as a brake on crazy parents, and many parents give up once the material gets too tough (usually from 10 years old onwards, or Grade 4-5).