Talk:The Flying Classroom

Useless plot summary
I got an opportunity to read this book again, recently, and now I notice that the plot summary here is VERY wrong.

Many non-existent or inaccurate things are included into it - some girl called "Mona", a fire in the school building, helium baloons, etc. I have already removed these obvious errors.

Still, the summary is in pretty bad shape. Perhaps it would be best to just re-write it from scratch. -- Demon! (talk) 14:37, 24 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe. Evidently, however, you don't consider it useless after your own work, so the section heading was misleading.
 * Two months later, anony-editor User:93.133.213.136 rewrote the same section radically (yet with little change in length, +50 bytes) and mentioned "some 2003 movie stuff which does not belong here". Probably that explains the VERY variant matter.
 * --P64 (talk) 18:53, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Jonathan, an orphan --among 5 or 6 students
"The main characters are Martin, the first student of the class, Jonathan, an orphan who was adopted by a captain, Matz, Uli and Sebastian, students from the Tertia (Year 8)."

Evidently Martin is the first student. Is Jonathan the orphan? If so then [a] that conflicts with section Characters, "cast away by his parents"; [b] there seem to be five friends rather than six, and the list of characters does evidently names five.

Is that a captain in the German armed forces or a school or local position? All five or six are students from the Tertia, right? How many years are there? At this point "Tertia (Year 8)" may suggest final year to many readers (a la "terminal" and U.S.A. once required 8 years). Are all students males, thus boys at this age? If so, say so.

--P64 (talk) 19:04, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Jonathan is cast away, though I don't quite remember whether he was a half-orphan. He travelled from the USA to Hamburg, at any rate, expected to be fetched by his grandparents, and they are dead. The word "captain" (Kapitän), to the German reader, suggests not a military degree (that would be Hauptmann) but a shipmaster (though in one adaption, he was instead a "pilot-in-command", the German word for which is Flugkapitän or "flight captain"). The traditional classes of a German gymnasium (which are known to today's German students precisely from this book and in no other way, so, the reading experience is the same) are enumbered from above in Latin, where Prima, Secunda and Tertia take two years and the other ones one year each: Sexta (Year 5 after four years of primary school), Quinta (year 6), Quarta (year 7), Lower Tertia (year 8), Upper Tertia (year 9), Lower Secunda (year 10), Upper Secunda (Year 11), Lower Prima (Year 12), Upper Prima (Year 13) and after the thirteenth year of school (and ninth of Gymnasium), school is over (though nowadays often after year 12). - All Students are, indeed, boys. --131.159.79.171 (talk) 16:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)