Regarding the letter “When performance comparisons are ‘of the devil’” (SZ issue of December 9th) we write:
I regularly read articles about the educational crisis in the Schwetzinger Zeitung. Most recently it was about the departure of a trainee from school. The example of a friend of my daughter who also gave up her traineeship and now works for a large software company fits in with this.
A year ago, the issue of the educational gap was discussed in the cover story of the magazine Cicero. The tenor of the article was that Germany as the country of poets and thinkers or inventors and engineers – a country without natural resources – is continuing to decline. After the first Pisa shock about ten years ago, the education ministers promised improvement, but have toiled helplessly to this day, so that after short phases of improvement we are now in an even worse position. The statements of the President of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, Katharina Günther-Wünsch, “We now have to face the consequences,” do not help.
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After the Pisa debacle: head of the education committee calls for a special MPK
Published06.12.2023By dpa
Schwetzinger Zeitung Plus article Comment Educational misery
Published06.12.2023Comment by Birgitta Stauber-Klein
The education system as it is set up today is failing its customers, the students and teachers. In the Schwetzinger Zeitung, Brigitta Stauber-Klein sums it up in her commentary: School policy needs a complete change in the education system. Whether they come from trade unions or teachers’ associations, whether they are parent representatives or conduct educational research, they all try to be doctors who tinker with the symptoms but who do not even have an eye on the cause of the illness.
The fact is that in the wake of the crisis, the future of students is at risk. For Stauber-Klein it is clear that after the current shock things cannot continue with a little full-time here and language support there. In any case, there needs to be a big push for the countries to finally pull together. If they cannot do this, their sovereignty over education has failed.
Good insights can also be gained from the second law of thermodynamics: “A system works better the less energy it uses.” Too much energy is wasted in our education system, in schools and universities. I once experienced the ideal situation in which students are not let down and work highly motivated in the Münster City Library at an event on preschool mathematics. A pile of 10,000 wooden cubes was placed in the entrance area. The visitors and school classes did not need any mediation assistance for educational insights. The large amount of the same material was help enough. The learning process was accompanied by the University of Bremen and the Freinet Pedagogy Cooperative. Over the course of ten days, exciting products from the fields of art, architecture and mathematics were created.
Similar to the large number of dice, postcard mathematics was created in Freinet pedagogy, for which each child only needs a hole punch and a guide folder. Experience has shown that starting with the same material in large quantities leads to the basic calculations very harmoniously and naturally.
Anton Strobel, Brühl
Germany Pact for Education
Ulrich Kobelke’s relevant letter to the editor on the current educational situation requires an addition from the perspective of a former student. In the post-war years, reading, writing and arithmetic were learned in elementary school. During the first four years, teachers were able to determine which students had the skills for secondary school and who were suitable for skilled trades. In order to be admitted to high school, an exam had to be taken. The school requirements did not depend on the parents at all. Anyone who achieved achievements and sat on their “pants seat” managed to graduate from high school.
So from a class of initially more than 40 students, only half remained for the Abitur exam. The grades were between two and four – a grade of one was rarely given. Today the grades are usually between one and two. Even those who chose a craft profession mastered their lives very well. Many highly respected figures in politics and society came from the good old elementary school. So it’s not true that children from poorer homes don’t have the same opportunities, but what matters is the willingness to perform and ultimately the inherited skills for mental or manual work.
Examples of this can be provided. It follows from all of this that it is not just the state that is responsible for good education, but rather every individual and, above all, parents. Napoleon once said: “Everyone carries the marshal’s baton in his knapsack.”
Rudi Lerche, Plankstadt
Qualified and limited
The last Pisa study gave German education policy a somewhat uplifting pre-Christmas present. Politics and the media skirt around the result like the well-known “hot mash” without mentioning one of the main causes: the connection between loss of education and mass migration. Incidentally, the “Pisa shock” has been around since 2000; it shook the belief that German schools are doing well in an international comparison.
Since Merkel’s migration misery from 2015, student performance has only gone in one direction: downwards. The decline in reading and arithmetic skills has reached an “unprecedented extent,” it said when the new results were presented. Nevertheless, suppressors and illusionists try to hide the connection with demographic change. In 2013, 13 percent of students had a migrant background, ten years later it is 26 percent and at primary schools it is already 38 percent.
You may like the ex-SPD politician Sarrazin or not, but so far his predictions have proven to be correct: Germany is abolishing itself! We are experiencing something that has never happened before in history: native German speakers are a minority in primary schools. In many places it has long been this way, see Ludwigshafen-Hemshof and elsewhere. The lack of language skills is combined with nonsensical teaching methods such as “writing by ear” and the loss of value for hard work and ambition. And of course Corona, the school closures for far too long. Yes, a lot came together, including in the other countries involved in the study.
Nevertheless, the German education system has suffered the greatest decline. However, anyone who believes that it can still be stopped, namely by the federal and state governments, must be very optimistic. Migration as such is not the problem at all. Yes, we need them, but qualified and limited! Immigrants from European countries or the Far East are usually culturally assimilated after one generation.
In other cultures, however, religion is more important than education, obedience is more important than freedom, and the family and clan are more important than the state. Of course, children from such backgrounds are not stupider, some will still go their own way. Nevertheless, many will only integrate into their circles, where complete language skills and the adoption of the values of German society are unnecessary, where the local way of life is even despised and where hatred of Jews is the rule rather than the exception.
For many on the left, it is still considered racism to state such facts. Just as until recently it was taboo to point out Muslim anti-Semitism. In this respect, there is a connection between educational disaster and massive antipathy towards Israel and Judaism. Both have to do with negligent immigration policy, both could only grow through denial of reality. And we only pay attention to both in the media when it is almost too late to take countermeasures.
Soon our grandchildren will be a minority among many others. I cannot see what bracket could hold together culturally and politically the ethnically divided country divided into interest groups. Undisputedly, the future of a society depends on its level of education. The insights of normal citizens are usually greater than their influence. For politicians it seems to be the other way around. If the traffic light goes out in traffic, the rule is right before left. And in politics?
Winfried Wolf, Plankstadt
2023-12-15 23:11:20
#big #push #education
