Innsbruck, Vienna (OTS) – Education needs to be talked about. It has been a long time since any minister has addressed the question of how schools can prepare today’s children for the lives of tomorrow. Activism with a high school diploma doesn’t help either.
The Young Reds’ argument sounds logical: Anyone who has passed all exams from primary school to high school does not have to prove everything again on a “final decision day”. So get rid of this high school diploma, this “relic from times long past”. Instead, towards “practice-oriented project work” – sounds good, but still requires concrete content.
The high school diploma was the ticket to the educated middle class. High school diploma or not – this question determines opportunities in life and career. It was seen as a desirable goal for advancement or as a symbol of a society that wants to stay within itself.
In the minds of many, all of this may still be the test of maturity. The picture is no longer correct. Anyone who has a high school diploma today is far from having made it. While the Matura certificate used to open the door to all universities, today the entrance tests are the real hurdle. If you want to go into medicine, you first have to pass the MedAT. 11,700 applicants across Austria competed for 1,850 study places this year.
Conversely, the glass ceiling has become more permeable. It is no longer just high school students who have access to higher education. The school is no longer characterized by professors like “God” Kupfer, who drove the student Kurt Gerber to suicide in Friedrich Torberg’s novel. And “pre-scientific work”, for which young people work through a topic thoroughly, far beyond a “final decision day”, has long been the standard.
So what “relic from times long past” are the young Reds talking about? And yet the Socialist Youth, and with them the Viennese SPÖ since the weekend, are right: we have to talk about schools. Adjustments have been made, for example to the Matura since Corona, with the final certificates being included in the Matura grades.
For a long time now, no government or education minister has dared to address the question of how schools can prepare today’s children for the lives of tomorrow. Instead, the current head of department is tinkering with the semesters for teacher training.
Anyone who is really interested in the school should point out this problem. At the end there could also be a discussion about the type of high school diploma. However, anyone who wants to start debate and reform with a high school diploma is suspected of only being interested in quick headlines. However, this doesn’t make the education system any better.
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