Götz Frömming
National Education Report
German Bundestag, January 18, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/75, pp.
8798-8799
[Götz Frömming is an
Alternative für Deutschland member from Berlin. He is a teacher and has worked
a number of years in secondary schools in Berlin and Baden-Württemberg,
including the Schul Schloss Salem. The Abitur is a certificate granted by
college-prep secondary schools.]
Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and
gentlemen.
A few days ago a young teacher in Nordrhein-Westfalen made
nation-wide headlines when she told the magazine Der Spiegel that she gave only good grades so as to help each of her
students achieve an academic qualification; she no longer wanted to be
responsible for harming the educational opportunities of students with bad
grades. The left-wing opinion pages clearly applauded her.
Ladies and gentlemen, what is being presented here as a
particularly well-developed type of educational qualification is in truth just
the opposite: when all have an Abitur,
then none have an Abitur.
The national education report with impressive numbers serves to
describe the expansion of education in Germany. In the census year 2016, 17
million people are in some level of education in Germany, the education report
number also lately including the kindergarten small children group. One is now
supposed to accept that with this quantitative expansion, the quality of
education and the actual level of education is increasing. The opposite however
appears to be the case. In the last world-wide PISA ranking of 2016, Germany
has declined, not improved.
The educational researcher Rainer Bölling has correctly shown that
increasing Abitur numbers are bought
with a general decline in standards. Approximately 30 percent of students quit
their studies without completing a certificate. The AfD delegation therefore
again demands improved vocational orientation and entrance tests for the
universities.
Ladies and gentlemen, science and education are the most important
fuels for keeping our economy running and securing our long-term welfare.
Science and education do not however exist in a vacuum but are always
associated with people. When we speak of the future prospects of our
educational system, we must not exclude demographic and social problems.
The demographic problem is intensified by immigration, be it
organized or, more prevalently, unorganized. The country’s social problems
increase and our additionally over-stressed education system is brought to the
verge of collapse.
(Laughter from
SPD members)
Why is that so? Because obviously we have no immigration from PISA
winner countries, thus not from Singapore or Japan or Finland, but instead in
fact from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
For the immigration years of 2014 to 2016, the national education
report contains terrifying numbers: 69 percent of the migrants 15 years or
older from these countries have no vocational certificate and naturally no higher education
certificate. For the protection- and asylum-seeking group, it appears even
worse. 11 percent of the them indeed have a college certificate but 76 percent
of them have no education at all.
Kai Gehring
(Bündnis90/Grünen): If that were so, what would you do about it?
Ladies and gentlemen, in closing allow me to say something in
regards the coalition’s initiative for the focus schools [Brennpunktschulen]. I have myself have long worked in
these schools. That is a correct initiative. However, in these places you
naturally treat the symptoms only. They do not get to the causes. We have not
yet succeeded in regularly integrating the children of the guest workers of the
60s and 70s and the children of the civil war refugees who came to us from
Lebanon in the 80s. To the present day, for all the practitioners in the
trenches, they make the greatest problems. And with Frau Merkel’s 2015
immigration policy, these problems have now been massively intensified.
Margit Stumpp (Bündnis90/Grünen): Such nonsense!
Ladies and gentlemen, with this motion you do indeed take the
duster in hand because you notice that your cellar is full of water, but
perhaps you should consider the idea of going upstairs to turn off the faucet.
Thank you for your attention.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
