Nicole
Höchst
On-line
Learning
German
Bundestag, July 2, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/170, pp. 21319-21320
[Nicole Höchst is an Alternative für
Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Rheinland-Pfalz.
She is a teacher and here introduces an AfD motion (Drucksache 19/20568) on
education.]
Frau
President. Worthy colleagues.
The
crisis of the Corona precautions also has something good. It once again
discloses the limits of the much praised digitalization of the educational
system. The phase of on-line learning conditioned by the school closings left
an entire generation of students even more hobbled than was moreover already
the case. And the DigitalPakt Schools could alter simply nothing of this. “The
German School Barometer Special Corona Crisis” came to the conclusion that
area-wide, digital substitute instruction, stated mildly, killed equal
opportunity in education. Obviously, on-line learning, or hours of sitting in
front of squared-off screens, cannot nearly replace the in person and contact
instruction of the teacher.
Birke Bull-Bischoff (Linke): Digital
learning is not just bad!
That
has destructive effects upon the future capability of our society. The lesson
from the crisis must therefore be to prepare our school system equally for
future daily and epidemic situations and indeed so that in person instruction
is possible with observance of all required protective measures.
The
Greens are using the crisis to put the axe to our school system. The AfD
self-evidently rejects their demands for an all-day school system beginning in
the Grundschule and for work creation
measures for social, media and theatrical pedagogues. That can only accelerate
the foreseeable Waterloo of the German Bildungsnation.
The
FDP motion discloses a distorted picture of the living reality of many of our
country’s students. The FDP recognizes only one solution to all the present
challenges: Maximum digitalization. This however is – in the end – senseless,
cold and a preparation for George Orwell’s “1984”.
Stephan Albani (CDU/CSU): That is
just rubbish!
To
where is leading a soulless, God-less digitalization, without standard and
understanding? To a relations-disabled student with an ideological as possible,
pixelated world view and a digital dementia. We already stand before the ruins
of our educational landscape. The greatest losers are our innocent children.
Only
the Alternative für Deutschland demands what our schools actually require. More
teaching staff, smaller classes, a better digital and technical infrastructure,
increased training in the pedagogy of digitalization, and the financing of hygiene measures – to name only a few of the 13 points of our motion. Our
pragmatic motion on down-to-earth education helps make our school system more
secure in the pandemic crisis and thereby re-establishes fairness in education.
Birke Bull-Bischoff (Linke): Nothing
meaningful!
The
teaching staff, who are fighting on the most forward fronts for our future
society, will receive essential relief.
Ladies
and gentlemen, children are our highest good and the future of our society.
Their health, protection and education have the foremost priority. The people
of today and tomorrow will be enabled by education to manage in the worlds of
communication as mature, independent and responsible citizens. By means of a
human and humane education, they should be made immune against ideologization,
fanaticism and a virtual, conditioned dependence, as well as isolation and
de-humanization.
Kai Gehring (Greens): And against
rightist extremism!
For
the AfD, education is more than a trained, reflex, cultural Marxist competence
output. We want to remain human beings, with all our power of judgment and our
desire to act, with values and our free will – in Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit.
Good
evening.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
