German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/143, pp. 18150-18151.
Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
If is entered into a well-known search engine the word “education catastrophe” [Bildungskatastrophe] – it directly occurs to me when I peek at you, Herr Gehring –
Kai Gehring
(Greens): Many thanks!
then is received within 0.21 second approximately 34,600 results. The theme thus appears to agitate the public – in that regard, the term is certainly nothing new. Already in 1964, the leftist pedagogue Georg Picht coined the term of the so-called education catastrophe. He of course did it with a knowing alarmism so as to drive the Politik before him and agitate for reforms, similar to what today the authors of the PISA study are attempting. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, Georg Picht was wrong; since in comparison to today the 60s were simply an education paradise. Then, even a Hauptschul student still mastered the rule of three. Today, very many Gymnasium students can no longer do that, ladies and gentlemen.
When we now peek at the study, we need to state – it has already in part been said: In mathematics, Singapore is 100 points ahead of Germany, which corresponds to a lead of several learning years. And in German and natural science, our performances have dramatically broken down. The big question simply is: How to explain this?
For one – this was also discussed this morning in committee – it was a great failure to close the schools for months during the Corona pandemic. In scarcely one other country was it so long as with us in Germany. We had warned of that and meanwhile we know that these school closings, inclusive of wearing masks, were completely useless. Pleasant greetings to Herr Lauterbach and his wretched advisors.
Yet you evidently also wanted to use the times of the school closings to demonstrate that presence instruction might be replaced by digitalization. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if this should have been a field research, then you have thereby ruinously failed.
Kai Gehring (Greens): Yet you said:
There is no Corona! And Herr Gauland as one of the first let himself be vaccinated! Thus, what
now?
Since in many subjects, the students after the celebrated on-line instruction during the pandemic knew even less than before. That is indeed an evidence of incapacity for your pitiful attempt with the digitalization. While other countries – the song of songs to digitalization was again sung here today – like Sweden or Denmark besides straightaway again ban the tablets from the instruction – just read the newspapers –
Kai Gehring (Greens): Nay, read the studies for once! One does not succeed here with newspaper knowledge!
one hears and is stunned – to recollect the culture of books, you plan on economic and not really pedagogical grounds a Digital Package 2.0. Dear colleague Kaczmarek, dear Herr Jarzombek, you also evidently are for it. Please exempt the children and our schools from that. They still have not yet digested the Digital Package 1.0.
And the second principal origin of the education disaster is due to political false decisions – we have also already heard it. Between the years 2012 and 2022 – thus, within the span of the PISA – the portion of students with a migration background nearly doubled with us. It is now at 26 percent. And, ladies and gentlemen – here I need to look at the CDU – that was also unfortunately a “service”, in quotation marks, of your Chancellor.
Stephan Brandner (AfD): Of whom they want to hear nothing more!
Kai Gehring (Greens): Do you still
want to say something on gender, and why the young are worse?
The opening of the borders in 2015 and in the following years was a heavy mortgage on our education system, on which we still have to chew, ladies and gentlemen.
Josef Kraus, he was for 30 years President of the German Teachers Association, has just recently indicated in an article that at a proportion of from 20 to some 30 percent of children with a migration background, the level of a class or of an entire school dramatically sinks. In regards to which I need say from my own experience: It depends on from which countries the students come. Girls from eastern Europe, boys from Japan or Korea, are as a rule not a problem. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, we need for once to openly state it: Problematic are countries of origin like Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria and also Turkey. These students frequently fail over-proportionately in our education system. And those are the facts, Herr Gehring, at which you certainly need not laugh.
If we are not ready to name these facts without prejudice, without similarly swinging the racism club in the direction of the AfD, and then to thereby speak of it, then we will then also not protect our education system from further decline, ladies and gentlemen.
Kai Gehring (Greens): Ja, you are in love with decline! We are
average and need to be at the top! Yet, for you, it’s about decline! The AfD is
a wrecking ball for Germany!
Added to this with greater difficulty is that most of the students from these countries of origin also bring with them an unfavorable socio-economic profile, as is stipulated in the PISA study. Now, I translate that: There are students who also in their countries belong to lower classes distant from education. And it is simply naïve to believe that they, within a brief time with us, could present the skilled force which we so urgently need.
Maria
Klein-Schmeink (Greens): Which all of you scare off!
You make the dumbest migration policy of the entire world!
Vice-president
Petra Pau: Please come to a conclusion.
To other countries come the top forces; from us, they emigrate.
Kai Gehring (Greens): You are thus
for the point system. Which you yourself do not believe in!
Thus will be nothing with the education change. We require an education change
Vice-president
Petra Pau: Herr Dr. Frömming.
and a migration change of 180 degrees, ladies and gentlemen.
Many thanks, Frau President.
[trans: tem]
