Helmut Seifen, November 5, 2021, Freedom in the Universities

Nordrhein-Westfalen Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/149, pp. 37-38.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.

The major inquiry is praiseworthy. It after all shows that even the colleagues of the Bundnis90/Die Grünen delegation are concerned about scholarly freedom [Wissenschaftsfreiheit].

The State government’s answers nevertheless provide little information on the real influence of Chinese authorities over the Confucius Institute in the German universities.

Yet the government is not to be unconditionally blamed that these answers are so little evidentiary. The universities are plainly autonomous. On that account, the State government cannot answer questions on the intermediary contacts between them and the Confucius Institute, on scholarly exchange and, in that regard, to what extent open or subtle influence will be acquired.

We need now leave it to the scholarly personnel as to what extent an unfavorable influencing and inadmissible direction are resisted and a restraint imposed. Such prominent occurences as at the University Duisburg-Essen now only make clear that there obviously are such influences.

To that extent, right honorable colleagues, this major inquiry could provide no real information on inadmissible manipulations on the part of the Confucius Institute. Thence, one can only proceed on the basis that official representatives of a country like China, in which intellectual life is strongly directed and controlled, self-evidently need to carry out the agenda of their homeland. For him who still doubts this, there is no help. Details are plainly not to be exposed in all exactness because mental influencing generally occurs unnoticed and is not measurable.

If however you are concerned about freedom of opinion – and that is certainly to be praised – then you could perhaps just for once begin here in Germany. Since numerous scholars in German universities have wanted to speak and quite concretely complain of the curtailments of freedom of opinion in the German universities and colleges.  

Meanwhile, the pressure on many scholars in German colleges and universities has obviously become so great that now 200 of them trusted in openness and with the establishment of the Scholarly Freedom Network [Netzwerks Wissenschaftsfreiheit] have founded an organization which is opposed to the further narrowing of scholarly freedom.

In its manifesto, the Network states – I may cite with permission of the President –            

We observe that the constitutionally sheltered freedom of research and teaching shall be increasingly placed under moral and political reservation [Vorbehalt]. We must take cognizance of increased attempts to set boundaries, alien to scholarship, on the freedom of research and teaching, even approaching the restraint of applicable rights [schon im Vorfeld der Schranken des geltenden Rechts]. Before the background of their worldview and their political aims, individuals claim to determine which inquiries, themes and arguments are objectionable. Thereby is the attempt undertaken to standardize according to worldview and politically instrumentalize research and teaching. Who does not play along must then figure on being discredited. In this way, a conformity pressure is generated which ever more frequently leads to nipping in the bud scholarly debates.

If one thus reads this and calls to mind that you in your inquiry occupy yourselves with China, then one could get the impression that you want to distract from abuses here in this country. Scholarly freedom – a higher value – is of course also obviously nipped in the bud, as the colleagues in the universities write. Perhaps you may for once put a major inquiry as to how freedom of opinion and scholarly freedom are disposed in German universities.

Freedom of thought these days again experiences, as a direct result of an arbitrary drawing of boundaries, such a narrowing that entire areas of reality will be excluded from dialectical thought processes and be measured by dogmas.

We see this, ja, also outside the universities when the pandemic is discussed, and in regards vaccination and all these events, how quickly people are brought into ill repute who simply express themselves critically.

We of the AfD delegation already in November 2019 had submitted a motion which referred to the restriction of freedom of opinion in the universities and had demanded of the government to do everything to support university administrations in regards the maintenance of the freedom of teaching and scholarship. The motion bore the tile “ ‘The spirits which I summon…’ [‘Die Geister, die ich rief…’] The ‘Generation Antifa’ must be stopped!”  With this title, the actors were alike named who contest freedom of opinion in the universities and even threaten with violence scholars not in favor. There were then already various attacks on scholars in the press.

You responded to this motion with mockery and scorn. To that extent, I ask myself: With what effect shall this major inquiry clarify that Chinese officials influence scholarly freedom in Germany? I will probably require longer than the weekend to answer this question.

You then – as is your mode – had reacted only with appeasement and, ja, in part with scorn. To that extent, I doubt the earnestness of your motions to guarantee freedom of opinion and scholarship in German universities and colleges. I hope that this may yet change.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Helmut Seifen, November 25, 2020, Budget – Education

Nordrhein-Westfalen Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/108, pp. 65-67.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleagues.

A parliament’s budget deliberations are called the lodestar of democracy because in these debates the current distribution of state funds will be disputed. This debate is important because, by the distribution of state funds, political, social and structural developments are directed so that present requirements will be distinctively considered, and just so will future developments of state and society be able to be arrested or accelerated.    

That false decisions in the distribution of tax money can basically ruin the development of state, society and economy can in part be seen in the State of NRW. It is especially fatal if, with tax money, the scope of education is turned in a false direction because it is desired to initiate somewhat ideologically-based developments and thereby thoughtlessly destroy proven customary structures. Here then for decades alike have misdevelopments been codified.

Today in the year 2020, the faults to which these misdirections in the last decades have led are no longer to be concealed and are visible to anyone in the world who is not an ignoramus: An alarming academic performance of many students; deficiencies in the fundamentals of, among others, reading, computation and writing, resulting in a deficient maturity of education of numerous young people who wish to enter vocational training; a deficient learning ability of some holding an Abitur, which is indicated by the high number of aborted study plans and of young people without a graduation certification; widespread, in any case worsening discipline difficulties in some schools combined with a mobbing behavior, with the consequence that a learning atmosphere will not be formed; an intentional – intentional! – forfeiture of authority by teachers and thus now a worsening teacher shortage.  

The above named misdevelopments will thereby ever less be able to be restrained or repaired.  

This situation is fortunately not to be observed in all schools. We still have in the State a large quantity of well to very well functioning schools. Yet the crowding in the private schools shows that ever fewer parents trust the public schools. All together, the numbers of students have slightly decreased. The student population in the private schools has remained nominally the same. That means that in reality the private schools figure has increased.

The 2021 budget section presented in the area of “Education and Schools” draws upon directive elements which look into the above described problems and wish to undertake a redirection.

Thus the AfD delegation expressly welcomes that the school estimate will be raised and the largest increase since 2017 for personnel expenditures is to be registered. When in this connection the number of school assistants will be expanded, then that effects a relief of the teaching personnel from non-instructional duties and thereby a spreading of the teaching load in specific schools. A teacher who no longer receives chargeable hours for a non-disciplinary activity can naturally give more instruction.  

And the Grundschulen personnel differentiation with an opportunity for promotion is good for the attraction of the teaching profession in the Grundschulen. Yet all of this unfortunately will not eliminate the basic problem of the teacher shortage. As long as you, the black-yellow government and the parties sustaining you, do not eliminate the causes of the misdevelopment of the last 20 years, you will only be able to tinker with the symptoms.

It has been shown that, before all, the new teacher training law of May 2009 presents the greatest hurdle to the achievement of a suitable recruitment of teachers in the Grund- and Hauptschulen. As long as there is a numbers limitation for the beginning of studies in the teaching profession, as long as each student will be compelled to complete German and Mathematics as a subject in the same way, so long will you have the recruitment problem in regards the teachers.

The same holds for the working conditions in the Grundschulen. The heterogeneity of the learning groups, along with the handicap of employing predominantly free forms of learning, hugely overburdens all participants. Instead of here redirecting, you even strengthen the problem. In the Grundschulen, you set up 3,862 points of multi-purpose instruction in the area of inclusion. This is financially, organizationally and before all pedagogic-didactically, a huge expense with which will be attained the opposite of what a good school should attain in successful learning.

The results of the standard assessment tests show quite clearly: The performance of the Grundschuler in the basic skills regresses dramatically. By means of the ideologically motivated model of inclusion will all students and teachers be completely overburdened.

Finally recognize that the stipulations of the handicapped rights convention of 2006 expressly consider the Förderschulen to be an integral component of a school system, which in fact makes possible the participation in society of children with special needs. Here, right honorable Frau Minister, do not dare to change course, although the problems are visible to all.

Even the best teacher advertising campaigns do not help, before all when the last advertising campaign was so infantilely conducted. The means of 1.5 million committed for this were scattered to the winds like New Year’s Eve fireworks, which for this year indeed should be replaced. Therefore, the AfD delegation demands a clear reduction in this budget item.

Also astonishing is the fact that the black-yellow government since 2017 continues the red-green QUA-Lis project in Soest with a means growth of 4.5 million euros. Here, an examination of the commitment of means as to its efficiency must urgently follow.

Inefficient in any case is the personnel policy in the area of quality analysis. Alone, 21 Grundschulen headmasters were withdrawn from their office for the enforcement of quality analysis and thus are missing in the several Grundschulen. Here also the black-yellow government bows before the standards of the OECD which, with pseudo-objective findings, wishes to delineate the reality of the pedagogic-didactic process.

Cybernetic measuring instruments are completely inappropriate for the testing of performance in the area of sensory registration and understanding. Here alone the instrument of language counts. The budget provides much too little for that. You even cut the means for language assessment testing by 80,000 euros.

The AfD on the contrary asks to introduce a budget title “Reading and Writing” and to provide it with 5 million euros. The language difficulties principally make more difficult successful learning in the Grundschulen or even prevent it. Here, the State government must invest much more.

Not acceptable is the financially one-sided expenditure for Brennpunktschulen. No one will deny that here problems must be solved. The means which the State government wants to commit for that will trickle away if energetic pedagogical and didactic corrections are not undertaken.

Primarily should the effects of radical forces from the Moslem milieu be cause for the greatest concern. With your laisser-faire policy, you cannot restrain and control the boiling hatred of radical Islamists. In our schools in part rules a climate of intimidation, especially in your Talentschulen, Frau Minister. As long as the authority of the teachers is not reconstructed, so long will no appropriate learning atmosphere be created in these so-called Brennpunktschulen. Some of the Berlin schools have successfully demonstrated how such schools are conducted.

All in all, it can be stated that the budget attempts to correct the false course of decades in the education policy. That however will remain without success as long as you do not completely alter your direction; namely, away from a school of optional performance and training [Leistungs- und Erziehungsbeliebigkeit] to a school which looks at the individual students, provides them a corresponding education opportunity and thereby fulfills the mandate of a humane education.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]