Nicole Höchst, July 2, 2020, On-line Learning

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]

Peter Boehringer, July 2, 2020, Public Sector Purchase Program

Peter Boehringer

Public Sector Purchase Program

German Bundestag, July 2, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/170, pp. 21276-21277

[Peter Boehringer is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Bavaria. He is the chairman of the Bundestag budget committee and here introduces an AfD motion (Drucksache 19/20616) addressing the integration of German and European Union policies in regards a loan purchase program of the European Central Bank.]

It is remarkable how a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court on the PSPP [Public Sector Purchase Program], already functioning for five years, could unleash such activism on the part of the old parties.

            Otto Fricke (FDP): In the meantime, you also are old!

Meanwhile, a list from the Bundestag’s own European counselors is placed before us which shall document the meticulous concern over the enormous power of the ECB [European Central Bank] of those here in house. Interestingly, this list, since 2017, contains very many AfD initiatives which you altogether have rejected. You certainly did not wish to release part of it, yet now it will be zealously and officially documented before the Court that the Bundestag was to quite clearly comply with the integration responsibility required by the Court.

Eight of the eleven plenary debates on ECB policy took place due to AfD initiatives. Seven of ten relevant motions alone came from our small delegation – just as six of eleven relevant inquiries. From the Federal government in contrast came practically no activity at all. If the Bundestag and the Federal government should get through the conceivable following complaints to the PSPP in Karlsruhe, then that could throughout be also due to the AfD motions most deeply rejected by you.   

Thus, a gift!

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Your speech is also a gift!

You have now finally and formally concerned yourselves with the required proportionality test, although five years too late, and before all insufficiently; since 2015 at the latest, it was clear that OMT [Outright Monetary Transactions] and the PSPP will ultimately remove German budget sovereignty.

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Not agreed! Rubbish!

The Bundestag ought to have much earlier tested according to the proportionality standard not only the decisions over billions, which here were plainly belittled, but also and primarily the “forbidden monetary state-financing”.

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): You certainly do not know what that is!

We will certainly not do justice to the integration responsibility with an express debate on the PSPP compelled by Karlsruhe; nor suffices any non-binding monetary dialogue in unofficial circles, nor indeed in our secret records office as occurred on Monday.

The Federal Constitutional Court already in its 2009 Lisbon decision stated, I cite: “The legal and political responsibility of the parliament is fulfilled in so far as it is not a one-time, affirmative act.” Only with regular debates here in plenary session with the possibility of motions for a resolution prior to the implementation of a new ECB purchase program may we fulfill our responsibility.

Colleague Peterka and I, as well as the AfD delegation, propose precisely this today. Unfortunately, there is nothing of this in the common motion of the old parties.

The FDP’s individual motion in contrast also contains our filibuster [Dauerrede]. Here, we will vote in favor, even if our own goes yet further.

We will leave it to the courts to test the ECB’s current PEPP [Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program] with a volume of 1,350 billion euros. Highly diverse groups have associated themselves, along with the AfD, in the legal interpretation of “monetary state-financing”, among whom are the former chief economists of the ECB, Issing and Stark, the ex-president of the Bundesbank Schlesinger, and even one of the experts assigned by the Linke as well as one of the Bundestag’s own EU counselors.

The ECB’s documentation on the proportionality of the PSPP, missing for five years, was put before us a few days ago. I confirm that this was first served up to the media and then much later reached us members in the secret records office. That unfortunately is the usual abuse.

            Eckhardt Rehberg (CDU/CSU): Nonsense! That is rubbish, what you are saying!

Okay, to obviate this objection: Partially in the secret records office.

            Eckhardt Rehberg (CDU/CSU): Ah!

            Michael Frieser (CDU/CSU): Aha!

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): And you have done nothing so as to make it public!

In regards to the contents, we come to a result other than that of the ECB for the test of the PSPP. The consequences of the permanent manipulation of the public lending market are destructive for the saver, pensioner, renter and future taxpayer as well as for the purchasers of real estate. There is a threat of the artificial inflation of all asset markets. The zero-interest rates are leading to a zombiefication of the economy and to re-distributions from the poor to the rich. At the end stands a depression and in conclusion certainly a monetary crash.

Our conclusion’s devastating estimate, “PSPP against All of these Disadvantages”, is also shared by a new study of the Commerzbank, from which is cited: “On the whole, there remains doubt even in the basis of the ECB studies as to the proportionality of the loan purchases.” With the purchases, it acquiesces to “great risks for the financial stability.”

            Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague, come to a conclusion, please.

The ECB itself says that. It emphasizes that the negative effects of an expansive monetary policy would increase with the duration. That is sufficient grounds – I thus come to a conclusion – to ever more critically observe, evaluate and stop these effects after an intervening ten year period.

            Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague, you now have just 

            one sentence.

Having been warned by the president, my last sentence: I protest against the utterly insufficient treatment of this theme of billions in the Bundestag in an absurdly brief 30 minutes.

Hearty thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

             

           

Michael Espendiller, July 2, 2020, Digitalization Education

Michael Espendiller

Digitalization Education

German Bundestag, July 2, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/170, pp. 21257-21258

[Michael Espendiller is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. He is a mathematician.]

The magenta socialists of the FDP have again carved out a motion on the cutting edge [hippen] theme of “Digitalization in Education”. Unfortunately, dear colleagues of the FDP, I must say: You have really not yet heard the shot! This motion completely by-passes the reality of our schools. This motion even completely by-passes the digitalization theme; since the main problems with Corona were not faulty equipment or conceptual ideas, but faulty WLAN, over-burdened networks and faulty crisis management. Yet, if you were to be followed, dear magentas, we would only bring up in our schools complete idiots who look at a couple of on-line Erklär videos and then call that learning.  

            Michael Theurer (FDP): Who then all vote for the AfD, Herr colleague!

To your motion: You posit the steep thesis that the means of only the DigitalPakt Schools will not be retrieved because the instructions are too complicated. On that account, you propose that the corresponding instructions shall not be applied until the end of 2021. I gave that some consideration and I must say: If the schools are actually unable to go on-line to read through a couple of pages to fulfill the requirements, then neither should they be let loose on our children.

            Jens Brandenburg (FDP): You obviously have no idea how that works!

I know our school principals and I know our schools and I quite exactly understand that the problem is not here. That is to say, you are on the utterly wrong path, dear FDP, and that already since the beginning of this legislative period. For two years, I have spoken on this theme to you, that we have left our schools and teachers alone with a mountain of duties and work. One example: Instead of strengthening special needs schools [Förderschulen], our teachers shall push a false presentation of inclusion. They shall besides shoulder the main burden of integration. And then the teachers shall also conduct the eco-propaganda, nicely named “Education for Sustainable Development” and which shall be built into each department. And then there shall naturally be the digitalization.

Worthy colleague politicians, you must be completely deranged. We have a teacher scarcity at all levels, over-sized classes and a deficient child care ratio. Those are the problems we must address. I have in the meantime spoken on this theme for two years and nothing has happened. We have no additional teachers, our teachers receive no additional time for preparation of instruction or for extra instruction. We need more personnel! When will you finally get that into your heads? You cannot assign ever more duties and at the same time not increase the personnel.

In the Corona crisis we have certainly witnessed schools and teachers who have taken the initiative so as to adjust their instruction as best as possible to the conditions and to digitalization. And even here they were once again left alone because in the ministries of the neither the states nor the Federal government were there emergency plans as to how to deal with such a situation.

Kai Gehring (Greens): Are you now for or against digitalization? Is there or is there not Corona? What then is now your position?

Despite that, the teachers have made the best of it. Yes, there are a couple of black sheep and it is by far not perfect; yet the digitalization leap in education which we have made throughout, we all may presently see. And for that, we require no one from the dear FDP. Besides, you therefore perhaps have not a single word of thanks in your motion for our teachers who in the face of Corona have performed massive work, or for the teachers who have shouldered the double burden of home office and home schooling.

Basically –this I still wish to add – we could gladly keep up on digital learning concepts. But we of the AfD want first of all that our students be securely based in the traditional Kulturtechniken of reading, writing and figuring.

            Matthias Seestern-Pauly (FDP): That does not exclude one of the others!

Besides that, information has an equal right to be gladly taken up as a fourth Kulturtechnik. For that, however, we require more than ever a strong presence culture in the schools and sufficient,  motivated teachers. On that account, we reject the motion of the FDP.

Thanks.

            Matthias Seestern-Pauly (FDP): Again, a revelation!

[Translation by Todd Martin]