Students taking to the streets

nospam@example.com (Thomas Jollans) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:41:00 +0000

Today, Wednesday November 12 2008, about 100 000 German students skived off too march for better, fairer and cheaper education. And, mind you, it was the young kind of student that goes to school, not university. Yeah, the people you thought were apolitical knife-wielding mobsters.

The 16 German school systems are a mess. The way it is designed, you'll probably never go to university if your parents aren't either rich or academics. In Bavaria (where I'm from), we are required to do 2 lessons of religion (Christianity, that is) a week. There is an alternative course, ethics, which is quite obviously designed not to teach kids stuff, but to legitimize state-supported almost-mandatory theology classes. The flip side is that we only get to do politics in one year, one lesson a year. Best preconditions for the near one-party system we had for decades: keep people stupid, or, if that doesn't work, make sure few understand what the government is/does. What is worse, there is an enormous teacher deficit, and there is way too little money in public schooling. There are many more problems, some of which I put into writing in German.

There were demonstrations in many German cities with thousands of students at nearly every one. They were nearly completely peaceful, though, in Hannover, some idiots stormed the state parliament, and in Berlin, the city with the largest demonstration (predictably), the Humboldt university was temporarily invaded.

JollyBOX blog - politics

Students taking to the streets