The German Teachers’ Association and the Elementary School Association assess the statements by CDU leader Friedrich Merz on verbal violence in elementary schools against the background of the New Year’s Eve riots differently. Teachers’ Association President Heinz-Peter Meidinger told the German Press Agency Merz on Wednesday that he was right, “even if, of course, one has to limit that this cannot be a general suspicion or blanket accusation against all families with a corresponding migration background”. There is a fundamental problem, however, that female teachers in particular are not taken seriously and their authority is not recognised, Meidinger added.
The chairman of the primary school association, Edgar Bohn, said, on the other hand, to Merz’s statements: “I cannot confirm the quoted statement and the generalization and I think it is very exaggerated and incorrect.” He is aware that some parents, regardless of their status and origin, occasionally appearing inappropriately towards primary school teachers, regardless of their gender. “I experienced that myself when I was active and was physically threatened at least twice – which I can still remember.” However, he does not see an inability of schools to react adequately to such attacks.
Merz had said in the ZDF program “Markus Lanz” on the subject of New Year’s Eve riots that it didn’t start in Berlin and Neukölln. Teachers in primary schools experienced verbal violence. If they wanted to call children to order, the fathers would come to the schools and forbid this. “Especially when it comes to teachers, that they correct their sons, the little pashas, from time to time. That’s where it starts.”
If you are not able to help the teachers to defend themselves against these phenomena, “then it’s the 8-year-olds at school and then out on the street in a few years the 15-year-olds. That’s where the problem lies.”
Meidinger said children sometimes carry attitudes from home into schools and that fathers sometimes refuse to talk to female teachers. More than a decade ago, several dozen Berlin teachers called for help on this subject.
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