Tiroler Tageszeitung, editorial, July 2, 2023 edition. By WOLFGANG SABLATNIG. "And where are the children?".

2023-07-01 20:00:34

Innsbruck (OTS) – School is managed. In politics, however, there is nobody who fights passionately for the students.

The scene spoke for itself: a few weeks ago, Minister of Education Martin Polaschek and Minister of the Interior Gerhard Karner (both ÖVP) visited a violence prevention project at a middle school in Vienna. And who was in the front row for the group photo? The children? No: minister, director, representatives of the police.
Just this week. Then the holidays begin in Tyrol too. Nine weeks of sun, summer, beach or outdoor pool – at least for most of them, if they don’t have to study and catch up.
Time for a balance sheet. In any case, the pupils are not at the center of the educational policy discussion. Complaints about bureaucratic overload come from the directorates. The leisure educators are protesting against a new job profile.
Teachers are in short supply. The training, which has just been extended, is already being shortened again. The “digitization” of schools is progressing – another buzzword. At least a notebook or a tablet jumps out for the young people.
But for a long time no one has had any fundamental discussions about the school. The new secondary schools – never call them Hauptschule – have lost the “new” in their names, without even a single renaming of the problems having changed anything. It is still true that the further the parents were, the further the children get.
school is managed. But there is nobody in politics who fights with passion and enthusiasm to offer the children a good and at the same time challenging environment.
You would like to accept it. Because most of them are actually happy when school starts again in September. At least on the first day of school, they are the focus.