School enrollment ǀ Close to the neighborhood, lacking in education? – Friday

by time news

Only the best for the little ones! As always at this time of year, the ugly side of this truism shows up these days: the race for the “good schools” begins. Registrations for the school year 2022/23 will begin in Berlin at the end of September, the other countries will follow. In the capital, where rapid gentrification is currently causing “socially mixed” quarters, almost every third child should prefer not to go to the primary school assigned to them, according to their parents’ taste. But what is happening elsewhere is only pointed out here.

Of course you tell the offspring that all children are the same – that they mainly play with children from their own biod-German educated middle class, well: it just turns out that way. But when school enrollment approaches and the Kuschel-Kita is over, it gets unpleasant, because specifically: Isn’t the choice of primary school groundbreaking for life?

Many parents believe that and don’t want to go wrong now. Experts emphasize again and again that parental support is particularly important for primary school success – and not the composition of the class. Nevertheless, at this point, many panic begins, sometimes under the pressure and sometimes more openly. You can “find out” in Berlin easily online at the Senate, whose school portraits also break down the social composition of the children. Keyword “focal point school”: Anyone who has doubts about the moving-in school and knows how to do it has quickly applied for a change.

Above all, it affects the “trendy district”, where the students of yore now have families. Especially the belly-left academic middle class, who enjoy the multicultural city flair, are suddenly applying different standards. But even in more dignified districts, the “focal point” lurks everywhere. And if the administrative act does not work out immediately, which keeps the offspring away from those who are scolded as “uneducated” in order not to say anything worse, complaints will be made. The court process to the more popular state school costs 3,000 euros, as much as a private school year for a middle-class family. That the classes are larger at the coveted addresses because more children are sued than the schools want? All the same. The offspring are safe.

Good and bad second language

In Berlin, dance revolves around a cipher that has been repeatedly called for abolition in recent years: NDH, short for “linguistically non-German origin”. The percentages per school are public in the capital, the interpretation is up to the social imagination: the bilingualism of children with British or Spanish parents is often welcomed as an additional cosmopolitan competence. But children who speak Arabic or Turkish in addition to German are perceived very differently. Why actually? Many parents associate this with a “completely different culture” of upbringing and imparting values. In their prejudices, immigrant families with many children always have a more authoritarian tone, education is neglected – and, moreover, the gender roles of the day before yesterday should predominate. Do you really want to expose your own children to this? In a television documentary by the RBB recently, a mother who opted for a private school said that she did not want to conduct a social experiment with her child.

These prejudices are not checked. We “know” that schools with a high proportion of NDH are always at a low level and that the teaching staff can only assert themselves there in an authoritarian manner. Schools with an NDH share of 70 percent are “too homogeneous”. But that’s a chimera: behind high NDH percentages in particular there is often an extremely heterogeneous student body with parents from Warsaw, New York, Damascus, Turkey, Italy, Croatia, Greece or Tunisia. It is precisely this fear of too little mix that creates a standardized biod-German and educated middle-class environment in the “better” schools.

The very important question for parents about the right school for their own child has also been asked of our small family, who have been living for several years between falafel stalls, vintage shops and trendy bars in hipster Neukölln, where the series is 4 Blocks was filmed. We did some research – and decided on the assigned focus school. And lo and behold: it quickly turned out to be not half as bad as the playground gossip knew: there are no old-school drummers shouting around there, nor are there any schoolyard beating. Of course, German is the common lingua franca and there are no clan members or militant Islamists in the parent council. The art focus of the school, the name of which still frightens “informed” parents, provides fantastic equipment with a clay, wood and even screen printing workshop.

During the first year, our daughter mastered the short way to school on her own. She knows almost all children in the playground and on the street. She is experiencing a great boost in independence. And we parents can invest in school the time that we don’t spend on long journeys to the supposedly better educational institution across the city: parenting committee work, the school garden that we helped to create, or a pottery class in the afternoon. Where many children have little family support, schools have to do a lot. There is a lack of money and staff. But committed parents can definitely make a difference on a small scale.

It is worth taking a look at the poorly reputed moving-in school at least once. Often times it is better than its reputation. Those who don’t dare to go alone can network with others. Doubtful parents are not uncommon: Many pursue the search for a “good school” with a bad conscience, willy-nilly, to promote the racist and classicist divide. If they show that their aim is not to “protect” their own children from the other children, but to stand up for everyone, such initiatives also meet with support.

Of course, not everyone is a racist who doesn’t want to send their child to primary school. But the large number of individual decisions against the primary school creates and reproduces the social and racial segregation in education for which our country is notorious. It is certainly more exhausting to integrate yourself into a neighborhood than just appreciating post-migrant literature. But children, another much-used truism, are the future. Do we really want the relationships that begin with segregated schools to continue forever?

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