Nothing will change: Hurray, hurray, the school is on fire!

Germany is in the process of becoming stultified and there is no way out in sight. Federalism condemns education to eternal second place.

The OECD has done it again and teased the Federal Republic for its progressive stultification: the latest education study confirms that the land of poets and thinkers has the worst pupils in arithmetic, writing and reading than ever before.

When someone is down, you have to give them a good kicking: So for its part, the commercial health insurance company KKH has presented a study on children. It found that one in ten children suffers from language development disorders. Among fifteen to eighteen-year-olds, the rate of increase for speech therapy was a staggering 144 percent. There are many reasons for this, they say, but one of them is that families prefer to talk on their smartphones rather than with their carnal companions: "Chatting and liking is no substitute for direct communication."

The state of schools is a disaster. If the equipment allows digital teaching, the fear bureaucracy will inevitably follow: data protectionists are doing everything they can to give us a generation of prodigies who are trained on obscure, self-made nonsense programs because they are not allowed to use Microsoft and then fail in industrial reality.

Education helps against practically everything

In short: Germany is rapidly becoming stupid - but, strangely enough, not furious with rage. Why? Why aren't thousands of Germans demanding what is their basic right, namely education, and marching with banners in front of the Brandenburg Gate? Don't they know where it is?

After all, education is great. Education is cortisone, antibiotic and steroid all in one: it helps against practically everything. The mega-problems of our society may be complex mazes, but one path, if not the exit, always leads to this answer: education. The examples are endless.

How can a society protect itself against disinformation on the Internet, against propaganda, lies, fakes and deep fakes, without setting up a state censorship apparatus? Through education!
How do we protect ourselves against populism, authoritarianism, racism and anti-Semitism? Through education!
How can we deal wisely with emergencies, whether they are caused by a pandemic or war? Through education!
The ifo Center for the Economics of Education warns that the backlog in mathematics will cost 14 trillion euros by the end of the century. So how do we balance the budget? Through education!
How do we create social justice and fair opportunities for advancement? Through education!
How do we make Germany a more attractive location for skilled workers and their children? Through education!
How can we deal wisely with climate change? Through education!
How can we ensure that AI is not misunderstood as a license to dumb down? Through education!
How do we dry up Mario Barth's ticket sales? Through education!

Talking does not mean acting

Politicians know all this, so they keep promising more education. The FDP has fought an entire election campaign on the subject, education is part of the folklore of the Social Democrats and the CDU has even dared to appoint Karin Prien, a female education minister, as deputy party leader. The promise of education belongs in political texts like the appendix belongs in the stomach - and unfortunately both are similarly effective.

The gap between talking and doing in education policy is toxic. It cuts deep into the public's trust in the state. But political laziness is not the core of the problem. Talk and action are not one and the same because the federal government has no say in education but would like to have a say. Like many phenomena that are not immediately understood, this also has to do with history and Nazis.

The cultural sovereignty of the federal states is an alternative to the centrally controlled propaganda of the Third Reich. And federalism is even deeper in our historical bones: When we wrote the Legend of Poets and Thinkers, Germany consisted of feudal states and imperial cities; even in the Weimar Republic, education and culture remained in the hands of the states. Only the Nazis changed that and the Basic Law turned the whole thing back again.

Cooperation? Forbidden!

Today there is even a constitutional "ban on cooperation". This word sounds like a government satire from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Many have tried to shake it up, from the Left and the FDP to the SPD and some Greens, but they have all failed. Sovereigns do sovereign things: No state wants to relinquish sovereignty.

Instead of education, education, education, it's all about mine, mine, mine. For decades, Germany has been living in a feverish fantasy of responsibility, in which brats supposedly learn differently from little ones, Pänz differently from Steppkes, Grumbiere differently from Buan and Madln. Not even the German education system can destroy the brain enough to believe this nonsense.

Speaking of cultural differences: are we ever going to talk about the fact that the proportion of immigrants in schools is 26 percent? Is there a political response to this fact or do we leave the problem to desperate parents and the AfD?

This is why education is not a mega issue

For decades, the federal diffusion of responsibility opened the door to many ideological experiments on the backs of children. Federalism condemns the issue of education to perpetual secondary importance. Education does not dominate election campaigns, education never becomes dangerous for a federal government, no federal politician has to bear responsibility for lousy education policy. The federal government points to the states - and they point to the federal government. This will hardly lead to an education crisis in Germany.

Some parents, those with options, are beginning to wonder whether the Federal Republic is still the right place for children. In the "Machtwechsel" podcast, "Welt" correspondent Robin Alexander reports on a couple who have just chosen Singapore as the center of their lives because they don't want to send their newborn child to German shanty towns later on.

Maybe we'd rather move to the Brandenburg Gate instead of Singapore. In case that's not clear, it's at Pariser Platz, 10117 Berlin.