Vienna’s city councillor for education Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS) is planning compulsory summer courses in German language for children with language deficits. In an explosive letter to the former school headmaster and daily newspaper columnist Niki Glattauer, however, a teacher is now sounding the alarm. Pedagogues would prefer to abolish the language courses. There are too many sexual assaults, too many ethical conflicts among immigrants.
The young refugees are not grateful for the opportunity to learn the German language for free. “The absentee rate is beyond anything we have ever seen before,” reports a teacher from Lower Austria in the free newspaper “Heute”. Strictly veiled girls with headscarves are absent on principle from every teaching trip, others simply go home – there are no consequences.
But the many truants are still the least of the problems: “Ethnic conflicts are smouldering in these courses,” writes the teacher. And she continues: “The Syrian doesn’t work with the North African because he sees him and his language as a ‘defilement of pure Quranic Arabic’, the European doesn’t practise dialogue with the Muslim because he thinks he’s better, and the Ukrainian, who still doesn’t speak a word of German after a year of German classes, is always absent and makes it known that he doesn’t like the country or the Austrians. In addition, there are sexually suggestive comments – against female pupils and against female teachers. The teacher writes about bearded, allegedly 15-year-old Arabs. “Once, when I bent down to pick up a chalk that had fallen to the ground, the two Syrians laughed insinuatingly and made explicit remarks. I felt uncomfortable. Once, in a similar situation, I managed to record snatches of speech with my mobile phone. I’ll spare you the translation.”
There is fear among teachers. There are now even instructions to teach such pupils only in the corridor or with the door open. This should at least give the teachers some security. “All this is a disaster and far from the job you studied to be a teacher,” the teacher sounds the alarm.