The parents of her Muslim pupils regard their new homeland as a “hostile Christian country”, view Christians as “infidels” and therefore wish to remain in “their” neighbourhoods – the well-known Viennese teacher Susanne Wiesinger speaks openly about the current undesirable developments resulting from uncontrolled immigration.
Susanne Wiesinger, a Viennese teacher and author, has recently described in the newspaper Kleine Zeitung a school day in which learning to read, write and do arithmetic is often overshadowed by serious conflicts. Her assessment: Anyone who continues to gloss over the integration problems at high-risk schools is heading towards segregated neighbourhoods – towards a ‘self-imposed apartheid’ that nobody wants.
Susanne Wiesinger sparked a wide-ranging and emotionally charged debate as early as 2018 with her book *Kulturkampf im Klassenzimmer* (Culture War in the Classroom); she later served as ombudswoman for values issues at the Ministry of Education. She now teaches at a primary school near Reumannplatz in Vienna’s Favoriten district: according to her, of 250 children, only eight do not have a migrant background. In her new book *Gebt unseren Kindern eine Chance!* (*Give Our Children a Chance!*), she writes that in 2018 she believed things could hardly get any worse. Today, her verdict is: “I was wrong.”
To illustrate the current situation in Vienna’s schools, the teacher gives an example: when first-graders were given counting cubes, many did not know what to do with them. They swiped their fingers across the box – as if it were a smartphone – and waited. In the past, Wiesinger says, children would have emptied the cubes straight away and started playing. The contrast is shocking. At the same time, she explains, up to 70 per cent of lesson time is lost to defusing conflicts. Even a bump against a pencil case or a glance can provoke an argument. Added to this are clashes between ethnic groups, which are carried over into the school from families and communities.
A lack of German language skills exacerbates the problem, says Wiesinger: Some children can technically decipher words but do not understand their meaning; she therefore works with pictures and gestures. The Viennese teacher would therefore be in favour of a compulsory, enforceable assessment of language skills as early as the age of three – and, at the same time, significantly more funding for nurseries. Nursery teachers are poorly paid, have class sizes that are too large and receive too little recognition.
The latest figures underscore the urgency of reform: in Vienna’s primary schools, 39 per cent of pupils are Muslim, whilst in secondary schools the figure stands at 49 per cent. In the Favoriten district, 74 per cent of pupils are from foreign backgrounds. Vienna recently sent 1,700 children starting school to German language support courses.
Discussions between teachers and pupils’ parents are particularly sensitive: alongside language barriers, Wiesinger describes a fundamental conflict over identity. Many strictly religious families define themselves through their faith, their customs and their clans. They do not want their children to stray from this way of life. To them, Austria appears to be a ‘culture of infidels’, a ‘hostile Christian country’. That is why, according to Wiesinger, they remain in ‘their’ neighbourhoods – whilst other immigrant groups integrate much more successfully. The problem, Wiesinger says, lies primarily with strictly Muslim communities. The teacher also mentions the issue of patriarchal patterns: in cases of brawls and serious verbal abuse, it is predominantly boys who are involved.
Despite the fact that the track record is not exactly positive, Susanne Wiesinger does not consider the future to be lost: giving up would mean allowing neighbourhoods to develop “around which fences would one day have to be erected”. What is needed, she says, is a long-term plan for Austria as a country of immigration – ideally one that transcends party lines.