The accusations are growing in the scandal surrounding the Carl Bolle primary school in Berlin’s Moabit district, where Islamist-educated children and young people influence everyday life. Several teachers told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about a school climate in which violence, intimidation and religiously motivated marginalisation had gone largely unchallenged for years.
One teacher said that during her four years at the Carl Bolle primary school, she was ‘constantly exposed to some form of violence’. As a woman, she had to reckon with ‘boys making obscene gestures behind you during lessons or even making pornographic noises’. She therefore usually wore trousers or floor-length dresses.
Teachers also reported cases of Muslim children refusing to play with Christian children because their fathers had forbidden it. One teacher wanted to paint eggs and decorate windows with her class at Easter. She said: ‘But that was not possible.’ The pupils had shouted ‘haram’. This is ‘forbidden’ according to Islamic law.
Another teacher reported an incident before PE class: a pupil had warned her that a fellow pupil wanted to ‘stab’ him with a knife. She took a butterfly knife from the pupil and reported the incident. However, ‘like all other cases’, this ‘ended up in a file as a report of violence and nothing was done’.
The teachers report anti-Semitic attitudes among the Muslim pupils. Pupils with behavioural problems and violent behaviour were ‘never expelled from school, not even temporarily suspended’.
A former teacher also reported that teachers had already written to the education authority in 2018. She said: ‘But nothing was done about it’ and described the way the responsible authorities dealt with the matter as ‘a complete system failure on the part of the Berlin authorities’.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung had previously reported on the case of the Brazilian teacher Oziel Inácio-Stech. The teacher had been discriminated against by pupils because of his homosexuality. According to the report, he was labelled a ‘disgrace to Islam’, “disgusting” and ‘unclean’, among other things. One pupil said to him: “You gay man, get away from here. Islam is the boss here.” While the staff had supported him in his outing, ‘there was not enough support from the school management’.
According to the report, the staff council advised Inácio-Stech to adapt his pedagogical concept to the ‘initial social conditions’ of the school. According to the minutes, the school management and staff council advised the teacher to ‘protect himself as a homosexual’.
The parents’ association issued a statement saying: ‘We, the parents’ association of the Carl Bolle primary school, are shocked by the reports of discrimination against a teacher on the basis of his sexual orientation.’ Inácio-Stech had been repeatedly bullied by pupils for a year and a half. The statement speaks of ‘elementary problems’: ‘Our children report marginalisation, violence and a lack of respect among the student body.’
According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, Education Senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU), the head of department responsible for the school, Detlev Thietz, and the school management have so far only communicated internally about the incidents. There have been no public statements to date, although the media have been requesting information for a fortnight.