After a father filed an emergency appeal against Critical Race Theory (CRT) in his son’s classroom, the Berlin Administrative Court has ruled that the racist theory is permitted in Berlin’s classrooms.
The court argues that children should “basically be expected to be confronted with the views and values of a pluralistic society – despite a possible contradiction to their own convictions.”
Critical Race Theory, first popularized in the United States, comes in various permutations but is overall defined as anti-White hate theory, which posits that White societies are inherently racist and systematically oppress minorities. The theory arises in the U.S. despite programs like affirmative action, trillions funneled into inner cities to improve minority outcomes in education over the last decades, programs from universities and corporations to recruit minorities to the exclusion of Whites through Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) schemes, government discrimination against Whites, and even preference in medical care for minorities over Whites.
Although CRT is not as widespread in Germany, it is increasingly incorporated into classrooms, especially by activist teachers influenced by progressive trends in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
In the U.S., books like “Not My Idea” have been promoted in classrooms, which explains to readers that “whiteness” is what drives White people to make “deals with the devil” for “stolen land, stolen riches and special favors.” The book also claims White people get to “mess endlessly with the lives of your friends, neighbors, loved ones, and all fellow humans of color for the purpose of profit.”
In Cupertino, California, third graders were required to rank themselves on a scale of “power and privilege” based on their race, and schools in Buffalo, New York, taught students that “all white people” perpetuate “systemic racism.” The program also required kindergarteners to view a video of dead Black children with the warning that “racist police and state-sanctioned violence” were responsible.
The education state department in Arizona also distributed “equity toolkits” to schools, claiming that infants as young as 3 months old begin to show signs of racism and “remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness” by the time they turn 5 years of age.
Court rules gender-neutral language also permitted in German classrooms
As a part of the emergency appeal in Germany, the father also attempted to halt forced teaching of gender-neutral language in his son’s school, but the court also rejected this appeal, according to Berliner Zeitung. The German language has words with both the male and female form, and this also applies to professions. For instance, the word “teacher” has both a male (Lehrer) or female (Leherin) version. Left-wing activists and feminists have been attempting to modify the language towards a gender-neutral form, which has produced words like Lehrperson or Lehrer*innen to denote both genders in one word.
Such a move has been a major point of contention in German society, with politicians, academics and the news media entering a heated debate about attempts to change the German language.
In the case in Berlin, the court argued that the use of gender-neutral language for teaching materials and worksheets does not exceed “the leeway granted by the framework curricula in the design of teaching materials.”
Schools are required to be politically neutral, according to German law, but the court also rejected the claim that the use of gender-neutral language is politically motivated. The father argued that gender language conflicted with the requirements of German as an official language. The court found that “the school administrators expressly allowed the teachers to use gender-neutral language in the classroom and at the same time clearly pointed out” that “the rules of German spelling must be observed in the teaching and learning process.”
The court wrote that gender-neutral language “does not involve the expression of political opinion and, moreover, nowadays both the use and non-use of gender-neutral language allow for political attribution.”
The father disagrees with the ruling, telling Berliner Zeitung, “On the one hand, the court says that the official spelling is binding and thus clearly contradicts the Senate Administration, which had rejected a binding nature for lack of an act of implementation. On the other hand, (the court claims) every teacher should be allowed to write and speak with asterisks in class, deviating from the official spelling.”
The father said that when the teacher uses a specific form of the language, it creates pressure to conform among the students. The father said that his son was being bullied both by teachers and classmates for his refusal to use gender-neutral language in class and was forced to write gender-neutral words on multiple occasions.