Trying to explain the attacks by the Palestinian terror gang Hamas and Israel’s military response to them to schoolchildren? A difficult task for Austria’s teachers. Especially in the cities of Vienna and Linz, where more Muslims attend compulsory school than Catholics.
“Well, this is a difficult task,” one headmistress sums it up in the newspaper “Heute”, according to the well-known ex-school director and teacher Niki Glattauer. Teachers are supposed to explain the Middle East conflict in class. As balanced as possible, that’s what the education directorate wants. In view of the indoctrination many pupils receive at home, this is an almost impossible task.
Glattauer reports that Austria’s Islamic teachers received a written instruction from their school board (IGGÖ) last week. They were to deal with current events “responsibly”, it said. One headmistress sounded the alarm: “I asked upstairs if we could at least leave out the topic at the moment, when two colleagues on the teaching staff are self-declared Jews,” she is quoted as saying. The answer: “On the contrary!” They expect the subject to be dealt with in class, as objectively as possible, of course.
The dilemma of many educators can be found in the figures of Statistics Austria. In most primary and secondary schools, Muslim pupils are already in the majority. In Linz, for example, 35.75 % are Muslims, 33.13 % Christians – eXXpress reported. A matching survey result: every second Muslim questioned is an avowed “anti-Semite”. Only 14 % of the Muslims in Austria surveyed in autumn 2022 agreed “fully” with the assertion that “Israel has a right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people”, and almost 50 % said that this was “not at all” or “rather not” true.
Based on three statements by teachers, Glattauer makes the desperate situation clear: “We teachers are not miracle workers, and if the children are indoctrinated at home, there is not much we can do.” – “School is there for mathematics, geography and other things, but not for social work.” – “In this day and age, the best thing you can do as a teacher is to address 0.0 political issues. You can only lose with that topic.”
For EVIL to conquer only takes cowards to be silent.