Students in Essen wanted to organise a segregated graduation ball. The idea was rejected, but it epitomises problems that other schools are also familiar with.
For many pupils in Essen, their school days are coming to an end these weeks with the Abitur, which is usually celebrated in style. At one grammar school in Essen, some of the students apparently had a very special graduation ball in mind for 2025: They wanted to celebrate the Abitur separately by gender – probably for religious reasons. ‘I am stunned by this example of colossal disintegration,’ says a teacher who teaches at another school. The grammar school concerned would prefer not to comment on the idea.
Legally, the graduation ball is a private party – the school can’t interfere with that
When we asked the headteacher what the idea of integration at his school meant, he played it down. The whole thing was quickly cleared up: ‘It was never a planned, just a suggestion. However, the students who came up with the idea of celebrating their final exams separately for men and women had already dealt with the legal aspects: The graduation ball was legally a private party, and the school had no say in the matter. That doesn’t just sound like a joke in the school playground, and it wasn’t just the young people who were involved in the negotiations: The school teachers knew about it and are said to have unanimously decided to stay away from such a graduation ball. The students then dropped the idea.
The matter had startled the teachers and they had declared “that they would not attend”, confirms the headmaster. However, this was not the decisive factor in the idea being rejected: Rather, this had only come from “a few spokespeople who wanted to enforce it”. The majority of pupils rejected it, so that neither the teaching staff nor the school management had to intervene.
Nevertheless, the sixth form coordinator took the matter so seriously at the time that he reported it to the headmaster. And: there are apparently more frequent situations in which strict Muslim pupils and parents ignore the school rules. Sports and swimming lessons are boycotted, participation in school trips is refused – and integration efforts are undermined as a result. This became depressingly apparent years ago when a pupil refused to shake hands with his teachers at the graduation ceremony.
Some girls apparently only wear the headscarf because their classmates put pressure on them
Even if it is only a radical minority, it becomes tricky when they try to impose their morals on others. ‘There are girls who only need to wear a headscarf to attend school because they are afraid of a Muslim group putting pressure on them,’ reports the teacher quoted at the beginning, who does not teach at the school in question. However, the phenomena described are known and can be seen similarly elsewhere. The supposedly perfect world of secondary schools no longer exists.
A father whose daughter attends another grammar school in Essen confirms this diagnosis. The girl has been repeatedly criticised by classmates for her style of dress: “If she wears a sleeveless top in summer, the others say it’s haram. If she paints her nails, they say it’s haram.” For devout Muslims, ‘haram’ means “forbidden”, as opposed to ‘halal’ (permitted). The girl comes from a Christian family, but still feels unsettled by the pressure from her classmates. ‘It’s fundamentalism like in the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages,’ says her father.
Recently, the situation has obviously become heated: The Middle East conflict is now being fought out in school playgrounds, Israel is being condemned and Jews are being agitated against. But the furore of Islamic hardliners does not stop at other Muslims either: there is the liberal Turkish family whose daughter is being persuaded to wear a headscarf by her classmates. Alawites report that they prefer to conceal their religious affiliation, and the young Shiite that Sunni classmates insult him as an ‘infidel’.
At the end of January, the Essen secondary school heads are said to have discussed the development. Berthold Urch, head of the Alfred Krupp School and spokesman for the Essen grammar schools, says that he does not provide any information about school management meetings. However, he does answer general questions about the upheavals described. Schools are places where young people from different backgrounds and religions come together, and each of them must be able to ‘feel accepted, in good hands and safe’. Pupils should learn to treat each other with respect in an atmosphere of trust.