By Annette Seifert
Attending the central demonstration in Berlin on Wednesday, part of a nationwide protest against the current state of education in Germany – the Education Strike 2009 - I was struck by a banner reading “The most effective method of repression is bureaucracy.“ It immediately hit home with me, reminding me of a week of running from office to office, getting this and that signature and making sure I had all the required credit points needed to apply for my BA thesis. No questions about what I had actually done at university, what seminars I had attended, and what education I had supposedly received. It was a procession of unknown faces signing and stamping sheets of paper outlining my credit points and making sure I was within the set system of what was required and what counts as education.
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| Central demonstration in Berlin on Wednesday |
And I’m definitely not alone with that experience, as the impressive turnout of 20,000 protesters at said demonstration proved. Pounding the pavement in central Berlin, the voices of pupils, students, teachers, and professors were united in their call for more funding for education, a more flexible and critical curriculum, and the general view that the BA and MA system in Germany has been an abysmal failure so far. An opinion that was echoed in the nationwide protests this week, with more than 200,000 people demonstrating across the country.
The Bologna Process from 1999 had high aims. Making Europe’s higher education more international and transparent by adopting a common system with the Bachelor and Master as used in anglo institutions. Crossing borders during and after university was to become easier. The drop-out rates of students was to be minimized through a system that provides more guidance. Instead, many are faced with the same issues I have had to deal with – a lot of paperwork, a more difficult process of accepting credits from different universities within the country and abroad, a complete lack of guidance and support from the universities, and seminar rooms too crowded to provide a chair for everyone that needs to be there.
At the same time, my institute, the John-F.-Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Free University in Berlin, declared itself “excellent” and “elite”, focusing on a newly opened Graduate School while out of the roughly 60 BAs that were supposed to tackle their BA thesis this semester, a mere 17 actually managed to sign up for it, the rest dropped out or unable to tackle the requirements.
And this is only one example of current problems that showcase deeper issues as outlined by the general assembly of students and supporters at the FU on Tuesday. Roughly 1,300 attended the assembly in the morning, adopting a resolution to be delivered to the university’s President, Dieter Lenzen, that outlines key issues students are striking for. Professor Funke from the political science department flat-out declared the BA and MA system as a failure in a rousing speech. Issues of access to education were raised, with the prospect of a small elite that can actually afford an education in the future, furthering a growing social divide and relegating education to a good that can be bought. The rigid and inflexible structure of the new BA makes it impossible to educate a new generation of critical thinkers, instead churning out a uni-product geared towards the demands of business. Which is also why our President, Dieter Lenzen, was just voted Best University MANAGER by the Financial Times.
The number of students seeking psychological advice has swelled from 16,000 to 22,000 since the introduction of the BA and the drop-out rate has actually increased in fields of study that reduced the previous 9 semesters to 6, while still trying to cram in the same amount of information.
Unsurprisingly, many students are frustrated. A frustration and latent anger that was expressed when, during the assembly, the announcement was made that the seat of the Free University’s President had been taken over by students, prompting a swift ending to the gathering and more than 400 students joining the protesters at the Präsidialamt.
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| Breaking up the protest on Tuesday |
The peaceful takeover, that saw the adopted resolution read out to police gathering in front of the building and supporters joining in a sit-in at the building’s entrance, was broken up forcefully by the police on Tuesday afternoon after the students’ demand for a dialogue with the university management was not met and protesters refused to leave the building.
But similar to the ending of the demonstration on Wednesday, where students stormed the foyer of the Humboldt University in Berlin and proceeded to throw toilet paper and flyers instead of stones and bottles, the protests have been peaceful and non-violent so far.
On Thursday, students will “rob a bank” to protest the fact that the government is willing to bail out banks with millions of Euros while universities in Berlin alone had their funding reduced by more than 70 million Euros, a fact that brought thousands of students to the street years ago much like today.
Hopefully, the many united voices will be heard on Friday when politicians discuss the state of education in Germany at their Kultusministerkonferenz (state conference on education and media) in Berlin.
images © Annette Seifert
© Article from EuropeFront.com - European News Network
http://www.europefront.com/news/707/education_strike_2009_students_vs_higher_education.html
Published: 21/11/2009