West-east pupil exchanges in Germany?
January 15, 2018
The new president of Germany's Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK), Helmut Holter, has proposed pupil exchanges between eastern and western states as a way of bridging differences that still remain after German reunification almost 30 years ago.
"We need not only pupil exchange projects with Poland and France but also between Leipzig and Stuttgart," Holter told newspapers of the Funke media group published on Monday.
"I am convinced that the east and west talk much too little about what used to be and what the situation is today," he said, adding: "East German experiences must be brought to the west and vice versa."
Holter's remarks come shortly after he took up the post of president of the KMK, an assembly of German ministers of education that is meant to coordinate educational policy between the states, which are largely autonomous with regard to education and culture.
Holter himself comes from the eastern state of Thuringia and belongs to the Left Party, which has its roots in the SED, the party that governed former communist East Germany until its demise in 1990.
Read more: East Germans still victims of 'cultural colonialism' by the West
'Not very useful'
The president of the German Teachers' Association (DL), Heinz-Peter Meidinger, expressed skepticism about the proposal.
"The lives and experiences of pupils in the western and eastern states are much closer to each other now," he told broadcaster MDR, adding that pupils in both parts of Germany had never experienced the country before reunification.
The education minister of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, Marco Tullner, also said Holter's idea was not very useful.
"In the 28th year after German reunification, we shouldn't construct ideological walls where there are no longer any," he told news agency DPA.
"Instead, we should aim to stress things there are in common rather than differences," Tullner said, adding that school pupils were often a step ahead of adults in this regard.
The government's commissioner for the former eastern states, Iris Gleike, called Holter's proposal out-of-date, adding that many young people were no longer aware of "peculiarities or sensitivities" between east and west.
Still behind
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), ceased to exist in 1990 and merged with former West Germany to become the Federal Republic of Germany.
The states in the eastern regions once comprising the GDR still register higher unemployment than those in the west, and average wages continue to be lower.
Read more: The dying rural communities in eastern Germany
tj/jm (dpa, AFP)