#3 A little Education will do the Trick - Possibilities for an Education Against the Right

Column text from the 24th of April, 2024

After my last post, I heard in a conversation about the text that there is a great lack of understanding as to why there is not more investment in education. This person - understandably - thought that if only people were given enough information and educational attention, the problem of right-wing and misanthropic ideology would be solved in the coming years. Of course, I was exaggerating here a little, and there's actually nothing wrong with the idea. From my own biography, I know how important certain information was for me to get into a process, to question my own -isms and to be able to think about politics at all.

But is that really true? When I’m thinking about it I realize that I've actually been thinking about politics since I was a child. I just wasn't aware of it. But before I was even in kindergarten, I said to a playmate that unfortunately our Barbies couldn't get married after she suggested it. This was not a reflective, informed statement or position, but simply a conclusion I drew from observing my environment, where there was no visible same-sex love. My friend then explained to me that this is very possible and that they would then be called "lesbians". My mind was blown.
My friend of the same age probably didn't know that two Barbies wouldn't have been able to get married back then because same-sex love was possible but politically prevented. Otherwise, she might even have agreed with me. This situation was as innocent as it was political and was formative for me and the rest of my life. It shows that political education doesn't just start at school and isn't just about so-called “Realpolitik” but includes all considerations that deal with the structuring of our societal life. And this begins in our own environment and lived reality.  

When I think about it, most of the things that are relevant to me TODAY, especially in terms of my own political education, I learned outside of school. Of course, I had the subject "History and Political Education", in which I learned relevant things, such as how democracy is defined and what human rights are. But I didn't learn, for example, that America wasn't "discovered", but violently colonized. Nor did I learn that the effects of these acts of violence continue to have an impact and can still be felt today and are even being perpetuated in a different way.

I was also politically socialized at school, but the stories above show that this doesn't just happen there, and that the choice of content covered or not covered at school is also political. It is no coincidence that I learned about the so-called "European spirit of discovery" and that Austria supposedly bears no responsibility for National Socialism, but rather a victim instead of the atrocious deeds of Europe and the Austrian Nazis or civilian population during the Holocaust. This is the result of political decisions.

Political education and, above all, political socialization happen in every area of our lives - intentionally or not. However, a conscious, self-determined, informed, theoretical engagement with political issues only happened for me after I resumed my studies and was forced to deal with them due to my own social position. And I think that's also what resonates in this reader's feedback (it was one of my brothers, by the way hihi), namely exactly this awareness: All the things I write about are not a natural part of schooling and that's a problem.

I agree with that - it is indeed a problem. But for whom? Is it a problem for the Straches, Höckes, Nehammers and Scholzes? For the Kickls, Trumps and Maaßens? Probably not so much. And I think that is also the reason why education as an institution in the German-speaking world looks the way it does. Basically, its task is to discipline, to raise its children as so-called "responsible citizens" and to equip them with what is considered necessary for this in our society - in short: to maintain the system. Encouraging critical thinking may be part of the curriculum, but how critical can students be if their textbooks, curricula and teachers are not? If the focus is on fulfilling certain performance requirements and not questioning the circumstances in which they are to take place?