Social issues

From strategy paper to flop in daily school life

“The opposite of good is not bad, but well-intentioned” (Karl Kraus)

by Alain Pichard,* Switzerland

(11 May 2023) (Edit.) Cantonal governments and authorities draft strategy papers that practitioners in schools have to implement. Often, the planners have no idea about the lives of the schoolchildren they want to delight with their educational programmes. This is the case throughout the German-speaking world. Alain Pichard describes such a process using the example of a nutrition education programme in the city of Biel.

USA

“For freedom of the press Drop the charges against Assange”

Rashida Tlaib, Democratic congresswoman, is collecting signatures in the US Congress to prevent a dangerous precedent

(2 May 2023) upg. Journalist Julian Assange has been stewing in the British maximum security prison Belmarsh for three years. He must wait there for a decision on extradition to the USA. One does not have to sympathise with Assange, one can even have bad feelings. But it is about what he has actually done. And that is nothing different from what newspapers like the ”New York Times” or the “Washington Post” have already done. This is what the Democratic member of the US House of Representatives, Rashida Tlaib, says.

Why the German state is failing

No clarification of Nord Stream attack?

by Robert Seidel

(25 April 2023) Like an elephant in the room, the question of how it can be that leading German politicians and judges accept the main artery of Germany's energy supply, the Nord Stream pipelines, be sabotaged, but the perpetrators not prosecuted.

Germany

«Craftsmen for peace»

Congress of craftsmen and entrepreneurs in Dessau-Rosslau

by Marita Brune

(18 April 2023) For once, it wasn’t the well-known groups of the classic German peace movement that hosted a congress for peace. This time the initiative came from the heart of society, from craftsmen and entrepreneurs from small and medium-sized businesses. On Sunday, 2 April 2023, the “Craftsmen’s Peace Congress” took place in Dessau-Rosslau in Saxony-Anhalt, organised by Karl Krökel, head of the Dessau Metal Guild. About 250 people, twice as many as expected, came to the “Hugo Junkers” Museum of Technology. The star guest of the event was Gabriele Krone-Schmalz, long-time Russia correspondent for the German public TV channel ARD.
Pedagogy

Teacher shortage: the real reasons

by Prof. Dr. Mario Andreotti*

(11 April 2023) Up and down the country, school presidents and principals are looking for teachers for the new school year. In eastern Switzerland, the situation is somewhat less dramatic than in other parts of the country. In the Lake Constance region, all vacant teaching positions were once again filled. Nevertheless, the situation remains tense here as well, as guest author Professor Dr Mario Andreotti writes.

France Blocked For 4 Years

President Emmanuel Macron has just deliberately destroyed his constitutional authority

by Thierry Meyssan,* France

(6 April 2023) The crisis that France is going through today is not just another episode in an eternally agitated country. It is about a deep crisis of mode which will be solved only with the beginning of a new society. The country will go through several years of blockage, before embarking on a complete transformation, a revolution that will last at least a generation.