by Béatrice Di Pizzo,* Zurich
(23 May 2023) Swiss primary schools are dominated by competence orientation, self-organised learning and inclusive support. The humanistic educational ideal falls by the wayside.
by Gerald Oberansmayr,* Austria
(17 May 2023) (Edit.) In Austria, too, there are strong efforts to circumvent the country’s neutrality, which is deeply rooted in the population. A look beyond Switzerland’s borders can therefore be helpful for the discussion in our country. The starting points are different, but in both countries a part of the political establishment seems to be deeply annoyed by neutrality.
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.
(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.
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.
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.