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SPIEGEL education newsletter

2021-08-24T07:50:42.679Z


Where should you vaccinate? Who has to be in quarantine? And who's been chatting at school for so long - new friends? Our education newsletter.


Dear readers, good morning,

now the summer is really over, in Hamburg it feels like autumn at least.

And about schools and lessons, about vaccinations and quarantine, a heated argument has arisen again between politics, educational associations, parents and students.

("That's going on")

You can read in our newsletter

which federal state scores points in education and what people sitting next

to you

have to do with quarantine and friendships

(“good to know”)

.

Have lots of fun with it!

Feedback & suggestions?

The team from »Kleine Pause«

Susmita Arp, Silke Fokken, Armin Himmelrath

That's going on

1. Should vaccinations be given in schools?

Following the recommendation of the Standing Vaccination Commission to vaccinate children and adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age, individual federal states are preparing to offer schools as well.

Mobile vaccination teams drive around in Schleswig-Holstein.

Some find this practical in order to immunize as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

Others fear that students will be put under pressure.

From the Bavarian Ministry of Culture, for example, it is said that vaccination is an individual decision and not a requirement for school attendance.

And the Association for Education and Upbringing (VBE) says: Children would have to voluntarily choose to have a vaccination.

"We think it is questionable whether this can be redeemed if the vaccination takes place in mobile vaccination vehicles in front of the school," said Federal Chairman Udo Beckmann to SPIEGEL.

Dario Schramm, General Secretary of the Federal Schoolchildren Conference, thinks it is good that schools are supposed to be vaccinated.

"It is now important to offer vaccinations in the places where young people are," he told SPIEGEL.

The Federal Parents 'Council and the President of the German Teachers' Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, have also spoken out in favor.

The vaccinations should, however, take place outside of class.

2. Who has to be in quarantine?

A classmate will test positive for Corona. What now? In North Rhine-Westphalia, only those sitting next to you are sent to quarantine, as well as people who have been in direct contact with those affected. In most cases, the health authorities decide who exactly has to go home and stay there - depending on how well the hygiene measures have been observed and how many school members have already been vaccinated.

The "Family Initiative" considers the course taken by NRW Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) to be the right one.

Heike Riedmann, a member of the initiative, says that children should receive as much face-to-face teaching as possible.

"Quarantine is a deprivation of liberty and means a lot of stress, especially for families in cramped conditions." The chairwoman of the Education and Science Union (GEW) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Ayla Çelik, says: Quarantines should apply to the whole class.

"Children and adolescents don't sit in their seats all day, and aerosols don't stay there either."

3. Saxony in front, Bremen in the back

The ranking of the education monitor of the Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft is here.

According to this, Saxony is back in the rankings of the federal states.

Saxony is praised, among other things, for the high all-day quota and the good knowledge of the students in maths and natural sciences.

Bremen scores worst in the education monitor.

Here the students achieve poor results in the competence tests.

Foreign pupils relatively rarely pass the Abitur and comparatively often leave school without a qualification.

And the proportion of all-day schoolchildren in kindergarten, elementary school and secondary level 1 is below the national average.

What else?

In the UK, top marks in private schools are putting the minister of education under pressure.

The record high number of high school diplomas reveals a gap between private and state schools.

That causes criticism.

In Florida, the governor caused a controversy: He wants schools that insist on masks to cut funding.

He considers masks to be superfluous in class - if schools insist on mouth and nose protection, there should be less money.

Some still enjoy the summer vacation.

Others have to get up on time again, very early in the morning.

Why actually?

Researcher Knud Andresen explained to our colleague why work in advertising agencies starts so late, but so early on construction sites and in schools.

An interview about the finding of working hours.

Good to know

When the new school year begins, pupils usually ask themselves: Who is actually sitting where in the classroom? This is by no means without consequences, as a new study shows. Schoolchildren who sit next to each other usually make friends with each other, even if they are actually very different. This is the result of the study, which was carried out with the participation of the University of Leipzig and published in the specialist journal »Plos One«.

Teachers can therefore influence who makes friends, for example by placing students next to each other, says the psychologist Julia Rohrer from the University of Leipzig, one of the study authors. "Teachers can intervene in school classes in a simple way and thus create a more diverse network of friends from which disadvantaged students in particular could benefit."

There should be no compulsion, says Gisela Steins, psychology professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

"In the classroom, the children are crammed into a very small space anyway, so they shouldn't sit next to someone they don't like." Teacher President Heinz-Peter Meidinger says there is a better way: rotating.

This would give the students the chance to get to know each other and develop a better group feeling.

Outsider positions would also become rarer.

News from SPIEGEL Ed

Lessons for the 2021 federal election: "How do we get out of the climate crisis?"

At SPIEGEL Ed, in the weeks leading up to the Bundestag election, teachers will find teaching units on the important questions of the future from politics and society, new this week: "How do we get out of the climate crisis?"

In this teaching unit, students deal with the climate crisis, the effects on Germany and the world and the possibilities of overcoming it.

The teaching units are designed for middle and high school.

There are also materials on the questions "How do we want to talk to each other?" And "How will Germany become fairer?"

All teaching units can be downloaded here free of charge.

The good news at the end

The Hamburg school authority has ordered more than 21,000 mobile air purification devices worth more than 21 million euros from various manufacturers for the classrooms of the state schools in Hamburg.

School Senator Ties Rabe (SPD) celebrated that Hamburg is so far the only federal state that has equipped all classrooms and a large part of the other classrooms with mobile air filter devices.

The next newsletter comes on September 7th.

Ideas, suggestions, feedback?

We look forward to receiving mail to kleinepause@newsletter.spiegel.de.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-08-24

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