As of: March 7, 2024, 5:00 p.m
By: Markus Thiel
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Music lessons in primary schools are at risk - the Bavarian Ministry of Education wants a timetable reform.
© Rainer Jensen
Prominent artists have intervened in the debate about the planned timetable reform at Bavaria's primary schools.
Stars like Anne-Sophie Mutter, Sir Simon Rattle and Vladimir Jurowski wrote an open letter to the state government.
They strongly criticize a possible reduction in hours in the creative subjects of music, art and works.
Baritone Christian Gerhaher has already commented on this in detail in our newspaper. We are publishing the open letter here in full:
Dear Minister Stolz, dear Prime Minister Söder, dear Bavarian State Government,
We would like to express our protest against the planned cuts in teaching in creative subjects in Bavarian schools.
The attempt to relativize or even deny the planned merger of the primary school subjects of art, music and crafts on March 4, 2024, to transfer responsibility for the lessons to be carried out to the schools and to allow “epochal lessons”, for example for half a year We consider teaching art, then music, to be a dubious attempt to take the wind out of the sails of the widely unanimous protest against your plans.
The fact remains that you now want to give a legal basis to the inability to adequately provide the creative education of our students, which has long been real in practice.
Epochal is at best your open attempt to explain the arts as a dispensable secondary matter.
We would like to remind you emphatically that Article 3 of the Bavarian Constitution obliges you to do justice to the state of Bavaria as a cultural state.
“This government’s lack of interest in cultural content”
To the many failures in this task, for example during the pandemic, you are now adding another serious failure in line with this government's increasingly obvious lack of interest in the cultural content of school and university education.
The arts in our country are a unique selling point of our country in terms of their state funding and therefore extension, they contribute enormously to the productivity of our country and they are not recipients of subsidies, but rather places for investments in a future with a historical foundation and cultural tradition, in a way of passing on Content that has been maintained for thousands of years is passed on to the following generations.
We probably need creativity to a great extent in our world.
How are we supposed to be able to deal with the diverse and threatening developments of more than just recent times if we only rely on acquiring skills?
We must give our children the opportunity, encourage them not only to follow the rules, but also to use their imagination freely and associatively, to develop ideas, and to think and try out new things with sensual joy.
The free use of creativity contributes to emotional and empathic competence, language acquisition and communication skills.
This is another reason why education through the arts plays an outstanding role.
Because of the cultural sovereignty of the federal states and because of Article 3 of the Bavarian Constitution mentioned above, they have a particularly high responsibility to live up to.
“So that this country gets new ideas”
We therefore call on you to take the opposite approach: Please do not leave it up to schools, which are already overwhelmed by staff shortages, to decide how to deal with these subjects.
Don't allow these subjects to become less important again, but on the contrary, correct the mistakes that have long been made and repeatedly and which have obviously caused disinterest in the arts to grow.
Rather, please strengthen lessons with cultural content: In German lessons, promote not only skills, but also the natural acquisition of broad literary knowledge, promote art-historical judgment, and make familiarity with musical content a matter of course again, so that this The country is also getting new ideas from this side.
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In order for this to work in secondary schools, the youngest children must be supported in this direction as well as possible.
We must not leave the care of the arts to museums, theaters, orchestras and high schools, and all children must be allowed to participate - this works best in primary schools, across languages and backgrounds and is therefore particularly integrative and identity-forming.
What you're trying to do is make cuts in completely the wrong place!
Best regards
Prof. Julia Fischer, Prof. Christian Gerhaher, chief conductor Jakub Hrusa, GMD Vladimir Jurowski, Prof. Anne-Sophie Mutter, chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle, chief conductor Lahav Shani, chief conductor Joseph Bastian, Hansjörg Albrecht,
Prof. Georg Arzberger, Yulianna Avdeeva, Prof .Juliane Banse, Prof. Markus Bellheim, Prof. Gerold Huber, Prof. Christiane Iven, Christiane Karg, Konstantin Krimmel, Prof. Mi-Kyung Lee, Prof. Nils Mönkemeyer, Daniel Müller-Schott, Michael Nagy, Tareq Nazmi, Prof. Lena Neudauer, Prof. Christoph Poppen, Prof. Alexandra Scott, Prof. Julian Steckel, Prof. Ingolf Turban, Prof. Wen-Sinn Yang.