Schoolchildren from Ignaz-Taschner-Gymnasium spread stickers with anti-Semitic and racist representations in the class chat. And this despite the fact that the ITG can call itself “School without Racism - School with Courage”.
Dachau - Stickers with racist or pornographic motifs, pictures with Nazi symbols or those with which marginalized groups are disparaged have been distributed by pupils in a ninth and a tenth class of the Dachau Ignaz-Taschner-Gymnasium (ITG) in their respective WhatsApp class chats. Ironically, students of the high school, which since 2009 has been able to call itself “School without Racism - School with Courage”.
The hate-and-baiting posts had already been reported to the school in November and December 2019. "Thank God there are parents who look into their children's chats," said school principal Erwin Lenz yesterday. In the meantime, the school has worked on the matter internally. For this reason, the school management has so far not filed criminal charges with the police.
"We looked at each case individually," says Lenz. It turned out that the students did not have any party political activities. According to the headmaster, it is simply “stupid, naive, pubescent importance” - which was nevertheless punished disciplinarily. Lenz does not want to say how exactly. Just so much: The ITG's disciplinary committee, consisting of nine teachers, the parents' council and the school psychologist, met. Also at the table: the students concerned and their parents. "The students were very insightful and concerned," Rector Lenz noted.
And the grammar school took another measure: it brought an experienced chief detective chief into the house. The man from the Extremism Unit gave lectures for one morning in the two classes concerned and then later in all further tenth classes, including the students. "It was first class what the man did," says Lenz, "great how he prepared everything pedagogically."
The ITG has been quiet ever since. And Rector Erwin Lenz draws a conclusion from the story: “The problem is that the students have all the instruments in hand. But they don't know how to deal with it. ”Whatsapp, for example, is“ something great, but also something dangerous ”.
The ITG case is not the only one in the Munich area. As became known in November 2019, ninth graders had also sent anti-Semitic incitement posts in class chat at a high school in Grafing (Ebersberg district). And yesterday, the police headquarters in Munich announced that sexually offensive and, in some cases, hateful content had been distributed or distributed to people under the age of 18 in a class chat at the monastery high school in Schäftlarn. The exact size of the group of participants in the chat is currently the subject of the investigations. According to the first findings, the number of people involved in the chat is in a double-digit range. The police are currently investigating two 14-year-old students. It is suspected that the offenses could have been carried out using unconstitutional organizations, incitement to hate people, and the distribution of pornography.
