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White construction helmets in front of yellow safety vests at the construction ceremony for the new Munich criminal justice center
Photo: IMAGO/mufkinnphotos / IMAGO/aal.photo
I don't know Hans Peter Wollseifer personally, but he must be a brave man because he just got the whole justice industry on his back.
As president of the craft trades, Herr Wollseifer called for an "educational turnaround," but not the kind that is always demanded, so that the other half of a cohort after their 18th birthday also goes to university.
Herr Wollseifer said that there is a shortage of a quarter of a million skilled workers in the trades.
From this he concludes: "Over-academicization is a mistake."
"Stopping over-academicization" is worse for certain biotopes than "let nuclear power plants run longer" or eating pork neck steak.
It questions the post-war imperative of advancement through education.
“Stop over-academicization” is a declaration of war.
As a rule, advancement through education does not mean an apprenticeship with "gas, water, shit," as the highly respectable plumbing trade is also called.
Advancement through education means, especially among leftists, that children should achieve a higher level of education than their parents, meaning that they should graduate from high school and, if possible, go to university.
For decades, the goal was worth all the honors and some state intervention, with the exception, however, of the one-star inflation on some certificates and the widespread abolition of the Hauptschule, because its name alone stigmatized.
But now we are realizing that the most urgent future tasks of the country or even the planet cannot be carried out on time if there are too few plumbers and other trades of the more tangible kind in Germany.
In any case, an (even) higher high school graduation or student quota will not help much with Minister Habeck's project of millions of heat pumps instead of gas or oil heating systems, nor with all the wind turbines or the repair of roads, bridges and networks.
All of this is handcraft because it is not only made with the head but also with the hands.
In short: Comparative literature is important.
But not for achieving the climate goals or defeating Putin.
As long as there were enough youngsters, you could have both: the rising tale of the growing school-leaving certificate quota and the master craftsmen their apprentices.
Now Germany is running out of youngsters and we have to make a decision.
Even the "taz" writes that "social mobility downwards" is also needed if this is the only way to cover the needs of society as a whole.
So far I only knew such sentences from myself.
Politicians and trade unionists like to sing the praises of the dual training system on Sundays, vulgo: of apprenticeship and vocational school.
But what counts for them and by which they are measured almost exclusively is their rise in society.
This is not least measured by the number of high school graduates and first-year students.
A shortage of apprentices, a brake on growth, an investment backlog in climate protection - it doesn't matter, billing is based on academization.
"The children of academics go into production," counters the left-leaning taz.
According to the current interpretation, however, that would mean relegation, and according to current understanding, society would be less good and just as a result.
How to recognize: This previous understanding is becoming more and more a mere number shift.
Academization is not a value in itself.
Incidentally, this has long been proven in European countries, which have very high student rates and very high youth unemployment rates alike.
I don't want to talk too much about simple work, also known as »unskilled«.
It's so underwhelmed by the official bodies that Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil would rather have thousands of employees brought from Turkey to work as airport staff than vigorously advertise this work among the local unemployed.
The SPIEGEL interview with the new head of the Federal Employment Agency also deals with all sorts of things, but not with the question of why several hundred thousand vacancies for unskilled workers cannot be filled from the group of 2.3 million unemployed.
If the 2.3 million are exclusively former skilled workers, I don't want to have said anything.
Then, however, they would have to be able to fill the several hundred thousand vacancies for skilled workers, which, however, does not happen
because there is a lack of further training for the unemployed.
No matter how you twist and turn it, something doesn't work there.
Clearly: Education is the gateway to life, every rise means a victory for the individual and an honor for the whole country.
We are close to the ideal society when everyone is allowed to make of their own lives what they want and are able to do.
But it is also true that there is human life without a degree or university degree, and perhaps some normal people simply can no longer hear what they should do with themselves and their lives in order to find recognition in the Justemilieu.
On the other hand, those with a high school diploma and degree should recognize that our weal and woe could depend less on their peers in the near future than on the fact that not quite as many follow their educational example, but learn a craft.
To reconcile the interests of the individual and the community on this issue,
is a complicated thing.
But when it comes to academization, the rise of the individual threatens to trigger a decline for the whole.
PS.: I can already hear the replies and questions as to whether our three children have done an apprenticeship.
No, they didn't, they studied.
But honestly, what does that change for the questions that are raised here?
