Even more than four decades after the first introduction of ethics lessons in the states of Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate, millions of non-denominational pupils and parents are still being deprived of a fully-fledged ethical and moral education alternative to religious education, criticizes the Ethics Association in the “Memorandum on Ethics Lessons – Between Success and Discrimination” presented in Stuttgart on Tuesday. According to the association, an ethically and morally educational and ideologically neutral subject is currently taught in 12 out of 16 federal states under varying names such as “Ethics”, “Values and Standards” (Lower Saxony) or “Life Design, Ethics and Religious Studies” (Brandenburg) and is currently attended by almost 1.7 million pupils nationwide. However, with the exception of a few federal states, the range of value-forming subjects without a denominational-religious orientation is very poor in many respects. “The subject of ethics is somewhere between an educational policy scandal that has lasted for over 40 years and a success story since reunification,” say the authors of the memorandum. In the current situation, many pupils continue to be deprived of “basic educational goods that are acquired in ethics lessons”.
Professional association: “punitive detention” is “unlawful practice”
The list of criticisms mentioned in the analysis is long. This is because in many federal states, ethics lessons are not offered from grade 1, but only from grade 5 or even later. Although the state of Hesse has established ethics lessons from grade 1 to 12/13 under school law, in practice the subject has only been introduced there to 30 percent. Only Berlin has introduced ethics lessons 100 percent of the time, with only Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt achieving a high level of introduction. However, although ethics and religion are set up as compulsory elective subjects in Thuringia, non-denominational parents and their children must feel disadvantaged there because ethics lessons are of “inferior subject-specific quality”. In addition to the simple lack of ethics lessons, the provision of the subjects shows a further general deficit. Ethics is “to a considerable extent not taught by professionally qualified teachers”; in the majority of federal states, this is even predominantly done by teachers from outside the subject, according to the professional association. Only in Saxony-Anhalt and North Rhine-Westphalia are the clear majority of lessons taught by qualified specialist teachers. The memorandum also states that the state of Bavaria is an example of a “targeted prevention of the training of ethics teachers”. The professional association also criticizes the treatment of pupils who do not take part in religious education despite the lack of alternative options. In federal states such as Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, “non-denominational children are kept in school for two hours every week, over and above their compulsory attendance, without being offered an education equivalent to religious education in the curriculum”. In view of the landmark ruling by the Federal Administrative Court on June 17, 1998, which demanded that the school subject of ethics be provided on an equal footing with religious education and classified “punitive seating” for pupils who had opted out of religious education as an unacceptable burden, the professional association describes this as an “unlawful practice”.
“Emaciation of professionalism”
In some cases, there have apparently even been significant setbacks in the development of teaching provision, as in the case of the subject LER, which was introduced in Brandenburg in 2001. LER was once considered a pioneering concept, but has since been gradually “dismantled”, with the result that only 35.4% of the original 100% of teachers now have the relevant qualifications. “The full extent of the discrimination against LER pupils becomes clear when you know that in the same federal state, religious education is taught by almost 100% specialist teachers and can be taught from Year 1 to Year 12/13, while LER is only taught from Year 5 to Year 10 and then only in Years 7 and 8 with two lessons and in Years 5 and 6 and Years 9 and 10 with only one lesson,” the memorandum states. The professional association believes that it is clearly politically necessary to reduce or abolish the disadvantageous position of non-denominational and ideologically neutral courses in school values education. As the 2015 Shell Youth Study showed, more than half of young people between the ages of 12 and 25 are now non-religious. Of the entire German population, 34% are non-denominational. It is therefore “astonishing and even unrealistic that religious education is given a higher status in education by Old Catholics, Mennonites and freethinkers than ethics education” in many federal states; the authors of the memorandum describe the existing neglect and discrimination of ethics subjects as a substitute subject as “absurd”. In conclusion, the professional association calls for, among other things, the abolition of the “substitute subject” status, an end to the “punitive sitting in school rooms or other classrooms, which is contrary to the Basic Law”, the establishment of ethics lessons for all grades, the guarantee of a truly comprehensive range of courses as well as the professional qualification of all teachers responsible for teaching ethics and the establishment of corresponding teacher training courses at universities.
More on the topic
