Teachers in Saxony-Anhalt fear a future AfD government in schools

On Sunday, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt holds elections to its state parliament, in which, according to polls, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) could win. In the town of Haldensleben, roughly half an hour from Magdeburg, opponents of the party and AfD's own pre-election "festival of democracy" held rallies at the same time — both drew sizeable crowds, including families with children.

Marco Ladewig, headmaster of the Friedrich Foerster Gymnasium, came to the protest march to openly speak out against the party. "My colleagues are afraid of the future. They ask what they can still talk about with the children, and what they can no longer say," he said. What worries him most is what will happen to the teaching of history, democracy and civics if the AfD comes to power in the region.

A dispute over teacher neutrality

Ladewig's gymnasium recently voted on whether to join the "School Without Racism — School With Courage" network. The vote required 70% approval — it fell sixteen votes short, and some students applauded and celebrated when the result was announced. The AfD, for its part, calls such programmes a tool of "left-wing indoctrination" and has pledged to cut their state-level funding.

Martin Reichardt, leader of the AfD's state branch, urged parents at a campaign rally to "support their children against left-wing teachers." MP Hans-Thomas Tichy [Tillschneider], one of the party's leading ideologues in the region, has previously told parliament that teachers are "mostly left-wing educators" and promised to "drive the rainbow flag and any left-wing propaganda out of schools." When an SPD lawmaker asked who would decide which teachers were "reasonable," he replied: "We will decide what's reasonable."

According to the German outlet Taz, people close to Tillschneider helped draft the AfD's election programme, and the MP himself is being mentioned as a possible candidate for education minister should the party win.

What the party is proposing

The AfD's election programme demands stricter political neutrality from teachers: when discussing political topics, educators should only moderate students' opinions rather than express their own. The party also wants to make it easier for parents and pupils to file complaints against teachers and headmasters, and to set up a dedicated "hotline" at the education ministry.

A telling case took place in the town of Stendal: when two sixth-graders asked teacher Max Heckel whether he would vote for the AfD, he said no, adding that anyone voting for the party must be either rich or "crazy." Following an inquiry, the state education authority issued him a formal warning, which the teacher is now contesting in court.

Malte Gerken, deputy chairman of the GEW teachers' union, considers the punishment excessive but admits the remark was careless. What worries him far more is the overall atmosphere among teachers: "Teachers ask us: what can we say and what can't we? This never used to happen." According to him, the AfD's label of "left-wing indoctrination" is now being applied even to basic principles of civic education — such as the idea that "we are all human and have equal rights."

Inclusion, refugees and home schooling

The AfD plans to roll back inclusive education for children with disabilities in mainstream schools, calling the approach a "failed experiment," and to expand the network of special schools instead. Gerken sees this as one of the most alarming measures: given the region's existing teacher shortage, a return to segregated education would put even more strain on the system.

The party intends to take an equally hard line on the children of refugees and asylum seekers — proposing, without exception, to teach them in separate classes, since their stay in Germany is treated as temporary. Gerken objects: children who remain in Saxony-Anhalt need to learn the language and integrate into society — and eventually into the workforce the region badly needs.

An even more radical proposal concerns compulsory schooling itself: under the AfD's programme, parents would be allowed not to send their child to school at all, teaching them at home instead and having them sit centralised exams twice a year. The duty to provide an education would remain, but the duty to physically attend school would disappear. The party explicitly ties this idea to its belief that today's schools impose "dubious life views" on children.

More Bismarck, less Hitler

Party ideologue Tillschneider has already stated that the 19th century matters more to German identity than the 20th, and when a journalist asked whether that meant "more Bismarck and less Hitler," he agreed, adding: "Of course, National Socialism too, but a bit less of it." The AfD's programme does not call for removing Nazism from the school curriculum, but demands greater emphasis on the Napoleonic Wars, German unification and the founding of the Empire in 1871, which the party describes as a "success story."

Headmaster Ladewig, who teaches history himself, has no objection to giving more attention to the 19th century, but sees a problem in politicians deciding in advance how students should judge the past. Union representative Gerken points out that education in Germany falls mainly under state jurisdiction, so in the event of a decisive AfD win, many changes could be pushed through without any need to consult Berlin.

Economist Thomas Brockmeyer, head of the IHK Halle-Dessau chamber of commerce and generally a critic of the current federal government, nonetheless believes the home-schooling idea is a mistake: "If you keep a child from going to school, you deprive them of other points of view too. You'd end up with indoctrination from the opposite direction — the whole thing would simply flip 180 degrees."

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz