Tagesspiegel community about homoofinity in schools: “It is a failure to society as a whole”

For weeks, a gay teacher was insulted at a Berlin primary school of children – and and Hardly protected by your own school management. Instead of supporting the educator, he has been suggested to change school. The case caused a sensation across Berlin and raised the question of how homophobia deals with schools – both by the institutions themselves and politics.

The Tagesspiegel caught up with voices from the educational landscape in a follow -up point. Many teachers report everyday discriminationoften already in the lower grades. The assessments of where the causes are and how countermeasures are separated – but of course it becomes: The problem is structural and not an isolated case.

The article was also intensively discussed in the Tagesspiegel community. Numerous readers share their own observations, demand demand consistent education Already in primary school – and criticize a society that allows itself to Recrease old prejudices among children. Read an editorial selection of comments from our readers here.

NonameOnthestreet
We live in a patriarchal world, hypermasculinity is constantly being shown to young people as desirable. Not wine, be a real man, drive SUV, earn a lot of money, go to the gym, have a “sexy” woman, show her where it goes. Men have never emancipated themselves from their toxic role models, on the contrary, these are globally on the rise – Trump, Musk, Orbán.

So project your uncertainty and helplessness onto queer people (because this does not only affect gays) who, in themselves, represent an attack on your masculine self -construction. This is not a milieu problem, because discriminatory and inhuman attitudes of all kinds are socially anchored.

nimili
I have been teaching material lessons and natural sciences at a primary school in Berlin for years. Different family forms of father & mother (also with different skin colors), single parents and father & father or mother & mother are from the 1st/2. Great theme. These family forms are presented for granted when it comes to family without much female, so that the children can classify their own families and get to know other family forms for granted. In NAWI lessons in class 5/6, sexual tendencies are a topic in sexual studies. I always had very interesting hours there.

Since I work on a Christian-confessional primary school, we rarely have Muslim students in the classes and if so, then they are usually very well integrated. In contrast, however, we have several Russian -born students in all classes and they regularly express homophobic in sexual history lessons. The discussions that then take place within a class clearly show that relatively many students are very open, stand up for homosexuals and can also argue well. I wouldn’t have done that at that age, many 11/21-year-olds are very familiar with the topic today.

I already see it as positive when a student with an extremely negative attitude sounds all of this, perhaps also responding to arguments. Ultimately, it is important that these students deal with the other opinions that they have never heard at home or their community. Sometimes that leads to a more moderate attitude.

Ida73
You have to intervene early, not just with teenagers. I have already experienced in second graders that such sayings are put on “cool or gay” and the like, quite possible that the child simply liked the rhyme. But you should never leave that as a teacher, so time has to be for a brief explanation of why the saying doesn’t work.

Indian111
The continuing homophobia at Berlin schools is alarming. It is regrettable that certain groups, including Muslim young people, are not sufficiently held accountable in this context. A consistent approach to any form of discrimination, regardless of the origin of the perpetrators, is essential. The silence and view of progressive forces help to continue to exist. Without clear measures and an open examination of the problem, the situation for homosexual students and teachers will continue to deteriorate.

Konner_ffM
In the context of the growing homophobia at primary schools, one should not underestimate the influence of the AfD: While Islamist currents indoctrinate children with rigid gender roles and distress fears, the AfD delivers ammunition for precisely the same prejudices.

By defaming LGBTQ+ as a “opponent” of an allegedly threatened family model and repeatedly giving homophobic tips in media discussion rounds, it already normalizes exclusion in the classroom. Anyone who trivializes this is dilated how much this politically orchestrated campaign reduces inhibitions and gives children the feeling that hatred is part of the “correct” mediation.

Acuman
Unfortunately, it becomes obvious that German society surrender and the loudly highly captured values ​​of diversity and inclusion cannot fundamentally defend for which it promises to stand up. It is already bad if adult people have to be insulted by prepublished children homophobic. Children who have not yet developed their own identity themselves and are parroting the resentment of their great siblings and parents.

This cannot be done with cultural backgrounds, religious affiliation or level of education. Actually, the motto for several decades has been taken so much: “If only a few marginalized groups are just a few, should not be like this.”

Then nobody really has to be surprised in the foreseeable future that the subsequent generation would no longer want to do this insanity teaching profession. In addition, these children are part of a future generation of lived intolerance, hatred and the exclusion of everything that seems to be considerable from their perspective. To be honest, I am stunned how this country could slip this country in this way. And yet the tendencies in large metropolitan areas were already foreseeable in the 1990s. You have to name what it is: a failure of society as a whole.

Cockroach
Yes, I hear this: are you gay, old? Again and again on the street, on the train. I am a 69-year-old woman and then think I can get involved. Then I speak to the boys why they express themselves and in the end they only look unsettled and mean: Say everyone like this. It is difficult for the young people to explain that they should not use these expressions because these are usus in the daily use. Thoughtful stupidity.

nimili @Cockroach:
Many children hear such phrases at school and just rip them stupidly. When I listen to my elementary school students as a teacher, I ask what they say. Especially in the first two school years, most children don’t even know what “gay” means. When I explain it, they usually find that it is probably not a swear word. After this clarification, most children no longer use these sayings at school. ”

Broeckelhaus
Unfortunately, I can only say that in the 80s and 90s I grew up in a socialized manner that was used as an insult. On the one hand, this was completely unreflected and simply “normal”. On the other hand, it was just an expression of the fact that gay was connoted negatively. It was associated with unmanliness in relation to masculinity and the boys wanted to be real men.

But that changed and that was the development, which then started in the 00s and which is more and more rejected today than Woke. There was linguistic reflection and discrimination was discussed. However, this also followed the angry citizens who excited themselves about early childhood sexualization when it was actually only a diversification of the heteronormative standards and there are not only prince and princess in children’s books.

If a certain faction now homophobia on religion, etc. wants to moor, but at the same time want to have identified Wokeness as a further problem, then bite the place. People who were socialized in their home countries, as I was socialized as a German in the 80s and 90s, should be followed by clarifying the same processes that caused a positive development after the 90s. Exactly these approaches to diversity are also under fire. Homophobic vocabulary will probably be said again.

In other groups, however, it is an expression of civilizational backwardness, from which one then concludes cultural incompatibility and demarcation. We should talk about toxic masculinity and explain to the children how diverse people can be in order to also set counterpoints to something like religious fundamentalism. With the best will in the world, something like that does not only reject Muslims.

Bestnote20
For some time now, we have had to find negative statements about homosexuality again! However, this was associated with stigmatization in Germany for affected men in the twentieth century until the early nineties! And unfortunately high prison terms. It should therefore have been much more important in schools and youth institutions that there is an urgently needed clarification here. Many prejudices can also be found in older people! Unfortunately.