Separate classrooms for children with disabilities so that students without cognitive impairment can be “more productive”. This is the proposal of Bjorn Hocke, one of the main proponents of the German far-right party AfD, part of the Identity and Democracy in Europe group, and Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Marine Le Pen’s Unification national party. The suggestion and the words used increased the protests of educators and disability associations. And again they remembered the dark age of Nazism because of the old statements by Hocke himself.
The AfD politician and party leader in Thuringia stated in a television interview that inclusion is one of the “ideological projects” that the German education system needs to “save”. Such projects “do not help our students” and “do not make them more productive”. According to Hocke, school should “turn our children and youth into future experts” and disability is a “stress factor” that must be “excluded from the education system”. The far-right added that he is not the only one: immigrant children are one of these stressors.
Hocke is no stranger to such rants. Accused of being linked to neo-Nazis and anti-Semitism, he was investigated for closing a rally in 2021 using a phrase used by SA members, the paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party. In March this year, the Thuringian parliament waived its immunity after a prosecutor’s office opened an investigation against it for inciting hatred against immigrants. In a post on Telegram, Hocke talked about the case of a Somali refugee who killed two people in Germany: The politician talked about the “daily substitution war” in his post and used the phrase “a life not worth living”. Mitte recalls the same one used to describe disabled people subjected to forced euthanasia in Hitler’s Germany.
Berlin ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009, which includes the commitment of persons with disabilities to equal participation in society, including education. According to the Gew school workers union, “every child, every young person has the right to be educated in an inclusive way, that is, in a regular school” and must be protected from “all forms of exclusion and selection,” Spiegel says.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
