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One Year After the Revolution: Politics and Policies of Education in the Eastern German States

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One Year After the Revolution: Politics and Policies of Education in the Eastern German States DOCUMENT RESUME ED 356 152 SO 022 246 AUTHOR Reuter, Lutz R. TITLE One Year after the Revolution: Politics and Policies of Education in the Eastern German States. INSTITUTION Bundeswehr Univ., Hamburg (Germany). REPORT NO ISSN-0175-310x PUB DATE Mar 91 NOTE 35p.; A publication of the Pedagogy Division. Revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the German Studies Association (15th, Los Angeles, CA). PUB TYPE Viewpoints (Opinion/Position Papers, Essays, etc.) (120) Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Educational Change; Educational Quality; Elementary Secondary Education; Foreign Countries; Political Socialization; *Revolution; Social Change; *Socialism IDENTIFIERS East Germany; *Germany ABSTRACT Complaints about changes in East German education following the break-down of the communist system are widespread. Critics are d.ssatisfied with:(1) the rapid pace of change;(2) the lack of genuine East German solutions; (3) the loss of the German Democratic Republic's (GDR's) identity; (4) dominance by Western Germany; and (5) the lack of West German sensitivity to the east's problems. Over time, easterners realized that GDR's rigid socialist education system had to be changed. The scope of political indoctrination in the schools and the dearth of meaningful education and training, combined with growing instability in the Soviet Union, left little room for gradual change. Strong support for conservatives in western Germany in the long run helped keep Helmut Kohl,a strong proponent of reunification, in power. There was little significant effort to improve East German education. East and West German concepts of egalitarianism differed greatly, with the East promoting uniformity and the West employing a structurally differentiated system of educational "tracks." The post-reunification goals of academic freedom and decentralization will require further changes. East German education will continue to face problems of finance, teacher quality, restructuring, and a lack of private support. Nonetheless, in 10 years, East Germany is likely to occupya highly competitive educational position in Germany and the European Community. (Contains 32 references.) (LBG) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** UNIVERSITAT DERBUNDESWEHR HAMBURG One Year after the Revolution: Politics and Policies of Education in the Eastern German States Lutz R. Reuter U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educabonal Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as weed from the person or organtzslion ongmatung it O Minor changes have been mad* to improve reproduction Quality Points of vssw or opinonsataldm this docu- ment do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Beitrage INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." aus dem Fachbereich Padagogik ISSN 0175-310x 2 BEST ropy AVAILABLE Beitrage aus dem Fachbereich Padagogik der Universitat der Bundeswehr Hamburg Hrsg. Lutz R. Reuter and Gerhard Strunk 3/91 One Year atter the Revolution: Politics and Policies of Education in the Eastern German States Lutz R. Reuter ISSN 0175 - 310X Revised version of a paper presented at the 15th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association in Los Angeles, CA [Session 66: The Challenges of Unification] 3 Introduction The Wende or break-down of the communist system in theGerman Democratic Republic (GDR) and the fast process of reuniting the two Germanstates had a heavy impact on all education and research institutions, on the educating staff andon the curricula, the process of policy making and the restructuring of political institutionson the level of the Laender (states), counties, and communes. The article outlinescurrent problems of the education sys- tem within the new Laender and describes the major developments and problems sincethe "peaceful democratic revolution", focusingon the time since the socio-economic union and the political unification. It analyses the consequences for the political-institutionalframework and the reproductive functions of public education systems: socialisation,selection, integration. Practically all public policy subject matters andareas were and still are involved in the ongoing system transformation process in eastern Germany. Butwhile it does not make sense to play off one policy area against the other, the education politicsand policies obviously are of particular importance with respect to their requiredfunctions and their dependency on political ideologies. Although education itself isa longterm process, thorough and as far as possible fast changes of the old GDR-systemwere thought to be necessary. Some of those aspects are listed below. Immediate changes obviously werenecessary when it came to subjects which were directly in- strumentalized for socialist goals (e.g. education of the"socialist citizen", "hatred toward the class enemy"; Staatsbiirgerkunde [social studies],or the compulsory studies in Marxism- Leninism). Several subjects, courses of studies, andprograms like law, business administration, "scientific communism" et al. are widely obsolete; others like pedagogy,German literature [Germanistik], history, philosophy, or other humanities haveat least to overcome their normativism and me- thodological monism. Educational goals and expectationsas outlined in the Education Law of 1965 legitimized the demand for a particular ideological reliability of teachersand professors. Top cadres like principals, university rectors, superintendants,or higher ranking administrators had to be SED members or at least members of a national frontor block party; only a very few were not. Ideological reduction, transfer of research into the academiesof science, censorship and re- strictive publication conditions, and theway of recruiting the academic personnel, left re- search and publications in various subjectsat the eastern German universities internationally incompetitive. Differences of the competitiveness of schools and universitieswith respect to instructors' qua- lifications, curricula, working conditions and equippingmay drive the most mobile and quali- 4 - 2 - for feed students and scholars to institutions in westernGermany; thus the necessary pote itial reconstruction might get lost. The introduction of the market economy and of the systemof liberal democratic administra- tion on the Laender and local levels since summer 1990require a wide range of continuing education and retraining programs. Under the threatof high unemployment figures, vocatio- nal further education and retraining on the job becamemajor means to reintegrate people into be among the the workforce.Ingeneral, vocational and professional education appeared to preconditions for economic reconstruction. The article first outlines politics and structure of the education systemof the former GDR. It then describes the education politics and policies since therevolution and the consequences of the accession to the FRG for education in eastern Germany.It follows the analysis of the dev- elopments in five education politics and policy areas such as nre-schooleducation; elementary and secondary education; vocational education; higher education;adult and continuing edu- cation and in-service training. EducationSystem of the German Democratic Republic The system of "democratic centralism" meant that the SED as the "partyof the ruling working class" was the only political power in state and society as constitutionallyfixed in Article 1 GDR-Constitution of 1974. Consequently, the East German education system was put under centralcomprehensive admi- nistration which nevertheless was split up into three main branches such asMinisteriumfur Volksbildung (general education), Staatssekretariat fur Berufsbildung(vocational education), and Ministerium filr Hoch- and Fachschulwesen (higher education). Inaddition, some specia- lized universities and schools were administrated by other departements (e.g.,medical univer- sities by the Department of Health) or interestingly by the SED itself. The regional and local administrative bodies, consisting of destrict, county,and city school councils, were completely restricted to follow the instructions of the centraladministration which could not act independently. All significant decisions on education policy and personnel were made inthe top circles of SED, Politbureau, and Central Committee. Formally, most of thesedecisions were "common provisions" (or statutes) of the Politbureau and the Council of Ministers (government)whose function was to publish and enforce them. The quantitative planning of the education system was part of the centraleconomic planning 5 3 - process and as such subordinate to the various central planning bodies. Separate from plan- ning general and higher education, vocational educationwas under the jurisdiction of the Central Planning Commission. This meant practically that not only the number of jobs within all branches of the economy were subject to planning, but also the numbers of senior high school, college, and university students and of those in apprenticeships and full-time vocatio- nal schools. Correspondingly, facilities and materials as wellas staffing were subject to central planning also. Teaching was centrally planned through
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