Schools in Germany are not well prepared to deal with anti-Semitic incidents. In order to be able to respond quickly and decisively, there would have to be a nationwide reporting system - and textbooks that better deal with the topic of anti-Semitism than before. This is what researchers at the Technische Universität Berlin and Justus Liebig University Giessen write in a recent study.
Such reporting systems should therefore be set up, for example, in the lower school supervisory authorities. In some federal states so far "only hesitantly" tries to obligate the schools to the announcement of anti-Semitic incidents, is called it in the still unpublished study. It is exclusively available to SPIEGEL.
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Examples of two federal states showed how differently the topic was dealt with: While the state of Berlin promptly suspended an anti-Semitic teacher according to media reports, the state of Lower Saxony did not release the teacher from teaching in a comparable case despite international media coverage.
It is often misjudged that anti-Semitism is not just a prejudice, but a world view, write the authors of the study, Samuel Salzborn and Alexandra Kurth. The linchpin in her opinion are the textbooks. With regard to the topic of anti-Semitism, they remained "flawed" and should be systematically reviewed.
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High School in Saxony: Racism in textbooksAnti-Semitism is sometimes seen only as part of National Socialism, without taking into account the pre- and post-history. The cultural history of the Jews is often neglected, Israel is represented in the opinion of the authors only one-sided.
They therefore suggest a supplementary cross-school textbook on the subject. Anti-Semitism must become a "key issue" in political education, the researchers demand in their paper.