Christian Blex (AfD) links the education crisis in North Rhine-Westphalia to immigration from ‘regions with low IQs’. This has provoked strong reactions from the Greens.
During a debate in the state parliament on educational standards in North Rhine-Westphalia, the AfD caused outrage with its analyses and demands focusing on the children of immigrants.
The debate was prompted by North Rhine-Westphalia’s poor results in the latest education survey, according to Die Welt.
In the ‘Education Monitor’ published by the employer-backed initiative New Social Market Economy, North Rhine-Westphalia ranked second from last in terms of school quality compared with other German federal states. Pupils in Year 9 demonstrated below-average skills in maths and science.
The scandal arose following comments made by MP Christian Blex, who represents Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Blex holds a PhD in mathematics and teaches at a secondary school.
He accused the government and the ‘pseudo-opposition’ of ‘engaging in semantic acrobatics just to avoid naming the giant pink elephant standing right in the middle of our classrooms’.
According to Blex, the dismal school results are due to “mass immigration from low-IQ regions into our schools, and our social welfare system, which has been completely unchecked for years”.
Blex called for a ‘halt to immigration from educationally disadvantaged and poor regions, the immediate and consistent repatriation of those with no prospect of integration, and an education policy that once again focuses on achievement and German standards”.
His party colleague Christian Loose demanded that children with insufficient German language skills be taught in separate classes.
It is not known whether the results in North Rhine-Westphalia are as dismal as the Norwegian PISA results, but this is unlikely. There is, however, no doubt that statements of the kind made by Blex and Loose would also have provoked strong reactions in Norway.
In the German state, representatives from the Green Party voiced the strongest reactions.
Lena Zingsheim-Zobel was visibly upset. She accused Blex of ‘racist statements and discrimination’ in her subsequent impassioned speech, in which she claimed that ‘IQ has nothing to do with origin’.
The Greens’ representative, Gönül Eglence, spoke of “racial ideology in its purest form”.
Neither the SPD nor the FDP, nor Education Minister Dorothee Feller (CDU), addressed the AfD directly in their speeches. However, Feller took the opportunity to praise the pupils.
“We also have many fantastic pupils in North Rhine-Westphalia of whom we can be proud – whether or not they have a migrant background.”
Refusing to accept reality
The problem is simply that the study at the centre of the debate reveals a completely different reality. Of course there are talented pupils, but the study is about the average standard, not about selected high achievers.
There can no longer be any doubt that a high proportion of pupils with an immigrant background lowers the standard of education. This is not an opinion, but a fact based on official school results.
There is no need to bring IQ into it or accuse immigrants of a greater propensity for violence and bad behaviour as an explanation. Nor is it necessary to point out that certain immigrant groups have a low level of knowledge upon arrival in Europe.
The simple fact that pupils from immigrant backgrounds naturally have a poorer command of the language than German pupils will lead to weaker results, as language skills are important in all subject areas.
This also applies to people born in Germany to parents born abroad, as parents play a major role in their children’s language acquisition. If none of the everyday conversations at home take place in German, German language skills will naturally be weakened.
This decline is exacerbated by the fact that many immigrants largely socialise with other immigrants within the diaspora communities, which are constantly growing in countries such as Germany.
The role of politicians
Education policy also plays a role.
Norwegian schools are approaching rock bottom, and it is set to get worse
The solutions proposed by the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Free Democrats (FDP) are well known: more money, more staff and more support programmes to break the link between social background and educational success. This has been tried in many European countries for several decades, with little effect.
A well-known example is that schools on the east side of Oslo, with a high proportion of immigrants, receive far higher public funding per pupil than schools on the west side of Oslo, without this having led to a levelling out of school results.
In 2020, a proposal was put forward to introduce a cap on the number of foreign-language pupils in schools. This was blocked by the Councillor for Education, Inga Marte Thorkildsen (SV), who refused to admit that multiculturalism can actually cause problems.
Thorkildsen will not impose a cap on multilingual pupils in schools
The problems in Oslo’s schools have been clearly visible for many years, and now these problems are spreading to the rest of the country. As Document has reported previously, standards in upper secondary schools are also deteriorating, as politicians have decided that everyone has the right to such an education.
This decline is also clearly evident in academia, as new students lack basic knowledge.
SPD leader Jochen Ott spoke of a historic low point in Germany as a whole:
“Never before have young people in Germany performed so poorly in reading, maths and science.”
Around a third of 15-year-olds failed to meet the minimum standards. It is therefore natural that concerned observers should ask the question:
Are pupils who complete their schooling without mastering language, maths or science really the ones who are to lead Europe into the high-tech future that everyone expects?
