The following video doesn’t day anything about asylum seekers or immigration, yet the “refugee” issue lurks in the background throughout. To get an idea of why the funding of schools in Berlin is a casualty of Chancellor Merkel’s immigration policy, check out this article from Breitbart:
Entire German 2016 Budget Surplus Earmarked for Migrants
The German government will allocate the entire six billion euro 2016 budget surplus to migrants after the two coalition parties failed to agree on how to spend it.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party proposed using the €6.2 billion surplus to pay off debts, while the Social Democrats (SPD) wanted to spend it on digital infrastructure projects. As a compromise the money has gone solely to migrant projects instead, Der Spiegel reports.
The present funds allocated toward migrant programmes is already €12 billion, which is thought to be more than enough to handle the needs of the over one million migrants in Germany. The budget surplus would take the money up to over 18 billion — far more than required.
Nash Montana, who translated the video for subtitling, includes this introduction:
I have a minor problem with this. It doesn’t mention “refugees”. But it’s an example of how the Old Parties are ruining the infrastructure of the country by spending billions upon billions for the “refugees” while completely not giving a [goldarn] about the infrastructure for German children. The school in Berlin that’s shown in the video is worse than anything I have ever seen in the USA. It’s like a third-world hellhole.
The text in the link under the video reads:
Dilapidated schools in Germany: Already 34 billion euros needed for renovations.
These are not houses designated for demolition — this is what schools look like that our children go to. Berlin parents have had enough and have created the campaign “Einstürzende Schulbauten”. [This is a play on the punk rock band from the ‘80s, the “Einstürzende Neubauten”.]
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Transcript:
| 0:04 | These are not houses meant for demolition. | |
| 0:07 | This is what schools look like that our children go to. | |
| 0:10 | Crumbling plaster, mold on the walls; the need for renovation is immense. | |
| 0:13 | But if you’re looking for handymen in these buildings, you’ll look in vain. | |
| 0:16 | Berlin parents have been fed up with this for the longest time. | |
| 0:19 | Now they are fighting back with an online campaign | |
| 0:22 | “Einstürzende Schulbauten” (Collapsing School Buildings). | |
| 0:25 | From now on they post a new school disaster every day, | |
| 0:28 | for 222 days until the federal election. | |
| 0:31 | Help has been announced, but the situation is that, | |
| 0:34 | for instance, they don’t deploy enough employees in the districts, | |
| 0:37 | that we don’t have enough contractors and building companies | |
| 0:40 | that can do this kind of work, | |
| 0:43 | and we still have structures | |
| 0:46 | that prevent quick construction. | |
| 0:49 | A visit to the Andreas Gymnasium, a regular guest in local newscasts every night. | |
| 0:52 | Daniela Von Treuenfels is the initiator of the campaign. | |
| 0:55 | The Friedrichsheim Upper Elementary stands at first place among the online school disasters. | |
| 0:58 | The school is infamous because of a spring in its basement. | |
| 1:01 | Parents’ representative Johannes Schwarz | |
| 1:04 | is leading the way into the catacombs. | |
| 1:07 | At the moment one can see the mold fungus that grows everywhere, | |
| 1:10 | because the ground water level has receded right now. | |
| 1:13 | This is because construction is going on next door, | |
| 1:16 | and the investor is pumping out the ground water at the moment. | |
| 1:19 | Normally it looks like this here; the water pools knee deep in the basement. | |
| 1:22 | You can see down here for example | |
| 1:25 | how high the water normally stands, | |
| 1:28 | and the mould is still hiking up. | |
| 1:31 | Here a complete renovation is needed. This year a thorough plan | |
| 1:34 | is supposed to be made; next year a thorough renovation is supposed to happen. | |
| 1:37 | Parents and students are skeptical. | |
| 1:40 | Well, I think this is very frustrating for many students, | |
| 1:43 | it’s an acute situation and it keeps being extended in time, this project. | |
| 1:46 | With this campaign, Daniela Von Treuenfels wants to provide | |
| 1:49 | a platform for people’s bottled-up frustration, | |
| 1:52 | but she also wants to collect ideas for the improvement of the situation. | |
| 1:55 | Not just parents, but students and teachers as well; all are participating, | |
| 1:58 | and can and should send in their examples. | |
| 2:01 | Berlin is the beginning. Schools from other states are expected to follow, | |
| 2:04 | because the renovation of dilapidated schools is a national problem. | |
| 2:07 | Over 34 billion euros are needed for this. | |
| 2:11 | We demand that there be immediate discussions about this. | |
| 2:14 | We demand immediate solutions, | |
| 2:18 | and this… this willingness just does yet not exist. | |
| 2:21 | I mean, when you ask the various (political) parties, | |
| 2:24 | the federal parties, they respond with very squishy and vague formulations. | |
| 2:27 | They have not yet comprehended what the actual problem is. | |
| 2:30 | The politically responsible parties have 222 days left | |
| 2:33 | to find solutions for this state of school emergency. |
Hat tip for the article: Fjordman.
I knew it was bad but I was shocked to see the “catacomb” in that Berlin school. Knee deep water. Unreal.
These are things that as a Swiss citizen, I find super hard too believe, yet it speaks to my inner ‘neener neener’ Swiss mentality about Germans. We say,
“Aussen fix, innen nix”. (On the outside squeaky clean, on the inside filthy dirty)
I’m sure every country has their sayings about other countries in Europe. Which once again goes to show that the EU was a bad idea from the get go. Good fences make good neighbors.
…and um, also…, Switzerland is not far behind from my own personal experience with school when we were back there in 2014. I was quite shocked to see what a filthy [excrement] hole the school had degenerated to that my daughter Sophia had to go to due to the school district we lived in. It was nothing like this Alexander Gymnasium in Berlin, no knee deep water etcetera. But it was old and dirty and in desperate need of repair.
(Not that I would know anything about it since I was slapped with a restraining order about 4 months into the school year due to my spreading ‘xenophobic tendencies’ that one night at the P-T conference… but that’s a whole nother story).
Sad to hear that Switzerland is succumbing to the multi- culti lies from Germany.Marine Le Pen is right .She says that a multi -culti society is a multi -conflict society and to be avoided at all costs.
The CDU wishes to spend the 6 billion on repaying debt. The SPD wants to spent the money on digital infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, schools, actual brick-and-mortar structures, have fallen into disrepair.
My husband wanted to spend our entire windfall on paying off the credit card. I wanted to replace my broken down stove that leaks a little gas. We compromised like the CDU and SPD did, by spending our surplus on a colorful balloon bouquet.
Brilliant post.
This is just another of the actions put in place to ensure the genocide of the German people by a thousand cuts so that they do not notice their own demise.
I have a secret for you guys: These buildings are built with their base below the ground water level, and the basement is intentionally porous for the ground water to go up and down in the basement of the building: That is how these buildings stand – in the muddy ground.
It is perfectly normal for water to come through into the basements. I doubt there is anything important in there for the school function. What is it you would want to repair?
If you are worried about too high ground water level, then you have to speak to the river authority, I believe they manage ground water levels in towns and cities.
Barn Swallow: Yes, we understood. The school was built over a spring but construction next door drained the water, leaving mold. The parents made that very clear. Many of us are familiar with river water seeping into basements, which is natural and expected.
But we also saw with our own eyes crumbling walls and lack of upkeep. The parents are speaking out because they are very concerned.
The basemetnts of these buildings are meant to be open to the outside air and ventilated. Some mold will be there so long there is water, but the ventilation is essential if you know you not gonna get rid of the water soon.
Regarding “crumblng walls” – and pipe leaks that you can see in the video, I would consider it a normal damage over the decades… All of it can be repaired for a few euro, so I don’t think the problem is financing, but the actual maintenance, that has to be done by actual hands of a real person being payed for the maintenance.
PS: I know from my experience that there are building technicians, and there are “building technicians”. Everything I seen in the video points to the latter – inexperienced – lazy guy…
Also, despite its 6 billion euro surplus Germany still doesn’t pay its full percentage for Nato & is resisting President Trump’s demand that they do so.
Trump should disband Nato until such time as Germany et al pay their full dues plus interest.
Germany – where they arrest you and take away your children if home school them.
Germany – where private schools are mostly for dunces and where they were outlawed 1930’s under the National Socialists.
Germany – where you have to decide if you are going to college in the 4th grade more or less and are funneled into Hauptschule (stops in 9th grade) or Realschule/Mittelschule (stops in 10th grade) or Gymnasium stops in (13th grade more or less but gets you to college).
There are more variations here depending on the state you live in but the point is the student is pigeonholed at age 10 or so. To switch later is almost impossible and I know. I paid out of my pocket to switch my future wife from Realschule to Gymnasium. I detest the German system and their rigid nonsense.
The German system is wrong because it is there not to encourage individual attainment and excellence but to produce workers for the State.
[redacted incivility] Germany.
Should haven’t said screw – should have said – to hell with the place
Never mind.It’s a succinct ,lucid and informative post.
having worked in that system for more than 35 years, I would be happy to learn who you paid and how much to get your wife out of Realschule.I for one left elementary school in 1957 after an assessement and entered Gymnasium( latin,greek and stuff, um, english and french of course). In those days at least, my parents did not pay a dime for schooling.Did you pay for private lessons to enable your wife? Fair enough, my parents paid too to make me catch up with latin and maths on occasions.This did not keep me from making a PhD later.
I paid for a year of Ubergangsklasse in a school for her near the Frauenkirche in Munchen.
Finally gave up and she got a degree in the US
Good for you by the way.
thanks for your friendly response and wishes.
…oh and America’s “Unionized Child Abuse” (thank you Mark Steyn – aka Government Schools in the US) is not much better. You get “teachers” who have the lowest SAT scores vs. Math, Science, Business and other vocations, 90% of whom voted for Obama or Clinton. In other words, dumb Democrats
The good news is we do allow homes schooling, support private schools (both religious and secular) and now have a burgeoning charter school system. Once the money follows the child (school vouchers being an example) the government school monopoly ends. Even Sweden and Australia have figured this out and The Marxists/Obama voters types don’t like it:
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2015/03/25/australia-follow-chiles-lead-stop-funding-private-schools/
For John Galt,
It’s true the charter schools give the parents and students more discretion and, to a certain extent, allow the school to actually address the unique characteristics of the child, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach of the unionized, big-city public schools.
But, the problem with the charter schools is that they will not meet the bloated expectations for minority, black and Mexican students. Most of the intellectual and character traits of people are determined genetically. Blacks have a higher proportion of lower IQs than whites, and so the charter schools will not be able to increase the black proportion of national scholars significantly. Charter schools may be able to significantly help black and brown students achieve real success in their lives, but the expectations have to be changed from “make everyone equal”.
You miss my point. The government school system is totally corrupted. Charter schools are only one of many options.
Let me give you an example.
In Philly where my kids went to school there are 70,000 in Catholic schools both private and archdiocese. There thousands in Quaker Schools, Christian Schools, Secular Private Schools and on and on. Just give the money to the students and watch the public schools wither into nothingness or improve. That is the ONLY solution.
Muslims? Simple. They pass rigorous examinations that they are learning something other than bomb belt making and Koran study or they get shut down. End of story.
You make an unsupported logical leap. You assume that because private schools with no government support that are paid for by parents are successful, that the success can be multiplied by pouring government funds into quasi-private or “charter” schools.
If you have studied Ayn Rand, you would know that she would totally oppose such an arrangement. I’m not an objectivist, but I do know Ayn Rand’s writings very well.
Also, you are assuming that teaching sharia in Muslim schools is incompatible with actually teaching subjects such as language and math. It is not.
Take a look at the websites of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates such as the Islamic Society of North America. They devote major attention to education.
http://www.isna.net/event/%E2%80%8B18th-annual-isna-education-forum/
So, with Muslim charter schools, what you get is well-educated jihadis, perfectly comfortable in the academic and government spheres. This is exactly what we need, isn’t it?
All true.I take it from your nom de plume that you are also an admirer of Ann Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”
Well, strictly speaking, Ayn Rand would correctly oppose charter schools as still being a government confiscation and redistribution of wealth from the productive to the non-productive.
Charter schools operate from the same disadvantage as public schools: they receive public funds and will sooner or later come under the firm control of the bureaucracy in the name of “quality” education.
Also, what are you going to do when Muslim schools are chartered, and teach sharia at public expense? Your choice is to either provide public vouchers for them, or have the public education bureaucracy “filter” the schools for appropriate teaching. Bye, bye independent charter schools.
I think that assumption of many posters is that the German bureaucracy will change behaviors if the effects of their present policies is made explicit to them.
I think this is roughly equivalent to the assumption that a pet cobra will be loyal to you if you treat it nicely.
School bureaucracies and government bureaucracies are natural enemies of the people. They function best inside cages, with no latitude of movement and no trust whatsoever. So, my recommendation is that the people affected stop trying to make a case to the bureaucracy and instead focus on ways of exerting their own power and make the bureaucracy accountable. For instance, the total elimination of civil service protections would be a fantastic beginning.
What Germany really needs is the AfD coming to power.They need to get out and vote AfD .Any other action is not worth a hill of beans.In other words any other action is futile ,worthless and meaningless.