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Language Diversity: Unused Capital in a Complex Society
Rüdiger Teutsch of the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture and the rapper Nazar on strategies of intercultural education policy and their practical effects...
The following is an extract from the interview:
KKA:
In Austria there is already a third generation of Austrians with migration backgrounds. Why haven’t they been better integrated into the school system? On the contrary, they are actually disadvantaged. What is the reason for this, Mr. Teutsch?
Rüdiger Teutsch:
It all comes down to the concept of integration: Integration should not be seen only as the immigrants’ responsibility. It is not enough for immigrants to learn German; the Austrian population has to learn to recognise and appreciate the value of linguistic and cultural diversity. Here in Austria, people still have the idea that “only German is spoken in this country” or “Austria is a country where the people traditionally have light skins, and if someone is dark-skinned, he can’t be Austrian”; this is absurd.
KKA:
Can our teachers deal with culturally, socially and linguistically heterogeneous pupils? Nazar says they can’t...
Rüdiger Teutsch:
We can see that cultural and linguistic diversity works beautifully in some public and private schools, and we can see that in other contexts it doesn’t.
KKA:
And why is that?
Rüdiger Teutsch:
Because what happens is that we confuse the problem of poverty with culture and origin. That is, usually it is only when migration and poverty are linked that a problem arises. Where migration is combined with prosperity, diversity is appreciated – for example in tourism or in advertising. The Austrian school system as such is not sufficiently able to compensate for social differences, no matter where the children come from. Children from poorer families simply have fewer chances in this school system.
KKA:
In Austria, the education of the parents is often the crucial factor in determining what kind of education their children will receive.
Rüdiger Teutsch:
Yes, and this connection between poverty and migration is often overlooked. People say the reason for the problem is that these people come from another country or that they are educationally underprivileged, or they say it is due to language difficulties or religious motives.
KKA:
Nazar, is migration presented as a social problem?
Nazar:
Yes, I think so. If you go to a private school that is attractive, where the teachers are well-paid and have a better working environment, you get a different kind of teaching and you enjoy going there. If people don’t have the money for this, which most migrants don’t, and “have to” send their children to a public school, and the one in their district is not the best option, the children can very quickly end up in this negative target group, which would probably not be the case in a private school. Since you mentioned the subject “teachers”: I can confirm this from my own school days. At first I was at a Gymnasium [secondary school with university-entrance leaving examination] on Ettenreichgasse. There weren’t that many kids with migration backgrounds there and the attitude was quite different. The teachers seemed to think: “OK, there are a few foreigners here; they must have done well in school so far or they wouldn’t be here.” That was not so much the problem. But in Hauptschulen [general secondary schools], the percentage of children with migration backgrounds is much higher and you notice very quickly that the teachers can’t deal with diversity at all. You even get very racist comments from some of the teachers, camouflaged as “jokes”, of course, but naturally a child knows what is really intended, and when you’re confronted with it every day, and in my case it was extreme, then it certainly gets you down.
My brother and my cousin went to school in Iran and they said that in comparison to Iranian schools, Austrian schools are a cinch. My cousin registered at the Vienna University of Technology and in the first two semesters they learned material that he’d had in the tenth grade. I don’t think anyone can accuse Iranians or Turks or children from any other country of being less intelligent or unable to learn a language. It isn’t that they don’t want to learn or that school is too difficult. You have to look for the problem up front; you have to look at the financial background and, as I said, at the teachers.
Rüdiger Teutsch:
There are schools where almost 100% of the children do not speak German at home and these schools function well. What makes them different? These schools usually have a principal who is extremely well able to deal with the situation. You come into the school and the first thing you see is banners saying “Welcome” in all the languages the children speak. The teaching is more loosely structured and the children are given the opportunity to contribute elements from their native languages. Or the teachers who work there have lived in other countries themselves or have been trained to teach “German as a second language”. The important thing is to have respect and appreciation for others and not always be looking for deficits.
KKA:
Too many “migrant children” in one class, many of whom reportedly can’t follow the teaching in German...
Rüdiger Teutsch:
You have to look at each situation closely: There is no linear correlation between a migration background and academic success or lack of competence in German. Many children from Eastern European countries who go to school here achieve better marks than Austrian children. We also see an above-average percentage of doctors and technologists who originally came from Iran. That means that it always depends on the reasons why people immigrate, what they bring with them, what expectations they have for moving up in this society. We especially see that people who were forced to flee their homelands seek to achieve something here, because they want to regain what they had at home and lost.
KKA:
Nazar, how did you learn German?
Nazar:
We were in Traiskirchen in the asylum seekers' centre. But I can’t remember that anymore. Then we moved to the fifth district in Vienna and I went to kindergarten. Everyone there took great care to treat all the children equally. Afterwards I went to the “Karl Brügger Hof” primary school in the tenth district, and although I could already speak German, I was moved back to the pre-school class so I could learn the language “better”. When I was in the third grade, giant containers were set up in the schoolyard where children from Kosovo were taught. And because it was too hot in the summer, these children came into the classes with the others and had to join in the lessons whether they liked it or not, even though they didn’t understand a word of German. Those are the kinds of problems where a lot goes wrong. Nobody has found a good solution, even though a lot of people have worked on it. I don’t know, either, what ought to be done to improve the situation, because as long as the “foreign” children’s parents themselves don’t realise that they should learn German with their children, things won’t get any easier for the children and the teachers.
KKA:
Do immigrant parents give the system the responsibility for seeing that their children learn German?
Rüdiger Teutsch:
We expect too much from the parents. We’re still acting on the premise of the existing half-day school system. In other, more successful systems, children start nursery school at an earlier age or there are all-day schools. That means the children go home in the evening with no school books and no homework; the educating, the learning, the language-learning and the playing – it all takes place at school. Why do we in Austria still expect parents who are not trained for it, and who can’t afford to pay for tutoring, to help their children with their homework and blame them if their children don’t speak good German?
Nazar:
I have to say, that sounds all very well. But my mother got us a tutor for German. She knew that we were going to stay here and therefore her first goal was to learn the language, especially when she noticed that she no longer understood her own children, because they were speaking mostly German. I have many non-Austrian friends and there are some families where the parents have been in Austria for 40 years and don’t speak a word of German.
KKA:
Why is that?
Nazar:
I can’t say. The problem is not always the state; it’s 100% a matter of what the person wants for himself. In other countries, in Iran for instance, if you don’t finish school, if you don’t have a university degree, you are a nobody. You have no possibility of earning money. There’s no state support. But here, children see that both their parents are unemployed and yet they still have food on the table and they have their Play Station games and their Nike shoes. And if the parents don’t spend time with the child doing schoolwork at home, then the child loses interest in trying to achieve something. The teachers need to realise this! If teachers see that a child isn’t making progress – then they have to react! That’s the reason for those parent-teacher meetings that the parents are supposed to be invited to. Not just to complain about the children, but also to find out something about their parents and their environment.
KKA:
How can we come closer to achieving equal opportunities? With an economic approach – or do we have better chances of success through reason, dialogue, insight...?
Rüdiger Teutsch:
One thing we can do is to pay more attention to equal opportunities in the school system. That means not succumbing to the prejudice: “they have dark eyes, they don’t speak German, they’ll never make it”, but rather, taking the approach: the goal is to help the child get as far as possible. In other words, a positive attitude is important. We also have to help the parents, give them advice, get them involved, communicate with them on equal terms. Studies have shown us that immigrant families expect a great deal from their children, because, after all, they have left their homelands so that their children will have a better life. That’s the main motive. We often hear, from Turkish families, comments such as: “We want our daughter to become a veterinarian”, when in fact the child is at a school for children with special needs! That means the child will never complete a university-entrance secondary school. They don’t understand the connection between going to school and moving up in society. Nazar, you come from Teheran, from an urban environment, a big city. Your mother understands what education is, she knows what a university is. Immigrant groups that come from rural regions often can’t really comprehend what a role education plays in social advancement.
KKA:
How can we communicate this context to these immigrant groups better?
Nazar:
The standard is much too good in this country. I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Teutsch, and I agree with you, but I think you’re trying to push all this too far away from the parents. If I bring children into the world, it’s my job to make sure I set them on the right path. That’s why I talk about my mother so much. Her husband died in Iran and she moved from a really good standard of living there to a “non-standard” of living here. But nevertheless, she sat down with us after school and asked us: “What does this mean, how did you do this?” I believe a lot has to come from the parents. You can’t just say: “They have so many problems and burdens.” I think that’s being too soft on them. Please don’t take this in the wrong way, but I think one can’t necessarily always expect the teachers and the system to do everything.
Nazar, born in 1984, is Austria’s most well-known rapper. His father died in the Gulf War. His mother fled with the children from Teheran via Traiskirchen to Vienna. Nazar’s first studio album “Kinder des Himmels” (Children of Heaven) was released in 2008. “Paradox” followed in 2009. His songs are broadcast on MTV. At the end of 2010 he will appear in the film “Schwarzkopf” by Arash T. Riahi.
www.myspace.com/nazarmusic
Rüdiger Teutsch is head of the department of “Migration, Intercultural Education and Language Policy” at the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture. Previously he was for many years the managing director of the Interkulturelles Zentrum in Vienna, an organisation that promotes the development of relations between people of different cultural origins. His work has focused mainly on innovative educational and networking projects in the EU and in Eastern and South Eastern Europe. He also teaches courses on intercultural education at the University of Innsbruck.
