More Trump for Austria's schools? – Diepresse.com

There are things. Astonishing enough that there are so many evangelical Christians who see a god -sent guide in Donald Trump. Now there is also an AHS teacher for history and political education that postulates, Trump stands for the rescue of the West (Stefan Binder in the guest comment: « Donald Trump, the rescuer of the West? », 22.2.). And this in the days when the US President blows the frontal attack on essential achievements: the rule of law, checks and balances, science, critical journalism, women's rights, transatlantic friendship. Due to the compliant papers to Putin, who, as he says, is in the fight against the « collective west », Trump has to be called the possible coffin nail of the West and not as its rescuer. All of this is not mentioned in Binder's explanations. The only critical note is that Trump has an « erratic personality ». That may also be true, but his current procedure follows a clear anti -liberal agenda with the aim of caving democracy (« Project 2025 »).

I still want to put myself in the position of my colleague. Easy for the comment was a sobering experience for a historian: a student, shortly before the Matura, can or does not want to call anything positive in western civilization. That would also irritate me as a philosophy and ethics teacher. So I can gain a lot in terms of content despite the title and the consequence. The progress of the West, the binder lists (medicine, technology, abolition of slavery), are undisputed and should not be swept under the carpet at school, but rather put on a podium if this is not yet sufficient. But therefore looking for his salvation in Trump?

I don't know how things are going in a city center in Vienna, but I hope that the colleague whether the student's response indifferent for Western values ​​is just somewhat overhauled. In my classes, 60 kilometers further west in St. Pölten, there is no widespread ingratability of living in the west. Two exceptions confirm the rule: a student trimmed from an early age (which did not stop him from it, in Nike-to run around and invest in Dogecoin), the « western propaganda » accused me of pointing out the crimes of Stalin or Putin. The other case was that a student took Austria very bad to stand by Israel's side. Emotionally understandable, since almost her whole family was wiped out during the war in Gaza. When she once advertised the « Queers for Palestine », I avoided the question of how the Queers in Palestine under the Hamas goes.

It is different in the USA

Overall, I consider Stefan Binder's diagnosis that an anti -Western story is told at Austria's schools. As far as I know them, the ethics and philosophieschul books are not the case. In many schools, this may be different in the United States. In the past, one was not entirely unjustified, the typical American student attachment was « Why the United States is the best country in the world », today there is the Critical Race Theory, which is relentless with the West and, above all, the « Whiteness ». According to this theory, whites cannot be different from racist, because it is structurally anchored, skin color and gender (or gender identity) inevitably determined whether someone is perpetrator or victim. The fact that science should strive for objectivity and ethics according to universalism is rejected from scratch, because clarification is an invention of the whites.

If Trump puts an end to this, this is generally to be welcomed, but unfortunately the plan is to replace this with the other extreme: Hurra patriotism and under-the table bends of the dark chapters of their own history (see Trump's « 1776 Commission » to promote the patriotic attitude of the students).

Illiberalism and autocracy

It is undoubtedly an important question for school and society as a whole, how critically or transfigured the western legacy is seen and taught and how to prevent extreme positions. The central question, however, is which Western political model one takes as a basis: that according to Hans Kelsen, the liberal democratic constitutional state, or that according to Carl Schmitt, the authoritarianism with a guide who is in the « state of emergency » over the right. Trump clearly stands for the latter (« He Who Saves his His Country Does Not Violate Any Law »). As an ethics teacher, I cannot be different from partisan and clearly speak out for Kelsen. Illiberalism and autocracy are the enemy of every ethics teacher, because this subject can only exist in an open society.

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