It was a surreal press conference. The ministers of education wanted to talk about school closings and distance learning before the impending lockdown – and the digital technology failed: Some participants in the conversation repeatedly fell off the line, others had sound problems, and still others, journalists in particular, were unable to mute their own microphone .
Overall, a little encouraging picture of the Federal German – not just the culture ministerial – digital competence after nine months of pandemic.
Particularly smart or particularly foolish?
But that was the slightest cause for disillusionment. The much more important: The ministers of education decided at their meeting yesterday not to take a decision on the threatened school closings. So today they only admitted it when asked.
Is that particularly smart, as an observer commented on Twitter – because every KMK decision would be politically overtaken by the vote of the Prime Minister by Sunday at the latest? Or is it particularly foolish of the ministers of education because they have made themselves superfluous for the further course of the debate about school closings?
The three ministers of education present, in addition to still KMK president Stefanie Hubig, the SPD coordinator Ties Rabe from Hamburg and the new union coordinator Alexander Lorz from Hesse (who replaced Susanne Eisenmann), had definitely brought a message with them.
Better distance learning than extending the vacation
It read: If there had to be a general lockdown due to such high and increasing numbers of infections, the schools could not and would not escape. However, only if all other areas of society (including shopping centers) would have to cut back in the same way.
Hybrid and distance learning are preferable to extending the school holidays. All in all, school closings should be as short as possible, and the different age groups should be treated differently.
This message was shared by the other ministers of culture, assured Ties Rabe. Apparently they had agreed on a common language regime for the press. Then why not put them in a formal resolution? Wouldn’t this have been an expression of the new self-confidence and the allegedly so much closer cooperation since the beginning of the pandemic, of your new sense of community, which the ministers of education have been emphasizing for months and again today?
At the federal level out of play
If the ministers of education had presented a concrete action plan today on how they want to implement the imminent closings, they would have stayed in the game. Yes, they would then have had to commit to something, and much of it – perhaps most of it – would not have been taken over by their bosses or would have been overtaken by the development of the pandemic.
And yet only in this way would they have been able to influence the further course of political decision-making to a certain extent. Since noon today they are no longer – at least at federal level.
