Educational Media Research

Tolerance is not enough. Migrants in German School Textbooks between Stigma and Agency (Hanna Schissler)

Introduction

It is a marker of our time that we are constantly confronted with strangers. The stranger, however, is an unsettling experience, since that which is strange has the tendency to unsettle and frequently also to upset us, to throw us back on ourselves, and to question who we are. According to the sociologist Georg Simmel, the stranger is the wanderer who comes today and leaves tomorrow. Today’s strangers, however, no longer keep passing through, but rather “come today and stay tomorrow” – as Simmel has put it. Thus, that which is common and familiar becomes alien while the alien gets closer, questioning that which has remained unquestioned for the longest time. It is the unquestioned identity of the self as much as of groups and nations that is at stake.

We continue to see the world as a conglomerate of nations. National history is history “by default.” Nations – at the core more and more ethnically perceived nations – continue to be taken for granted. Nation-states are expanding worldwide. Deconstructionist endeavors of history writing, like the social history movement, the feminist challenge to basic assumptions about history, and other current strands, like ethnically based approaches (“victims of history” approaches) were not able to displace this “container model” of thinking and writing about history. Especially when it comes to textbooks for use in schools, these challenges to conventional historiography might have scratched at its surface, but all too frequently they adhered to the given of nationally determined (and over-determined) histories. Textbooks as the canonized knowledge of a given society generally follow the “container model” of history writing. By this I mean that the nation marks the “natural” boundary of history. Individual textbooks do so more or less rigorously.

We live in an age of world-wide processes of migration, and migration by definition transcends national boundaries. Migration upsets the “container model” of society and raises questions that we are forced to deal with, whether we like it or not. European countries are currently trying to develop models of integration, assimilation, and to endorse diversity – or face the consequences of denial, which might entail, among other things, an ever more fragmented society. In this endeavor, they can learn from North American models, and especially the Canadian example, which has a long tradition of more or less successful multiculturalism.

However, there is an interesting aspect to migration: As much as migration transcends national boundaries, at the same time it also presupposes them. The identification of ethnic others is closely related to national frameworks, which allow for the distinction between “us” and “them” in the first place. Since schooling is one of the most strongly nationally determined enterprises, school textbooks are interesting texts if one wishes to examine the ways in which national frameworks change, soften, or harden under different circumstances. While some of these processes – the Schengen Regulation for example - unfold in a broader European context, many others exhibit decisive national traits which mirror the specific histories of particular countries (like the colonial pasts of Great Britain and the Netherlands, the universal heritage of the Revolution in France, or in the case of Germany, its troubled history during the 20th century.) Schiffauer et al. depict some of the key influences specific national histories exert on European countries’ migrant populations in an illuminating study.[1]

What is interesting about textbooks?

The state of social awareness in any given society is mirrored in textbooks and curricula. Thus, textbooks are a valuable source in analyzing the Zeitgeist. What is generally accepted becomes as visible as that which is contentious in any given society. In textbooks and curricula, societies write their histories and project their self-images into the future. Textbooks mark social boundaries and highlight social problems. This is the analytical value of analyzing textbooks. Beyond its analytical value, however, textbooks and curricula also have the function to shape and influence society, to formulate certain goals pertaining to the internal constitution of society. This is their normative aspect. Since a society conveys its values and convictions to the next generation through education, textbooks and curricula are thus an excellent means to analyze current social issues, not only when there is conflict, but also, when consensus and attempts at overcoming dissent are at stake. Textbooks always mirror the collective social image of any given society. The use of textbooks in the service of building the nation-state during the 19th century is most instructive in this regard. Two examples from German textbooks illustrate this aspect:

The famous “Lehrbuch der Geschichte” by Friedrich Neubauer from 1899 stated its programmatic goal clearly in the foreword:
“May the book contribute to historical understanding and promote Germanness among our youths.”[2]

And Professor Christensen in the 1905 edition of his “Grundriß der deutschen Geschichte”, after describing the proclamation of the German Reich in 1871, asked the pupils to consider the following questions:
- Why is Prussia the most capable of leading Germany?
- Which circumstances facilitated German unification?
- And by the way, how do these specific events necessarily follow from the preceding events? (A teleological goal is constructed in passing by the mere use of “by the way.” This gives the impression of a logical inevitability.)[3]

At least in Western Europe, we are no longer in a state of aggressive nation building. This is, among other things, revealed in the iconography of textbooks. There is a marked difference between confronting pupils with the Germania, the triumphant incarnation of Germany’s victory over France, or depicting Christo and Jeanne Claude’s Wrapped Reichstag. What we see, respectively, is a heroic and an ironic mise-en-scene of the nation, to speak with Hayden White. (transparancies)

According to Thomas Höhne, textbooks have by definition an anachronistic, a dogmatic and a canonical structure. The anachronism of textbooks refers to the fact that textbooks always lag behind actual scholarship, which should not come as a surprise. The dogmatism of textbooks accordingly reveals itself in textbooks' inherent normativism, which hints at the overall social steering function of textbooks. Their canonical structure, however, make the content seem entirely “natural”. The multiple and contentious ways in which knowledge is produced is thus rendered invisible.[4] After this somewhat lengthy introduction, what then is the political and social framework within which German textbooks deal with migration and migrants?

Analysis of current German textbooks

From the 1970s onward, Germany has been undergoing a long process of denial with respect to immigration to the Federal Republic. However, it would be a mistake to assume that migration is not a topic in German textbooks. On the contrary, textbooks extensively cover the subject. There is an enormous amount of material - of various quality, to be sure. Multiperspectivity, the mantra, and holy cow not only of German didactics, but of multiculturalism in general, is frequently to be found when we read about migrants in German textbooks. Migrants do have a voice in textbooks, and they also have agency. Frequently, little stories are included in textbooks, stories that tell the tale of how “foreigners”, usually Turks, experience Germany, what they think of how they are treated in Germany, what they think of their coworkers and about their country of origin. On a normative level, the multicultural society is embraced, and any number of explicitly stated intentions in textbooks testifies to this.

Textbooks in history, geography, and social studies focus on different aspects, but there is also much overlap. History textbooks focus on expulsion and forced migration, especially in the context of the Second World War and as a consequence of the Potsdam Agreement. Thus, forced labor, displaced persons, the laborers that Nazi Germany had captured and forced to work in Germany, as well as former camp inmates are covered alongside the massive flight of Germans from Eastern European countries. History books also depict the migration from East to West Germany until the closing of the border in 1961. Geography textbooks on the other hand focus on labor migration and its impact on the receiving German society. They depict the history of “guest workers” since the 1950s (labor recruitment in Southern Europe and later on in Turkey, stop of labor recruitment in the 1970s, attempts at sending back guest workers, problems of family integration, etc.). Social studies textbooks also deal with labor migration, they pick up on the diversity of migrant groups, especially when they address the (re-)migration of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union. They also address questions pertaining to the integration of migrants into German society. Social studies textbooks concentrate somewhat more than geography textbooks on the impacts of these developments on German society. While it is not completely absent in history textbooks, it is geography and social studies textbooks in particular that explicitly address xenophobia and explore ways to prevent hostility towards foreigners, frequently when they deal with the topic of asylum. Textbooks like to depict caricatures that reveal a self-critical attitude about “us”.

Transparencies

The “we” is depicted in a positive light also when xenophobia is addressed, like in this picture, which shows a demonstration after the arson attacks on a Turkish family in the city of Mölln in West Germany in 1992.

Transparency

The question of xenophobia, however, is framed in a particular German context, namely the shame over the German past, German unification, and the special position of Eastern Germany within the Federal Republic. Thus, what is particularly modern about present-day xenophobia (its blatant racism) does not really come into focus, and the “never again” attitude of many textbooks that tries to draw conclusions from the experience of the Holocaust does not really help to understand and fight today’s racism and xenophobia.[5] In fact, it might freeze the interpretation in a historical framework, which actually prevents us from understanding what is at stake in today’s society when it comes to hostilities towards migrants. The receiving society needs to convey a convincing self-image if it wants to successfully integrate migrant populations. The self-critical German attitude as based on the Holocaust experience, which has been cultivated especially in West Germany for more than two decades, clearly has its drawbacks when it comes to the integration of migrants and to conveying an image of “what we are all about” that migrants can embrace. We can hardly expect migrants to develop a positive identification with German society if a significant part of public opinion conveys what has been labeled a “Holocaust mentality” as the epitome of progressive historical and political thinking. For many decades, it was extremely difficult to be a self-conscious German, let me just remind you of the debates surrounding the “constitutional patriotism” that Jürgen Habermas proposed in opposition to what he and many others perceived as uncritical national identification.

Problems of migrants’ integration into German society are usually addressed by quoting short statements from migrants themselves. Again: Migrants’ voices are prominently displayed and their perspective is to be found in German textbooks! Only few geography and social studies textbooks address the fears of “the man and the woman on the street” that foreigners might take away ‘our’ jobs, or the (mostly positive) impact of migrant labor on Germany’s social systems. But these textbooks are exceptions. Some textbooks also address the increase of worldwide forced migration, the fate of refugees and the question of asylum. However, strangely enough, the specific historical background for the German asylum law, which for a long time was the most liberal in the world, is not mentioned. (Because of the expulsion of Jews and many political opponents during National Socialism, the Federal Republic’s Basic Law (sicher, dass Grundgesetz so übersetzt wird?) had adopted an unusually broad regulation on asylum, which eventually was curtailed in the 1990s in light of the heavy influx of asylum seekers.) Especially geography and social studies textbooks extensively address problems of “identity”, again, mostly through little stories about how difficult life in Germany and/or “between two cultures” is, how “we” (in this case: the descendents of migrants) continue to be looked upon as foreigners. The metaphor of “sitting between two chairs” is used extensively and depicted in various forms.
Transparency 1 on sitting between two chairs The assumption usually is that the poor child is to be pitied because it is torn between two cultures and not accepted by either, even if, at a closer glance, the depiction hardly supports such an attitude.
Transparency 2 on sitting between two chairs

Mirroring: What does the depiction of migrants say about the receiving society?

The decades of more or less unimpeded growth and development of the welfare state in Western Europe are over. The “stability” of the Cold War world has come to an end. Our world has become extremely complex. The rise of fundamentalisms of all sorts after September 11, 2001, has made the world into a much more insecure place. One of the many consequences of the de-centering of the world is that the nation state as we know it has come under attack from all sides: from above through transnational organizations like the European Union and the overall process of globalization, from below through regional particularities and disparities, and through the rise of various forms of identity politics. When the “pure” nation (the ethnically pure nation, that is) from the inception of nation-states was an illusion, its legitimacy in the present has become completely obsolete. The “world” no longer securely resides beyond our national boundaries, instead “the world” literally comes to us: through television into our living rooms, to our work places, into our families, into our schools and public spaces. Textbooks try to convey an idea of that as well.

Transparency: Graffiti

The world-historical context is the reality we live in today. We are confronted with this modern world as much as we are part of it, and we need to learn to deal with ever more multiethnic societies and other impacts of migration. One reaction to this challenge is the rise of world history curricula in schools and at universities. I do not know how things are in this regard in Canada, but in the United States, the multiethnic composition of American society (and its resulting identity politics) is closely related to a new anchoring of world history in curricula and textbooks. World history as, among other things, an attempt to relativize the European heritage of American society and to offer identification to non-European ethnic groups are explicitly and more often implicitly linked in world history curricula and textbooks. World history is thus replacing Western Civilization courses, which were a requirement in the humanities for decades.[6]

Textbooks and curricula in Germany also strive to addressthe altered conditions brought about by the rise of the “network society” – a society without clear boundaries, accelerated communication processes, and global economic involvement. This takes a number of forms: especially in geography and social studies textbooks, we find the trope of “unsere ausländischen Mitbürger”. This is a special German term which is hard to translate. Its subtle connotations do not have a proper counterpart in the English language. It is something like “our foreign co-citizens”. This trope signifies aspects of civil society – as Rodney King, the black motorcyclist who was beaten up by racist police in Los Angeles some years back put it: “we all must get along” (Dies ist nicht richtig zitiert, glaube ich. Ich denke, er sagte: “Why can’t we all just get along?” Das sollte man aber korrekt machen, oder?) and we should try to understand each other. However, the term does not point towards citizenship. It clearly points to the foreignness of people who are the object of this well-intentioned, yet somewhat condescending term, which is to be found in public speech as well as in textbooks. In addition to the trope of “our foreign co-citizens”, we find requests to nurture understanding for foreign cultures, peoples, and religions, and we encounter appeals for tolerance. In fact, these appeals seem to be ubiquitous in education. However, these well-intentioned demands are not unproblematic. In order to better understand the overall script in which German textbooks deal with migration, I want to take a closer look at the trope of “our foreign co-citizens”, the ubiquitous demand for tolerance, and the trope of “the enrichment of our culture” through foreign cultures in the following.

“Our foreign co-citizens” (first trope)

Those people who are benevolently and somewhat condescendingly called “our foreign co-citizens” might be anything, but they are certainly not foreigners. Foreigners stay for a short while and then leave. While this was the assumption of German politics for the longest time, the group that we are dealing with here is mostly composed of immigrants and future citizens in an increasingly, though reluctantly admitted-to multiethnic German society. What the revealing label “co-citizen” does is to point to the lack of a secure status as citizen. It is exactly the long-lasting refusal to give people who sometimes already live in Germany in the third generation citizenship rights, which renders their position vulnerable and aggravates social fragmentation. Clearly defined citizenship rights (and good programs for social integration) are among the most important means to define and to improve the status of minorities. Euphemisms do not really help, and they are all too reminiscent of long-standing statements like: “We are not an immigration country”. The only thing such euphemisms achieve is to gloss over a complex and adverse situation.

As we know from feminist as much as from post-colonial discourse, dominant positions are always unmarked. The defiant and subaltern needs specification: since they are not citizens, which is the position that we inhabit, we deal with “our foreign co-citizens” when we speak of people who live in our communities, attend our schools, grill in our parks, repair our cars, and increasingly share our workplaces.

Education for tolerance (second trope)

The situation is even more problematic when it comes to demands for tolerance. To promote mutual understanding is the recurring principle, especially in geography textbooks, but it can also be found in history and social studies textbooks. This is a widely acclaimed credo of political education in Germany. It is assumed that tolerance is self-explanatory and universal. Any kind of contextualization in the European Enlightenment or an awareness that tolerance belongs to a uniquely European set of values (which, however on an international level gained binding character as universal norm) is rarely to be found. Thus, the inherent origin in European thought also does not come into view. The norm becomes “naturalized”. This unquestioned and taken-for-granted approach to tolerance veils the underlying assumptions that feed into the concept. Because the concept is naturalized in liberal western societies, those who write curricula and textbooks are usually not aware of its historicity and the ways in which tolerance plays out, when it comes to migrant populations with non-European backgrounds. The appeal to be tolerant towards foreigners always presupposes that it is we who have the power of definition. What then does it mean for me to tolerate someone, especially if this person does not look like me, does not have the same rights, possibly behaves in ways that seem strange to me (by wearing a veil for example), and speaks another language? It is always the “others” who are in need of being tolerated. The hidden assumption, however, is that these people obviously require tolerance. Someone I tolerate is not on the same level with me, but more likely occupies a lower social, political, or economic status. Foreigners thus first need to be marked as different in order to be identified as requiring the tolerance of the majority.

The famous neurobiologist and epistemologist Humberto Maturana once voiced a similar idea in even stronger terms:
In my view the demand for tolerance has an extremely unpleasant aftertaste: What the person who demands tolerance actually does is to delay and postpone for a little while the rejection and devaluation that the situation supposedly requires. A person, who only tolerates another human being, leaves him or her in peace for a certain time, all the while holding the knife ready behind his back. He does not listen to him or her, is not really attentive; his own convictions and assumptions are in the foreground. The other is wrong, but you postpone his or her destruction for a little while: that is tolerance. Another way of dealing with difference would be to pay respect to the world-view of the other person; to be willing to really listen to another human being, to take his or her reality seriously and to accept in principle its legitimacy.[7]

Maturana thus distinguishes between tolerance and respect and marks the boundaries of tolerance: in order to further illuminate his point, he resorts to a historical example: Churchill clearly had great respect for Hitler and was thus able to grasp Hitler’s plans. Chamberlain, on the other hand, displayed much tolerance for Hitler, which rendered him incapable of gauging Hitler’s true intentions. Thus, in 1938 he made the well-known and highly problematic and nonsensical agreements with Hitler.[8]
Instead of insisting that students learn to be tolerant, it would probably be more promising and surely more appropriate if we teach young people that we coexist with others and inhabit the same space in modern multiethnic societies; if we acknowledge and convey to our students that the ethnically homogenous society is an illusion; that in the future we will increasingly have to share social as well as physical spaces with people of different backgrounds, religions, and skin color; and that we will have to continually negotiate the ways in which we live together. This requires more than just “tolerance”. It requires introspection and the willingness to question oneself. Social contracts need to be rethought and renegotiated on a broad scale.

The “enrichment of our culture” (third trope)

Euphemisms in textbooks are at play also in the trope that foreigners “enrich our culture”. Some aspects of foreign cultures might indeed be perceived as enriching, like ethnic restaurants or folklore. In a very different sense “enriching”, however, was (and continues to be) foreign labor in special branches of the economy. This was particularly true for the high time of labor shortage in Germany, when “Gastarbeiter” were hired for positions that could not be filled with Germans. The “Gastarbeiter” were thus contributing to social systems. Foreigners also tend to have more children than Germans. This aspect of enrichment is becoming more and more relevant in the context of our ageing European societies. In fact, one might go so far as to say: to accept this kind of enrichment has become a question of survival for European societies. Other aspects of foreign cultures, especially such aspects that cannot easily be neutralized by the demand for tolerance, like gender relations in general (or more specifically the ways in which women and girls are treated in some Muslim and African cultures) then leave us Westerners, who believe in the universal nature of tolerance, somewhat helpless. When it comes to such questions where it is difficult to reconcile Western traditions with habits and demeanors that are alien to West Europeans, potential conflicts are frequently swept under the rug. This is the critical moment at which a gap opens in which children and young people no longer can “synchronize” and integrate what they experience in real life and what they have learned, or were supposed to have learned, in school. The gap also widens for educators, who in the end might lose credibility (besides experiencing their own cognitive as well as emotional gaps). What then follows from all this and from the frictions that exist in any multiethnic society for historical and political education and for political culture in general? In my view, these frictions (“harte Fügungen”) must not be glossed over in the name of universal values. On the contrary, they offer the opportunity to address what kind of society we want to be.[9] Respect entails self-respect as much as the respect for others. In particular, it requires clear visions. This could then be a starting point.

Conclusion

The superb book Civil Enculturation by Werner Schiffauer et al. shows that European countries pursue quite different paths in how they deal with the challenges that migrants pose for any given society. The educational and curricular frameworks differ greatly, reflecting the various self-conceptions of each respective society. While multicultural society and ethnic diversity is explicitly embraced in Great Britain and in the Netherlands, France follows a decisively assimilationist model, where difference is hardly acknowledged at all. Germany, however, lies somewhere between the British and the Dutch model on the one hand, and the French on the other: Germany follows a culturalist path. In the attempt to make the “other” visible, to take into account the difficulties that migrants might experience, and to sensitize students to the discrimination which migrants frequently encounter, German textbooks focus extensively on “identity problems” of migrant populations - the metaphor of the poor (and also the mischievous) child sitting between two chairs conveys the idea. In focusing on “identity problems”, textbooks thus sometimes create the very problems that subsequently need to be taken care of through a myriad of educational programs. By focusing on the identity issues that supposedly shapes migrants’ lives, textbooks and teaching practices in Germany all too frequently tend to isolate migrants from mainstream society, turning them into an object of inquiry by encouraging the “German” children to question migrant children about their experiences and tell them about their cultures “at home”. Thus, Turkish children, who might have experienced Turkey on summer vacations, at best, become “experts” on living conditions in Turkey, or even worse: on Islam. The migrants’ supposed otherness is thus magnified and constantly put on display.[10] The appeal to embrace the other, however, requires that the other, in order to be embraced, needs to be clearly defined as “other” all the times. The initially good intentions thus have an adverse effect: Migrant children need to explain themselves constantly in their difference to the majority. Their supposed identity problems are thus magnified (sometimes they are even created in the process!). Students with a migrant background are all too frequently put on “display” and their isolation is confirmed by the very mechanism initially aimed at overcoming their isolation and contributing to social diversity and a broader acceptance of difference. Try to imagine, as a mental exercise, that the girls in a classroom would constantly be asked to explain what it is like to be a girl – the boys being the ones who ask the questions. Or an even more extreme scenario: a gay student would constantly be asked what it is like to be gay, forcing him into a situation in which he or she must explain him- or herself to classmates who are at best mildly interested, and at worst: outright hostile. Does not the situation of otherness require a tactful balance, in which neither the sweeping of differences under the rug nor their magnification should dominate? Learning empathy and solidarity obviously requires new and different approaches.

We might ask ourselves why is it particularly difficult for Germans to deal with migrants (as compared to Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France, who at least seem to have clear principles). In my view, there are two reasons: for one thing, Germany does not have a colonial background such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, or France. Thus, the particular post-colonial challenge of dealing with not only the consequences of one’s own colonialism, but also with the presence of large populations from the former colonies in the “homeland” is practically absent. Second, the painful history of National Socialism continues to frame the perceptions of present-day racism in Germany, sometimes obscuring the particularities of today’s racism, which have more to do with the presence of people with a different skin color under circumstances of tight economic conditions and an ageing European population. German shame leads to exaggerated proclamations of good intentions in textbooks as in politics. The reality, however, has changed since the 1930s. In German there is a saying: What is the contrary of “bad”? It is good intentions.
But a comparison between the situations then and now would require another talk entirely. The majority society needs to convey a model of the collective self that people can accept and to a certain degree positively identify with. It is very difficult to offer the widely accepted German model of guilt and self-blame 60 years after the end of World War II and expect that a population that increasingly consists of migrants positively can identify with such a model (not to speak of the fact that it is getting ever more difficult to convey to subsequent generations of native Germans as well). Dealing with competing memories, as Viola Georgi will point out (I hope she will!), is what characterizes multiethnic societies. As a final word: As long as politics are not able to develop clear principles, the problem tends to be displaced. Among other things, it tends to be displaced on schools and textbooks. But textbooks, which have greatly improved since the 1970s on the issue of migration, can only mirror society’s clarity or confusion about the issues that are at stake, they cannot resolve them.

Zitierhinweis:
Schissler, Hanna. „Tolerance is not enough. Migrants in German School Textbooks between Stigma and Agency.“ Eckert.Beiträge 2009/5. www.edumeres.net/urn/urn:nbn:de:0220-2009-00079.