Conference Program

A popular strategy of the “new right” in Germany is the call for neutrality. University teachers as well as schoolteachers are denounced for not being neutral when they address the racist, sexist and discriminatory utterings and behaviours of the right. As many teachers are civil servants in Germany, the so-called “neutrality principle” applies to them. This principle mainly becomes important in times of elections when teachers are supposed to withhold their political opinions to let students find their own positions in the political landscape. However, the “new right” instrumentalizes the “neutrality principle” to pressure teachers and to neutralize any political education. But still, it seems even though the educators’ union tries to inform teachers about this misinterpretation of the neutrality principle (cf. GEW, 2024), many teachers are becoming more insecure and careful about showing a clear positioning against right comments and policies.

This is not a coincidence. The call for more teacher’s neutrality has been present in German educational debates since the competence orientation was introduced in the early 2000s (cf. OECD’s DeSeCo project). In response to the “PISA Shock” in 2000 – that the German school system did not perform well in the PISA studies conducted by the OECD (Germany was just in the middle of the ranking) – teacher education and its effectiveness was questioned heavily. Another consequence was the promotion of individualized learning. As a result of this individualisation, the idea that the teacher should be a diagnostician became quite popular: “teachers’ key tasks include making diagnoses, as they are challenged to meet students’ diverse learning needs and adapting their teaching to students with heterogeneous academic abilities as well as multiple interests and motivations” (Klug, Gerich & Schmitz, 2016, p. 185). The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (abbreviated as KMK) promoted research on diagnostics and competences since the PISA shock as well (cf. KMK, 2001) and changed the structure of teacher education at universities. The social dimension of the teacher’s profession was minimized throughout those reforms (cf. Rojahn, 2025). What the concept of competence, the idea of diagnostics and the call for teacher’s neutrality share is the disregard of the subject matter as well as the lack of any community idea. Instead, they overemphasize the isolated student, their skills and perceptions. This individualized perspective stands in contrast to important aims of (political) education: enabling students to form judgements, creating solidarity, trying to emphasize similarities and shared interests instead of focusing on differences.

A concept that aims at enlarging and contextualizing arguments with reference to a community idea is Hannah Arendt’s concept of judgement (cf. Arendt, 1992). This paper will illustrate why judgement instead of ‘neutral diagnostics’ is a far more valuable concept for teacher education as well as political education.