German Elections 2017

Looks like dieLinke doesn't make it.
+ There is a outside chance, that the regional CDU leader (designated government leader), is not getting a seat in parliament. That would be quite funny.
 
https://www.junge-unternehmer.eu/fi...amu_jungu_schulbuchstudie_marktwirtschaft.pdf

Study about the German education system and how it portrays markets, the role of market-economies, international trade, businesses and globalisation. I am not at all surprised by its content or the consequences. Overall the German school system teaches kids a one-sided and very critical view-point and consequently they develop critical attitudes (based on dodgy science) towards these things. Especially globalisation is seen as problematic, while the fundamentals of the social market economy ("soziale Marktwirtschaft") are not getting explained properly. Justice is usually discussed in the context of economic equality.
Talk about hidden indoctrination. Fortunatly I visited a school in Bavaria, so I got at least a decent education. I still have to thank my Math and Physics teacher, who was brilliant. Unsurprisingly he was a mathematician who changed his career to become a teacher after working somewhere else for years. Sadly I also remember vividly that I wasted hours of my life with the analysis of poems….


More importantly so I’d love to know how many pupils actually learn basics like doing their taxes, writing a business plan, independently analysing+solving a practical problem or really any skills that would be important (e.g. programming; proper math/statistics; languages; organisational skills; using word; 10 finger writing; healthy cooking; how to fix your toaster).

Yet people still wonder why so many people are struggling to adapt. Yes, general knowledge is important, but there has to be a balance. Going to school till the age of 19 + 4-5 years of university means that there are way too many people who havn't worked a single hour in their life till their mid 20s. Yet this is apparently the elite. Worse: People who don't do this are often fecked, because we evaluate competence based on a very rigid system of certification, that is stacked against anyone who is not participating in this system.
 
PedroMendez said:
https://www.junge-unternehmer.eu/fi...amu_jungu_schulbuchstudie_marktwirtschaft.pdf

Study about the German education system and how it portrays markets, the role of market-economies, international trade, businesses and globalisation. I am not at all surprised by its content or the consequences. Overall the German school system teaches kids a one-sided and very critical view-point and consequently they develop critical attitudes (based on dodgy science) towards these things. Especially globalisation is seen as problematic, while the fundamentals of the social market economy ("soziale Marktwirtschaft") are not getting explained properly. Justice is usually discussed in the context of economic equality.
Talk about hidden indoctrination. Fortunatly I visited a school in Bavaria, so I got at least a decent education. I still have to thank my Math and Physics teacher, who was brilliant. Unsurprisingly he was a mathematician who changed his career to become a teacher after working somewhere else for years. Sadly I also remember vividly that I wasted hours of my life with the analysis of poems….


More importantly so I’d love to know how many pupils actually learn basics like doing their taxes, writing a business plan, independently analysing+solving a practical problem or really any skills that would be important (e.g. programming; proper math/statistics; languages; organisational skills; using word; 10 finger writing; healthy cooking; how to fix your toaster).

Yet people still wonder why so many people are struggling to adapt. Yes, general knowledge is important, but there has to be a balance. Going to school till the age of 19 + 4-5 years of university means that there are way too many people who havn't worked a single hour in their life till their mid 20s. Yet this is apparently the elite. Worse: People who don't do this are often fecked, because we evaluate competence based on a very rigid system of certification, that is stacked against anyone who is not participating in this system.
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I don't think many education systems around the world tick all the boxes. I'm surprised the German system is so backward with respect to its economic teachings. I'll jot down some comparisons with the Irish system is you're interested in reading:

First, the Irish education system has been regressing sharply over the last 10 years I think. They've increased the pass mark and made the honours courses easier. This is to fudge the numbers and make it seem like there's more people doing higher level maths and science subjects. In reality, they're just weakening the standard. For example, they've recently removed Matrix Algebra and heavily reduced calculus in schools. It's not until college where they are introduced properly, which is absolutely ridiculous. Probability and statistics aren't studied properly until late in the school system either (around ages 18). At the younger end, the maths course has been also been made easier. Kids don't study even basic algebra until ages 12/13/14. Most of the early work is in linear mathematics, geometry and trig. Luckily I was made do extra maths work when I was younger as I wasn't progressing at all in school due to the standard being far too straightforward.

Economics in school here is pro free trade. Adam Smith and Ricardo would be studied....but the course is still very basic and straightforward. A lot of study on markets (Oligopoly vs Monopoly etc etc). It looks at basic functions of the central bank, world bank, IMF etc but is very very basic compared to economics in university.

Courses like physics, chemistry and applied maths are still a pretty good standard. One of the problems with them though is up to around age 16, everything is far too simple. This leaves a lot of work and thought process to learn a lot of within 2 years. Likewise, we spend a lot of time on useless information. Poetry etc. We're also terrible at languages for some reason. We start learning Irish at the age of 4, and most people still can't speak a word of it by the time they're 20. Children in Netherlands,Switzerland etc can speak a foreign language easily by the time they're in the teens it seems.

Almost no work done on logic, programming, data analysis and very minimal real world skills.

And apparently the Irish education system is relatively good.
 
Dunno about Irish/German education, but GCSEs are far too easy now. I did mine in 2009 and got 6A*s and 2As when my method of studying was to just repeatedly do past papers. The content, especially Maths, was beyond simple.

Tbh, the jump to A levels was a bit steep, so I guess it balances out in a way.
 
I don't remember learning anything about economics in school.
To be honest, a lot of the stuff that's being mentioned here is as useless as peotry for most people. How many people need programming, statistics, calculus, matrix algebra or probability after they graduate from school? There should just be more space for electives in school
 
PedroMendez said:
https://www.junge-unternehmer.eu/fi...amu_jungu_schulbuchstudie_marktwirtschaft.pdf

Study about the German education system and how it portrays markets, the role of market-economies, international trade, businesses and globalisation. I am not at all surprised by its content or the consequences. Overall the German school system teaches kids a one-sided and very critical view-point and consequently they develop critical attitudes (based on dodgy science) towards these things. Especially globalisation is seen as problematic, while the fundamentals of the social market economy ("soziale Marktwirtschaft") are not getting explained properly. Justice is usually discussed in the context of economic equality.
Talk about hidden indoctrination. Fortunatly I visited a school in Bavaria, so I got at least a decent education. I still have to thank my Math and Physics teacher, who was brilliant. Unsurprisingly he was a mathematician who changed his career to become a teacher after working somewhere else for years. Sadly I also remember vividly that I wasted hours of my life with the analysis of poems….


More importantly so I’d love to know how many pupils actually learn basics like doing their taxes, writing a business plan, independently analysing+solving a practical problem or really any skills that would be important (e.g. programming; proper math/statistics; languages; organisational skills; using word; 10 finger writing; healthy cooking; how to fix your toaster).

Yet people still wonder why so many people are struggling to adapt. Yes, general knowledge is important, but there has to be a balance. Going to school till the age of 19 + 4-5 years of university means that there are way too many people who havn't worked a single hour in their life till their mid 20s. Yet this is apparently the elite. Worse: People who don't do this are often fecked, because we evaluate competence based on a very rigid system of certification, that is stacked against anyone who is not participating in this system.
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Economics isn't a science
 
TheCorkman said:
We're also terrible at languages for some reason. We start learning Irish at the age of 4, and most people still can't speak a word of it by the time they're 20. Children in Netherlands,Switzerland etc can speak a foreign language easily by the time they're in the teens it seems.
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They can't really speak a foreign language based on school. They wouldn't know a lot more than tourist stuff. But it's a country with four languages that needs people to be able to communicate between each other so for example french as the first foreign language is starting as early as in 3rd grade (9 y/o). I think the go to example for how to teach a language are the scandinavian countries. This lot seems to be very comfortable in english.
 
TheCorkman said:
I don't think many education systems around the world tick all the boxes. I'm surprised the German system is so backward with respect to its economic teachings. I'll jot down some comparisons with the Irish system is you're interested in reading:

First, the Irish education system has been regressing sharply over the last 10 years I think. They've increased the pass mark and made the honours courses easier. This is to fudge the numbers and make it seem like there's more people doing higher level maths and science subjects. In reality, they're just weakening the standard. For example, they've recently removed Matrix Algebra and heavily reduced calculus in schools. It's not until college where they are introduced properly, which is absolutely ridiculous. Probability and statistics aren't studied properly until late in the school system either (around ages 18). At the younger end, the maths course has been also been made easier. Kids don't study even basic algebra until ages 12/13/14. Most of the early work is in linear mathematics, geometry and trig. Luckily I was made do extra maths work when I was younger as I wasn't progressing at all in school due to the standard being far too straightforward.

Economics in school here is pro free trade. Adam Smith and Ricardo would be studied....but the course is still very basic and straightforward. A lot of study on markets (Oligopoly vs Monopoly etc etc). It looks at basic functions of the central bank, world bank, IMF etc but is very very basic compared to economics in university.

Courses like physics, chemistry and applied maths are still a pretty good standard. One of the problems with them though is up to around age 16, everything is far too simple. This leaves a lot of work and thought process to learn a lot of within 2 years. Likewise, we spend a lot of time on useless information. Poetry etc. We're also terrible at languages for some reason. We start learning Irish at the age of 4, and most people still can't speak a word of it by the time they're 20. Children in Netherlands,Switzerland etc can speak a foreign language easily by the time they're in the teens it seems.

Almost no work done on logic, programming, data analysis and very minimal real world skills.

And apparently the Irish education system is relatively good.
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I don't think that the german education system is particularly bad; I'd argue that in general education systems need to get re-calibrated. The amount of knowledge is exploding and rapidly changing. I think governments need to think more about what they want to teach in school. Nowadays it is very easy to pick up factual knowledge about any issue that you care about. Almost everything you need to know is less than 10 clicks away. So more focus should be put on skills that teach kids how to think, how to solve problems, how to be creative and practical stuff that they'll just need to know.

Education was the most important topic (#2 was security/integration) during the last regional election in NRW. Something that I usually fancy - giving schools more independence - wasn't a great success. It is not the first time that I read similar analysis and I start to wonder if this is really a good idea after all. Maybe centralised school systems are superior.

schwalbe said:
I don't remember learning anything about economics in school.
To be honest, a lot of the stuff that's being mentioned here is as useless as peotry for most people. How many people need programming, statistics, calculus, matrix algebra or probability after they graduate from school? There should just be more space for electives in school
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well; it depends what school should accomplish. Considering that we need highly qualified people, many of these things have practical applications.
What is more important is, that there are skills/tasks that increase one's overall ability to solve problems even in fields that are not related. Thats a key part of developing creativitiy. It is up for debate which skills actually have this effect. Personally I think that various forms of math rank high. Languages as well. Spacial understanding of forms is surprisingly useful. Proper reading skills. Understanding complex causal systems. There is a lot more.
Additionally there are practical skills that are also important. I am fully willing to admit, that what I rate as "important skills" are not necessarily important for anyone. So some of my examples might be bad ones. Thats something that should be central to the public discourse. Too much stuff that is thought in school lacks practical application or doesn't have any value at all.
Early work experience from the age of 14/16 is imo criminally underrated. Obviously I am not talking about working 12h/d in a sweatshop, but a couple of hours per week additional to school (or maybe during holidays) in a suitable job to teach kids responsibility, independence, autonomy and a different perspective.
 
The German minister of justice (Heiko Maas; SPD) tries to get his „Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz“ passed into law before the next general election. It is quite late and the law is fairly controversial, so hopefully something goes wrong.

The law would force facebook&Co to delete “hate-speech” and “fake-news”. If they don’t do that in a certain time frame (e.g. 24h) they might have to pay pretty significant fines (up to 5million). That would force these companies to simply delete anything that’s controversial to avoid the risk.

It is pretty obvious who is going to get targeted by that. Recently the “Amadeu- Antonio-Stiftung“ (partially funded by the government) cooperated with ministry of justice in an attempt to find and counteract “hate-speech”. They ended up listing the conservative party as right-wing extremists for a while until they had to take this down. Their approach is to label anyone who is not at least center-left as Nazi. That is not entirely surprising so, because this foundation is run by a former Stasi employee. But obviously the CDU is just as much to blame for that as the SPD and if they’d have the ministry of justice, they’d abuse it equally. The “opinion corridor” is already way too narrow in Germany. A law that would try to censor unpleasant opinions online is quite fitting.
 
Soooo, we finally managed to legalise same-sex marriage, the parliament passed the bill today that grants homosexual couples full rights.
Took a blunder from Merkel to achieve that but I'll take it, took the government long enough. Oh and watching the CDU/CSU and Merkel squirm on the matter is hilarious.
 
Kasper said:
Soooo, we finally managed to legalise same-sex marriage, the parliament passed the bill today that grants homosexual couples full rights.
Took a blunder from Merkel to achieve that but I'll take it, took the government long enough. Oh and watching the CDU/CSU and Merkel squirm on the matter is hilarious.
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Been looking over your most recent elections - what happened to FDP in 2013?
 
altodevil86 said:
Been looking over your most recent elections - what happened to FDP in 2013?
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They took a pounding being the minor partner in a coalition with the CDU/CSU from 2009-2013, similar to the LibDems in 2015. Their good result in 2009 was ludicrous to begin with, the party that stands for deregulation, privatising and open markets to gain after the financial crisis in 2008? Didn't make sense on a policy level but they kind of ran a smart campaign with "We need to lower taxes" basically being their only message. When they got in power, they couldn't deliver on that and a lot of the voters they just had won turned away from them. Their main man Westerwelle, who was well liked as a politician when he was in opposition also turned out to be hopeless and invisible in government as foreign minister. He was kind of a spectator on his position, and Merkel (and Schäuble) ran the show herself on important foreign matters such as the Euro crisis.
The problem with the FDP is that they mostly only live up to their 'liberal values' on paper. It's all well if you have equality of homosexuals or data protection of your personality rights somewhere in your manifesto, if you barely do anything about it on the political stage you look weak. People rightfully view them as simply the party of the rich and corporations, as this is mostly the stuff they promote.
The legalising process of same-sex marriage is a good example: Technically you'd expect the FDP to be among the first to push this agenda and they support it in their manifesto. But it was mostly within the last year that they started to really embrace this topic, before that it was always the Greens or the Left who promoted the agenda. So Lindner can shut the feck up with his complaining about how the SPD now used the matter.

@SqueakyWeasel Thanks, you're welcome!
 
I have a slightly different take on this. Overall economic liberalism isn't popular in Germany. Yet under Westerwelle they got a record result with a platform that was focused primarily on this issue. He run an unapologetic, aggressive, unconventional campaign and wasn't too afraid how he would be perceived (he often overstepped the line and ended up looking silly). Yet all of that was setting him apart and was appealing for parts of the middle-class.

When in government, the party couldn't deliver on a single promise. Merkel took advantage of their total incompetence and took them to the cleaners. They were completely marginalized despite having their strongest election result in history. Consequently they were wiped out. Why vote for a party that does nothing at all?

It is important to understand that usually centre left-wing politicians/journalists are able to define what economic liberalism means in the German public sphere. Naturally they have a very negative view.

The FDP under Lindner isnt even trying to contest the meaning of these ideas. He rather gives up on anything that is controversial. The result is a social-liberal course, that is pretty generic. Yet we already have parties that stand up(at least on paper) for moderate socially liberal values. That is more or less the consensus in Germany since the conservatives gave up conservatism.
Nowadays the FDP is just an empty shell, that is too scared of taking a stand. Liberal by name but too afraid to advocate for liberalism in any area. Even on stuff like drug policy, modern family politics, foreign policy, trade, crime, immigration they are timid to stand up for liberal ideas. Often they sound like this green party on these issues. Nvm economic liberalism.
By avoiding controversy they'll probably win 5-10%, but they'll do nothing again.
 
Rather wishing I was spending my evening in Berlin.
 
I suppose Merkel will win but would a win for the SDP affect the German government's attitude to Brexit negotiations ? I've read that he detests the Brexiteers.
 
Schulz has really bad numbers atm. His best age group is 55-65, says it all really.
 
Looks like any momentum Schulz has is gone. AfD really faded off too.
 
Fortunately the afd is having a difficult time. Without Petry(who has serious legal issues), they lack leadership. Their new duo is not getting any time in the media, who are ignoring them. A good example that any press is better than no press.
The FDP is soaking up many generic center right votes by staying out of any controversy.

Schulz was already struggling but the G20 was a disaster for the SPD. His attempt to present his agenda misfired.

Merkel is coasting to victory. Only question is now who she is going to govern with. The odds for Jamaika increased imo quite a bit.
 
http://www.zeit.de/2017/30/fluechtlinge-medien-berichterstattung-studie


A study about the role of the media during the migrant crisis found that German journalism turned into moralistic preacher and government cheerleader. Instead of checking/questioning the powerful, the media acted as activists.

Following German mainstream media closely, that's sadly true for almost all policy areas.
Economic policy, social policy, energy/environmental issues, anything related to Europe, migration or societal issues are almost all reduced to moral grandstanding. German Mainstream journalism doesn't promote discussion but prohibits anything outside a very narrow progressive/social-democratic mainstream.
 
PedroMendez said:
http://www.zeit.de/2017/30/fluechtlinge-medien-berichterstattung-studie


A study about the role of the media during the migrant crisis found that German journalism turned into moralistic preacher and government cheerleader. Instead of checking/questioning the powerful, the media acted as activists.

Following German mainstream media closely, that's sadly true for almost all policy areas.
Economic policy, social policy, energy/environmental issues, anything related to Europe, migration or societal issues are almost all reduced to moral grandstanding. German Mainstream journalism doesn't promote discussion but prohibits anything outside a very narrow progressive/social-democratic mainstream.
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It should be noted that the article you quoted also suggests that this study appears to be a bit biased in order to come to that conclusion.
At times, the study reads as if the researchers were specifically looking to grab the [media] branch by the collar and give it a good shake.

(...)

The argumentation starts to get inconsistent when they concede that the FAZ spoke out against the unlimited intake of refugees in 'many' comments, but nevertheless class the paper as a caller in the great, monotonous echo chamber.

Sure, editorials are something else than reports - but they contribute at least as much to the formation of public opinion.

By its own account, the study didn't at all incorporate guest contributions that deemed the Merkel government's refugee policy problematic. Especially the FAZ, however, printed several pieces of that kind, most of them warning against the economic costs of mass immigration.

Haller justified their exclusion with the argument, that guest contributions wouldn't be associated with the editorial staff by the reader. This may be so. But the reader probably also knows: guests don't appear completely out of nowhere either.
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(own translation)

I don't want to engage in a lengthy discussion about the subject, just wanted to feature the reservations expressed in that article. I think they contribute to a more realistic picture of German media's political spectrum (without necessarily reflecting my own standpoints on this matter).
 
The gist is still true and under normal circumstances we wouldn't need a study to point out that the German mainstream media lost its way during the last 12 years. A country indoctrinated its citizens into adopting a shared collective delusion.

There is no perfect methodology for such a study that can't be scrutinized. It is worth noting that the author is one of the most accomplished (maybe even the most accomplished) German journalist and media-accademic. The OBS is also pretty far to the left itself and cooperated with Heinrich-Böll and Rosa-Luxenburg foundations (close to green party and left wing party) in "anti-nazi campaigns". Usually they are part of the people who shout down anyone who disagrees. Hard to accuse them of being in any way sympathetic to the right.
So maybe it would be worth to think about it when they come to such a unambiguous and damning conclusion.
 
PedroMendez said:
The gist is still true and under normal circumstances we wouldn't need a study to point out that the German mainstream media lost its way during the last 12 years. A country indoctrinated its citizens into adopting a shared collective delusion.
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That's too much drama. This really isn't a realistic representation of public opinion in Germany for me.
PedroMendez said:
There is no perfect methodology for such a study that can't be scrutinized. It is worth noting that the author is one of the most accomplished (maybe even the most accomplished) German journalist and media-accademic.
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But excluding articles like editorials and featured guest comments from a study about the media's role in public opinion is still remarkable, isn't it? It's an important part of a publication's stance on an issue. That would still be no problem as long as the conclusions reflect and incorporate these (and other) methodical limitations; every survey has them, of course. But here very general conclusions are drawn despite that rather selective approach. At least this seems to be the case in your posts, not sure how far the study goes in that respect.
PedroMendez said:
The OBS is also pretty far to the left itself and cooperated with Heinrich-Böll and Rosa-Luxenburg foundations (close to green party and left wing party) in "anti-nazi campaigns". Usually they are part of the people who shout down anyone who disagrees. Hard to accuse them of being in any way sympathetic to the right.
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This fact could also be seen as an indicator that broadscale left censorship doesn't actually exist in the way you describe it.

--------
Besides not agreeing with the political narratives offered here, the alleged mechanisms of influencing public opinion don't seem too unusual to me: Media necessarily distorts reality and offers a selective perception of it; it is also always agenda driven to some extent; a certain uniformity on core issues has always been characteristic for German mass media imo, as well as generally not venturing too far from government policy.

It therefore seems to me that the perception of the media just recently having 'lost its way' might be more an indication of them having the 'wrong' agenda for once, than an actual paradigm shift in the way they function. All democracies are authoritarian to a degree, and feeling that one's own opinion isn't fairly represented in the mainstream is a rather common thing. It doesn't mean there's some kind of plot going on.
 
TV duel about to start now.
 
that... was awful.
 
Santi_Mesut_Alexis_87 said:
A summary?
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The first problem is that both candidates are from the governing coalition, Merkel obviously just wants to state 'We're doing great on everything' and prefers to completely ignore her opponent (which is something she's been doing for 12 years now) and the challenger Schulz can barely attack her since his own party supported the major CDU agendas.

But the bigger problem was the horrible moderators. Questions like "Müssen wir uns an den Terror gewöhnen?/ Do we have to become accustomed to terror?" are just invitations to boring, meaningless statements; I mean who the hell would answer "Yes".
No questions on the topics climate change/environment, education (!!!), healthcare, welfare state and many others but instead we could listen to both telling the world how hard they'll be on Erdogan and turkey (yawn).
In the end a fitting debate in this god awful election.
 
Santi_Mesut_Alexis_87 said:
A summary?
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Bad moderation/question selection. They spent way too much time on foreign policy - refugees, Turkey, Trump, NK - where Merkel and Schulz pretty much agree and too little on things that are actually important to people's lives - education, social security barely mentioned, infrastructure and climate not at all. Despite that they still managed to get in some inane questions like "did you go to church today?" and "do you like the 2022 WC being in Qatar?".

Overall, Merkel and Schulz both came off as competent if somewhat boring and not a lot to tell them apart, which probably favours Merkel as the incumbent.

The highest rated comment on the r/de post match thread is the German for "I'm tired, Robbie", so I'm sure you can appreciate what it was like to watch this debate :wenger:
 
ctp said:
Bad moderation/question selection. They spent way too much time on foreign policy - refugees, Turkey, Trump, NK - where Merkel and Schulz pretty much agree and too little on things that are actually important to people's lives - education, social security barely mentioned, infrastructure and climate not at all. Despite that they still managed to get in some inane questions like "did you go to church today?" and "do you like the 2022 WC being in Qatar?".

Overall, Merkel and Schulz both came off as competent if somewhat boring and not a lot to tell them apart, which probably favours Merkel as the incumbent.

The highest rated comment on the r/de post match thread is the German for "I'm tired, Robbie", so I'm sure you can appreciate what it was like to watch this debate :wenger:
Click to expand...

:lol: That was crazy. Although hilarious how Merkel felt the need to tell everyone that she was actually in church yesterday!
 
ctp said:
Bad moderation/question selection. They spent way too much time on foreign policy - refugees, Turkey, Trump, NK - where Merkel and Schulz pretty much agree and too little on things that are actually important to people's lives - education, social security barely mentioned, infrastructure and climate not at all. Despite that they still managed to get in some inane questions like "did you go to church today?" and "do you like the 2022 WC being in Qatar?".

Overall, Merkel and Schulz both came off as competent if somewhat boring and not a lot to tell them apart, which probably favours Merkel as the incumbent.

The highest rated comment on the r/de post match thread is the German for "I'm tired, Robbie", so I'm sure you can appreciate what it was like to watch this debate :wenger:
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Cheers mate. Guess it was crap because everyone knows Merkel is gonna win again.
 
The problem isn't so much Schulz or any other member of the SPD it's the party itself. It's a left wing party without a left wing profile. Schröder might have been responsible for large parts of our current economic strength but he also dug the grave for his party with that 2010 agenda. Being seen as the lapdog of the CDU isn't helping either.
 
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