I would also like to thank those who work for the police and within the judicial system, as well as the staff in residents' registration offices and aliens authorities, employment offices and social services for their often difficult and sometimes frustrating work for which they need much patience and sensitivity.
I pointed out at the beginning of my speech that 30 percent of all schoolchildren in Germany now have an "immigrant background". That often means insufficient knowledge of German, inadequate integration in class, little involvement on the part of parents who cooperate with kindergartens and schools very little or not at all.
How many problems, from kindergarten onwards, are simply passed onto the next educational establishment up!
In reality, we therefore need teaching from kindergarten and primary school onwards which recognizes that promoting integration is not an issue of secondary importance.
Is this task being given sufficient attention in teacher training? Are teachers already adequately equipped to teach in classes where half or more of the children are not German? Female teachers in particular are often faced with unacceptable behavior resulting from quite different ideas about authority and the roles of the sexes. What can be done about this? What is not done in school often cannot be compensated for later in life.
It is encouraging that the number of students of Turkish descent at our universities has doubled during the last ten years.
However, the number of foreign pupils at Hauptschulen is three times greater than that of their German peers, and the reverse is the case at more advanced schools.
Forty percent of non-German youths with a leaving certificate from a Hauptschule do not find an apprenticeship.
• We need education concepts which acknowledge that pupils from German families with a Western Christian background are no longer the normal case everywhere. This must be given greater attention in basic and further training for teachers.
• We have good pilot projects in which mothers and children learn German together, because it is usually the mothers who have the main responsibility for bringing up their children.
• Those who live in Germany permanently must be able to speak German. That is why "German for Foreigners" is a key educational project for our society's future. We need more teachers for this. I know that this will cost money. However, I also know that cutting costs in the wrong areas today will result in considerable costs later.
• It is not a sign of xenophobia when teachers and head teachers ensure that German is spoken in school. On the contrary, where that is not the case, integration fails from the outset, to the detriment of all children.
• It is in our common interests that all foreigners or newly naturalized citizens have the best possible educational opportunities. Education fosters integration, education opens up opportunities of good jobs, education gives people a voice.
• Education is, after all, the key element of any encounter between cultures worthy of this name. Only education can help to overcome prejudice. It is the best protection against fundamentalism and racism.
What we must avoid at all costs is the emergence of a new educational proletariat, a section of the population which suffers social exclusion as a result of its poor education. That leads to the formation of ethnic ghettos with all the damaging, indeed dangerous, consequences.
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