Top teacher Rösler calls for gender guidelines in politics
Published: Sunday, Dec 1st 2024, 20:20
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Politicians should dictate how Swiss schools should deal with gender-appropriate language: This is the demand of Dagmar Rösler, President of the Swiss Federation of Teachers (LCH).
In an interview with the online portal "blick.ch" published on Sunday, Switzerland's top teacher says: "Yes, there needs to be a joint commitment at a political level on how gender-appropriate language should be handled in future."
Rösler goes on to say that the schools are currently standing alone because of all the debates and recommendations - or non-recommendations. They would be in the firing line if they tackled the problem themselves.
Nobody really wants to disclose how schools should deal with special characters or gender-appropriate language. Apart from politicians, neither does the German Spelling Council, according to Rösler.
Rösler does not believe that it is a problem for children and young people to learn how to use the gender star at school, for example: "Teachers are trained to explain precisely such issues." But they lack a "climbing rope that we can hold on to."
Spelling Council still wants to observe
In July of this year, the German Spelling Council wrote in a statement that internal word characters such as the colon and the asterisk are not part of the core of German orthography. The subsequent problems cannot be sufficiently assessed. The development must continue to be monitored.
Special characters within words impair the comprehensibility and automatic translatability of texts. They cannot currently be clearly justified scientifically and cannot be included in the official rules of German jurisdiction.
According to the Council, this set of rules is binding for schools and administration in the German-speaking regions of Switzerland and its neighboring countries.
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