Social issues

Federal vote on 18 June 2023

Swiss Federal Office of Public Health in tow of WHO

Also for this reason: NO to the Covid-19 Act

by Sabine Vuilleumier-Koch, MD

(30 May 2023) Notwithstanding the social upheavals and the numerous scientific controversies surrounding the federal government’s measures to “combat Covid-19” over the past three years, in December 2022 the Swiss parliament extended the legal basis for certain measures until mid-2024. Thanks to a successful referendum, Swiss voters will now vote on this parliamentary decision on 18 June.
Pedagogy

Competence orientation?

Competence without education

by Béatrice Di Pizzo,* Zurich

(23 May 2023) Swiss primary schools are dominated by competence orientation, self-organised learning and inclusive support. The humanistic educational ideal falls by the wayside.

On Swiss Neutrality

Austria – Neutrality under pressure

“As long as you join us in the war, we don’t care about your status”

by Gerald Oberansmayr,* Austria

(17 May 2023) (Edit.) In Austria, too, there are strong efforts to circumvent the country’s neutrality, which is deeply rooted in the population. A look beyond Switzerland’s borders can therefore be helpful for the discussion in our country. The starting points are different, but in both countries a part of the political establishment seems to be deeply annoyed by neutrality.

From strategy paper to flop in daily school life

“The opposite of good is not bad, but well-intentioned” (Karl Kraus)

by Alain Pichard,* Switzerland

(11 May 2023) (Edit.) Cantonal governments and authorities draft strategy papers that practitioners in schools have to implement. Often, the planners have no idea about the lives of the schoolchildren they want to delight with their educational programmes. This is the case throughout the German-speaking world. Alain Pichard describes such a process using the example of a nutrition education programme in the city of Biel.

USA

“For freedom of the press Drop the charges against Assange”

Rashida Tlaib, Democratic congresswoman, is collecting signatures in the US Congress to prevent a dangerous precedent

(2 May 2023) upg. Journalist Julian Assange has been stewing in the British maximum security prison Belmarsh for three years. He must wait there for a decision on extradition to the USA. One does not have to sympathise with Assange, one can even have bad feelings. But it is about what he has actually done. And that is nothing different from what newspapers like the ”New York Times” or the “Washington Post” have already done. This is what the Democratic member of the US House of Representatives, Rashida Tlaib, says.

Why the German state is failing

No clarification of Nord Stream attack?

by Robert Seidel

(25 April 2023) Like an elephant in the room, the question of how it can be that leading German politicians and judges accept the main artery of Germany's energy supply, the Nord Stream pipelines, be sabotaged, but the perpetrators not prosecuted.