The Empty Stands

Behind "self-harming behavior" stands a child who sees no other way out. Behind "emotional neglect" stands a child that no one listens to at home. Behind "cybergrooming as a recurring theme" stand girls and boys who meet adults online that give them attention because they find it nowhere else. Behind "school aversion and avoidance behavior" stand primary school children who no longer want to get up in the morning. Not out of laziness. Out of exhaustion. At every school in this city. Comprehensively. Documented.

I'm not saying this as abstract criticism. I'm saying it from personal observation. My son plays in a sports club. I don't know 70 percent of the parents. I have never seen them. Not once. No face. No name. No cheering from the stands. Their children stand on the pitch. Look around. Search for a face in the crowd. And there is no one.

You are absent. Not occasionally. Always. Fundamentally. Systematically. And your children learn a lesson from this that no social worker in the world can ever undo: I am not worth anyone coming.

That is the foundation on which everything in this report is built. The self-harm. The loneliness. The anger. The violence. The feeling of having no future. It doesn't begin at school. It begins at the empty stands. With you. With all of you. Parents who transfer a responsibility to their children that has no place there. The daycare, the school, the sports club, social work — all of them are supposed to fix it. All of them are supposed to catch, accompany, support, stabilize. And you? You book the next activity, transfer the membership fee, and call that care. It isn't. Care is your face in the stands. Your voice when the system fails. Your refusal to just let it all run. Those who don't deliver that, who look away, stay silent, delegate and keep functioning — they are not overwhelmed. They have made a choice. Even if the system makes that choice easier every day.

I know that not everyone who is absent wants to be absent. Some work. Some are exhausted. Some are fighting for their own survival in a system that needs two incomes to feed a family and still expects you to be present in the evening. I acknowledge that. But the child on the pitch doesn't know that. They only know that nobody comes.

And they draw a conclusion from that which shapes their life, long before anyone gets the idea to write a report about it.

Not that parents aren't there. But that they no longer even raise their voices when it's to the detriment of their own children. Not for other people's children. Not for the neighbors' children. For their own.

That used to exist. The father who goes to the headmaster and doesn't leave until he gets an answer. The mother who sits at the town council meeting and asks uncomfortable questions. The parents' evening where people actually argued, because they still felt their word meant something. That is gone. Conditioned away through exhaustion. Through two jobs. Through indifference. Through a culture that punishes anyone who speaks up with a label. Through a creeping sense of powerlessness that was whispered for so long it started to feel like reality. Until parents sit in front of reports describing their own children — self-harm, loneliness, violence, hopelessness — and nod.

And go home. And do nothing. Not because they don't love. But because they have forgotten that love also means resistance. That being a parent doesn't end when the school door closes behind the child. That no one fights these battles for them.

And then comes the system. The system that is supposed to catch these children when there's no one at home. That sends social workers, teachers, educators into the breach — and leaves them there alone. People who give everything because they know no one else is there. Who write reports that no one wants to read. Who keep going even though they themselves are long past their limit. Burnout. Depression. Breakdowns behind closed classroom doors.

The education system does not solve this crisis. It manages it. For years. With growing expertise in managing and shrinking willingness to solve. This is not an accusation against local teachers. It is an accusation against a system that forces them into a role that isn't theirs, and leaves them there alone.

40,000 to 70,000 teachers are missing. Trend: rising. The answer was not to make the profession more attractive. Not to pay better. Not to improve conditions. The answer was: career changers without pedagogical training straight into the classroom. Shortened teacher trainee programs. Lateral entrants from unrelated fields. As long as someone stands in front of the board. This is not an accusation against these people. It is an accusation against a system that considers this answer acceptable. That pretends to our children that presence is the same as teaching.

And the same system fails at the second major issue that no one wants to discuss soberly. Educators spend half the day communicating with children via iPads because not a word is understood. These very children are enrolled in school the same year. No German. No preparation. No adequate language support beforehand. And the system acts as if this has no consequences. A teacher no longer designs their lessons for the class, but for those who don't understand anything. The others wait. Always. This is not an argument against these children. It is an argument against a system that neither adequately supports the one group nor the other, and then tells everyone to be more tolerant. As if tolerance replaces resources. As if attitude is a support concept.

Unlimited tolerance without a structural foundation is not a sign of strength. It is the most elegant tool of self-abandonment ever invented.

Why does no one speak up? Why do parents sit in front of these reports, read what is happening to their children, and then simply go home? Why don't town council meetings fill up? Why aren't phones burning in the offices of those responsible? Why is the loudest room in this debate still the one where professionals talk among themselves?

Because a society that has systematically worn down its parents — through poverty in installments, through overwhelm, through a political culture that punishes dissent and rewards silence — eventually produces parents who no longer even bang the table for their own children. Who were conditioned into powerlessness. Who learned that it makes no difference. Who are so deep in functioning that outrage feels like a luxury. That is not an accident. That is the result of a politics that views an active, demanding citizenry as a threat and an exhausted, silent one as a success.

And that leads directly to the next point. Because none of this is an accident.

There is a political current in this country that confuses educational equity with educational leveling. In plain terms: not supporting everyone to reach higher. But lowering the bar so far that everyone can clear it. Not out of ignorance. Out of conviction. One that believes equal opportunity means bringing everyone to the same destination, instead of giving everyone the same fair start. A conceptual error that has been eating its way through curricula, education ministries and educational debates for years like mold through wet walls. And that has real consequences. For real children. In real classrooms.

The result is a school system that no longer promotes, but equalizes. That slows down strong students so weak ones don't stand out. That abolishes primary school recommendations, devalues grades, strips curricula, lowers requirements. Graduation rates rise. Competencies fall. PISA results drop. Awards for inclusive concepts are handed out — for concepts thrown into classrooms without personnel, money or preparation. The diploma is democratized. The knowledge behind it is not.

No one shall be left behind — that is the promise of an education policy that treats attitude as a support concept and declares itself the conscience of society. The result: everyone is left behind. Just together. And that is called justice. The clever adapt to the less capable. That sounds harsh. It is harsh. But look at the landscape of this country. People who would not survive a single week in the free market. Who could not run a business, bear responsibility, feel the consequences of what they decide. Who sit up there not because they are better, not because they are more capable, not because anyone would have chosen them knowing what they were getting — but because a system that rewards mediocrity and punishes excellence inevitably floats mediocrity to the top. Not despite that. Because of it.

Spelling was simplified not because teaching improved, but because the standard was adjusted to the failure. Mental arithmetic is considered outdated. Classics disappear from curricula because they are too uncomfortable. History is wrapped in so much emotional work that understanding causes becomes secondary. The result is a generation that barely thinks anymore. That consumes opinions instead of forming them. That no longer knows what it doesn't know. That has no standards anymore because no one ever taught it how to develop them. That no longer knows who it is, what it wants, what it stands for — because identity requires friction, confrontation, uncomfortable questions, and exactly that was systematically spared. Protected from failure. Protected from effort. Protected from itself. And that is precisely what breaks it. Because a person who was never asked to grow through hardship, who never learned to process defeats, to feel limits, to know themselves — that person was not protected. They were kept small. Softened. Made dependent on validation that never suffices, because it was never earned. That is not an oversight. That is narcissistic abuse on installments. By a system that calls itself care.

That is not a failure. That is a result. A society that no longer thinks critically, that has no standards, that doesn't know its history and can't contextualize numbers — that society doesn't ask uncomfortable questions. It doesn't compare. It doesn't remember. It swallows whatever is put in front of it. A dull, content, manageable population is not collateral damage of bad education policy. It is its most logical outcome. And the proof stands daily in comment sections, in election results, in a public conditioned to outrage but not to insight.

Germany is not getting dumber despite its education policy. It is getting dumber because of it. Deliberately. Quietly. Successfully. Whoever says this out loud gets their label. You know which one. Because an ideology that believes it is right doesn't need criticism. It only needs your silence.

I am tired of having the same conversations for years. With professionals who all know what is happening. Who document it, name it, prove it. And who still aren't heard. By politicians who let reports disappear into drawers. By a public that prefers to look away. By parents who don't come. By a system that functions — just not for children.

Anyone who has accompanied all of this for years with "it's not that bad" or "it was always like this" has made a choice. Not for a different opinion. For indifference. And indifference is not a neutral position when children are falling. It is a decision against them. Active. Daily. Consistent.

The comfortable blindness of these people does not carry the same weight as thirty pages about children who hurt themselves. Who have no attachment figure. Who stand on empty stands and wait. Thirty pages in which every sentence is a child who fights. Which no one who still has a spark of honesty in them can argue away.

Whoever tries anyway is not of a different opinion. They are part of the problem.

We have gotten used to blaming the system. The system is guilty. But the system has no face in the stands. You do.

When did you stop being your child's primary attachment figure? When did you stop becoming uncomfortable — not for other people's children, but for your own? When did you stop asking yourself whether you are present enough?

Not whether you earn enough. Not whether you organize enough. Whether you are there.

That doesn't mean accompanying every step and cushioning every defeat. No helicopter hovering over the child, clearing away every friction before it arises. Friction is development. Failure is learning. Age-appropriate parenting means trusting, not protecting from life, but preparing for it.

It also means: putting the phone down. Not just theirs. Yours. A child who watches an adult staring at a screen during dinner learns everything about their own value from that. Hours of phone use in front of children's eyes is not a minor thing. It is a message. Repeated daily.

The system will not question itself. That was never its strength. And it will do so even less as long as you stay silent and do nothing yourself.