Political disenchantment, declining trust in state institutions, the electoral success of extreme right-wing parties - these and other developments in recent years that have been classified as a threat to democracy have led to calls to expand political education in schools. Political education is seen as playing a key role in strengthening democratic behavior and action. Using data from historical timetables, researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) were able to trace the development of politics as a teaching subject over the past decades. This shows that more political education was almost always provided at lower secondary schools compared to the Gymnasium. In addition, a clear correlation between the number of lessons in this subject and the party-political government constellation can be observed up to the end of the 1990s.
A LIfBi research team (Dr. Norbert Sendzik, Ulrike Mehnert, Prof. Dr. Marcel Helbig) created a new dataset based on timetables in order to clarify the importance of politics lessons in schools in Germany. This records for all West German federal states from 1949 to 2019 how many hours per week "politics" should be taught in the lower secondary level, i.e. from the 5th to the 10th grade, in the various school types per school year. The data for the eastern German federal states has been included since reunification. For the first time, the data allows an educational-historical and quantitative view of the development of political education from the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany to the present day.
Major differences between the federal states
The analyses show that the importance of politics lessons has increased since the 1970s and that teaching time for this subject had almost doubled in all federal states and at all types of schools by the 1990s. There were major differences between the federal states. For example, at the turn of the millennium, politics was taught for 7 hours per week in North Rhine-Westphalia (i.e. an average of approx. 1.2 hours per week per school year), whereas in Bavaria and Saxony it was only 2 hours per week (approx. 0.3 hours per school year). However, there have also been state-specific developments in the recent past: In Hesse, for example, teaching time was more than halved from 7 to 3 hours per week between the 1990s and the 2010s, while in Schleswig-Holstein it increased from around 1 to almost 5 hours per week over the same period.
More political education under SPD-led governments
The new data set also shows with rare clarity the political influence of the state government on political education, especially for the 1970s to the end of the 1990s, according to Dr. Norbert Sendzik: " Students received different amounts of political education depending on the political color of the state. If the SPD was part of a government, more political education was taught. If the CDU was in government, less political education was provided. This is particularly clear in the eastern German states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, which were dominated by Christian Democrats after reunification. In comparison, very little political education was provided there." Since the 2000s, however, political education has been less influenced by the composition of the state government.
Sendzik, Mehnert and Helbig call for further targeted research, for which the new data set can provide a good basis. In particular, attention should be paid to the development of civic literacy, i.e. the development people's civic and political competencies. More knowledge about the effects of political education could then hopefully also provide answers on how to deal with the political polarization currently observed in German society.
Original study:
Sendzik, N., Mehnert, U., & Helbig, M. (2024). Feuerwehr der Demokratie? Politische Bildung als Unterrichtsfach an allgemeinbildenden Schulen der Sekundarstufe I in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis 2019 (LIfBi Working Paper No. 114). Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverläufe. https://doi.org/10.5157/LIfBi:WP114:1.0
The study is based on the Leibniz Association-funded project "Efficiency and Equal Opportunity in Education: Quasi-experimental Evidence of School Reforms in the Federal States (EffEE)" (project period: 2019 to 2022), which is based at the ifo Institute and the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). The study was completed at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) following a change of institute of the study authors. During implementation, the authors received significant support from both the WZB and the LIfBi. The study and the data published here are thus also an expression of cooperation between the WZB and LIfBi.
Data:
Based on timetables for the period from 1949 to 2019, it was recorded whether and how much teaching time was provided for political education in all federal states in various types of schools at lower secondary level. The timetables originate from various legal bases. The legal bases for school law were obtained from the online archive "Makrolog-Recht für Deutschland", - its legal successor - the online portal "juris.de", the Library for Research on the History of Education at the German Institute for International Educational Research in Berlin and other libraries.
The timetable data was documented and processed in three datasets (raw dataset, school year dataset, year group dataset). The datasets offer various options for use and are available at www.lifbi.de/HISPOL