IMPACT OF HIGH SCHOOL PREPARATION
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for the world. By the way, without standardized tests but with a tightly–
knit system of academically well-trained teachers we are producing more
teachers than we can currently employ. From the personal point of view
this may be a tragedy but for the standards I think it's not so bad. And we
have a well-working net of powerful school superintendents. One super–
intendent, on average, for twelve to fourteen schools. If you compare this
to New York there is one superintendent for Manhattan, one for the
Bronx, one for Queens, and so on.
A school system is the responsibility of politics and of the society. In
Austria, cutting costs in the educational sector is not very popular. This may
be due to the fact that many Austrians (the generation after the second
World War in particular) have moved up the social ladder and have recog–
nized how much this upward mobility was helped by their good education.
And on a national political level there is the understanding that Austria (like
Japan) does not possess raw materials. We are not a rich country, so that our
qualifications are one of the main economic assets of our country.
Moreover, in the European context, which right now is becoming
more and more important for all European countries, the Austrian educa–
tional system (between the notoriously strong and highly-qualified
German and Swiss systems) constitutes a permanent challenge in quality.
But Austrian school politics embody no universal truth. Perhaps one goal
of our school politics is to develop and practice some sense of belonging
to a community, especially for immigrant children. Another goal is the
development of democracy: it should be the task of a school system to soft–
en opposites, not to entrench them. By this I am referring to the softening
of the opposites between Austrians and non-Austrians, the disabled and
non-disabled persons, the poor and the rich.
To reach this goal, there is no Rosetta stone for a school administra–
tion, no point of Archimedes . You simply have to take clear responsibility
and to try putting your work into the larger perspective of the peaceful
development of a society. Sometimes this is an uphill struggle. And I
think that what John Dewey said about philosophy is also true about
school politics: "Better it is for school politics to err in active participa–
tion in the living struggles and issues of its own times than to maintain
an immune, monastic implacability:' But it's not only the clear responsibility
of the school system to erve society; the society has a clear responsibility
as well.
Finally I'd like to borrow from a speech made in the United States by
a famous citizen of Vienna. You will not be surprised when I, coming from
Vienna, quote what Sigmund Freud said, and the comparison he used
when he was invited to read at Clark University
in
1909. He closed one of
his famous five lectures with a warning, recalling a story of a
Schildburger,
