Not a referendum is disastrous, but the cost of the Curriculum 21 are

Not a referendum is disastrous, but the cost of the Curriculum 21 are

Arguments for the Thurgau popular initiative against Curriculum 21 and for amending of the Public School Act

Section 23 paragraph 1 of the Thurgau Constitution reads: “Resolutions of the Council of States, which concern non-recurrent expenses of more than 3,000,000 francs or an annually recurring expenditure of more than 600,000 francs, are subject to a mandatory referendum.”
Cantonal Councillor Monika Knill (SVP) had the “Thurgauer Zeitung” of 20  May declare that a referendum on Curriculum 21 would be “disastrous”.
Recently the Federal Court called her off sharply, because she had wanted to bypass the people in pushing through the spending of renovation and conversion costs of the Fine Arts Museum in the Carthusian Monastery in Ittingen. An expenditure of more than 3 million was declared as recurring “maintenance cost”. At present, the Thurgau Government is suspected again to be afraid of the people, because it tried to hide preparation costs for the participation of our Canton in the planned Expo at Lake Constance by apportioning them and thus keeping them below 3 million francs.
However, the much bigger financial and democracy-political scandal is the planned introduction of Curriculum 21: the Canton of Berne estimates its annual costs at more than 21 million Swiss francs – the Canton Thurgau is silent, so far … About 150 facilitators are planned to be trained in the Thurgau, resulting in training costs of at least 2 million Swiss francs. Annual costs for temporary deputies of at least another 2 million Swiss francs are to be added. Over 150 headmasters were and are kept busy with several-day-lasting workshops on Curriculum 21. Again this certainly accounts to another 2 million francs of training and salary costs. Thousands of teachers were and are summoned up to meetings and trainings on Curriculum 21. Salary cost of estimated 8 million must certainly be added. Hundreds of thousands of textbooks adapting to Curriculum 21, must be newly purchased. Costs amounting to at least 30 million Swiss francs will arise in the next few years. Diverse school buildings have been or will be converted to suit the needs of Curriculum 21. Here, millions of francs are planned to be invested.
The annual expenditures for Curriculum 21 exceed by far the financial authority of the Council of States as ruled by the Thurgau Constitution – let alone the Government!
It is another scandal that those financial consequences are concealed from the Thurgau people and State Councillor Knill and her consultants refuse to subject Curriculum 21 to the Thurgau people’s vote. The costs will become even much more, if due to the questionable methods of Curriculum 21 thousands of students will no longer have a good command of the essentials of German and mathematics, and are no longer capable of being trained as in many occupations.
But, maybe, there is a fifth column that want people to master only the by-1, by-2, by-5 and by-10 series of the multiplication table, as is conceived in Curriculum 21. (see Curriculum 21 “competency MA1.A.2”). Well, there is a calculator at hand …

Georg Koch, Stettfurt

(Translation Current Concerns)

Our website uses cookies so that we can continually improve the page and provide you with an optimized visitor experience. If you continue reading this website, you agree to the use of cookies. Further information regarding cookies can be found in the data protection note.

If you want to prevent the setting of cookies (for example, Google Analytics), you can set this up by using this browser add-on.​​​​​​​

OK