July 31
Yasemin Karakaşoglu is a Professor for Educational Sciences at the University of Bremen. In an interview with the the Migration Journal Migazin, Karakaşoglu speaks about the challenges consequences of the headscarf ban in public schools for students, who wear headscarves and are aiming for teaching degree. According to her personal experiences, some students begin a career in private schools run by migrant associations. Some have given up their dreams of becoming a teacher. Only a rare number of graduates reveal to depose their headscarves. According to Prof. Karakaşoglu some few cases have revealed conflicts between headscarf wearing teachers and their non-Muslim colleagues. Either headscarves have been perceived as symbols of repression against women or symbols of religious fundamentalism. In her opinion, pedagogic training is the reasonable step to reduce the risk of hiring ideologically biased teachers. Nevertheless, the creation of compromise between the State and its citizens is an unavoidable step towards pluralistic nomality.
In 2003, the Constitutional Court ruled against the complaint of Fereshta Ludin, a Muslim teacher, who had been banned to teach with her headscarf in 1998. Eight German States followed the rule of the Constitutional Court and did not allow teachers to wear the headscarf, as the neutrality of the State would be violated. States in the Eastern part of Germany with a low percentage of Muslim immigrants did not consider the need to act legally. States in Western part of Germany reacted differently according to their interpretation of religious symbols in public institutions.
