31 March 2006

BERLIN - Violence at a Berlin school dominated by Arab and Turkish youths and the nearby slaying of police officer, shot in the head while trying to arrest muggers, has fuelled alarm that troubled parts of the German capital are lurching out of control.

Police have now been brought in to help control the situation at the Ruetli school in the immigrant-dominated Neukoelln district, with six officers checking students for weapons.

Teachers at the school published a letter this week widely interpreted as saying conditions at their school had become so bad that it should be closed down.

The letter said teachers had lost all authority and were now so afraid that they only entered classrooms with a mobile phone so they could call for help in an emergency.

"The mood ... is dominated by aggression, lack of respect and ignorance," said the letter, adding: "We have reached a dead end and there is no way to turn around."

When reporters went to school on Thursday they were pelted with paving stones by masked youths from the schoolyard as the district's mayor stood helplessly at the entrance of the building.

"While sheer chaos dominated behind him, the mayor talked about the failures of the 1968 generation," jeered the Berliner Kurier newspaper.

Teachers complain that over 83 per cent of the 224 children attending the school are foreigners. The biggest group, 35 per cent, are Arab children mainly from Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

Turks, with 26 per cent, comprise the second largest group at the school.

Germany has about 7.3 million foreigners or 9 per cent of the total population.

A problem in German schools is that especially Arab male students often refuse to respect the authority of women teachers, education sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Peter Struck, education specialist at the University of Hamburg, was blunt about problems posed by foreign students in German schools which separate children headed for university and those who are not, who get dumped in less-competitive "Hauptschulen.

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