A Vicious Cycle for Underprivileged Kids

Forget the conventions on children's rights. In Germany, the fate of children is dependent on parents and the state, not on their needs or potential.

Kids who grow up in socially disadvantaged families often have difficulties breaking the vicious circle later in life. A career as a welfare recipient can be pre-programmed for generations.

Everywhere in the world, poverty endangers people's health and work. In Germany, one of the richest countries in the world, there are plenty of warnings that child poverty also endangers the future of society as a whole.

Wasting human capital

According to the Pisa study, children in socially disadvantaged families have very little chance of receiving education.

UNESCO has warned that support for underprivileged children is scarce. And just last week an OECD study was released that indicated Germany is letting its only notable resource lie idle -- human capital.

There aren't many countries in Europe where so few children and young people graduate from high school or college as in Germany. Yet those in the German economy complain about the shortage of skilled employees, which can only be alleviated by importing labor from countries that desperately need qualified workers of their own.

Education gaps lead to unemployment

Thus, Germany's educational catastrophe takes on an international dimension. A country that could have afforded to train employees has managed to create an army of mainly unqualified job-seekers.

One of the wealthiest countries in the world has also reaped 2.5 million children living in poverty, knowing that they are excluded from the German education system.

According to the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Germany has also signed, every child has the right to education. Germany actively supports this right in its development policy abroad, though it is not practiced at home.

Import-export of labor will continue

When many children in Germany don't complete a high school degree because of social reasons, when children from underprivileged families or families with immigrant backgrounds have practically no chance of getting job training, then the state has failed ruefully.

The resource that the whole world is dependent on, the human resource, will continue to flow from the poorer countries to the wealthy ones, just like metal and other raw materials during colonial times.