Since November 2005, Angela Merkel acts as Federal Chancellor in Germany and repeatedly used public schooling in her speeches to address social problems, reframe political issues and to realign public expectations on schools. Prominently, she used schools in 2008 when stating officially that “for access and advantage in our society there is one main keyword of our time: Bildung. I phrase it with one sentence: We have to become the Bildungsrepublik Germany. That is crucial to secure our future for the coming decades. Every child needs the best support possible. Teachers are the most important profession in our society.”[1] The recurrent topic of schools was regularly tied to social crises perceptions (Smeyers/Depaepe 2008) – if economic, administrative, or socio-cultural in nature – and concurrently shared a pursuit of optimism via schooling (March 1975; Habermas 1981b). Herewith the expectations of the public towards public schooling are framed (Hopmann 2008: 424).

A set of speeches delivered by Angela Merkel will be examined and contextualized to show how public schooling is repeatedly confronted with new or reshaped expectations: for example, by addressing economic challenges during times of financial crises (Merkel 2008a, b), by covering religious and civic education while debating migration to Germany (Merkel 2013a, 2016), or by balancing the rise of federal school funds to meet challenges of digitalization and distance learning triggered by social and health questions (Merkel 2013b, 2020).

[1] My translation; original text runs as follows: „Und so führen uns diese Überlegungen zu dem für Einstieg und Aufstieg aus einer Sicht entscheidenden, dem zentralen Stichwort unserer Zeit: Bildung. Ich sage es in einem Satz: Wir müssen die Bildungsrepublik Deutschland werden. Das ist es, was unsere Zukunft für die nächsten Jahrzehnte sichert. Jedes Kind braucht die beste Förderung. Lehrer ist einer der wichtigsten Berufe in der Gesellschaft“ (Merkel 2008a: 10).

Exemplary sources, covering Angela Merkel’s specific addressing to Germany’s public schools from 2008 to 2020, available as podcasts, videos and transcripts via the homepage of the Federal Chancellery were categorized by overarching topics. Based on headlines and content, three categories were built: creating, managing, and reshaping expectations. Two transcripts of each category will be used for a discursive document analysis following steps by Landwehr (2009) and Fairclough (2003), adding contextualizing elements of contemporary German history (see e.g. Radkau 2017).

It will be shown how expectations originating from social crisis discourses are delegated to schools in order to be solved there (Hemetsberger 2020), even though those issues were not school related (creation of expectations). New accountability is created, especially when proclaimed by public spokespersons such as Angela Merkel. Germany, however, has a set of publicly ‘established’ school expectations, such as equity, originating from older discussions at least from the 1960s. These expectations are recurrently portrayed as insufficient, proven by statistics or international large-scale assessments. They are defended irrespective of their previous problems and school reforms are implemented to fix the deficiencies (management of expectations). Besides these two categories, expectations on public schools need to be readjusted in order to fit the respective discourse. As Germany previously portrayed itself as a country of poets and philosophers, which was damaged severely with PISA results (Steiner-Khamsi 2003), the recreation of Germany as a Republic of Bildung is a reshaping of expectations, public schools have to cope with (Radkau 2017). This paper argues in a tripartite way of how public spokespersons create, manage, and reshape expectations of public schooling in Germany over the last decades.

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