Udo di Fabio

In the 50s and 60s, someone from a miner’s family didn’t go into higher education just like that. When the time came to determine who out of my primary school class of 30 would move on to a higher secondary school, only two were considered. A slightly different ratio than what is typical today. And it was my young teacher and the headmaster who urged me to go to a Gymnasium (grammar school), but my parents were afraid of it. And that was school in the 1960s, full of the pioneering spirit of rising up through education. In the 60s and 70s, it wasn’t just the dream of rising up through education that was contagious, but the student movement had also given the impression that universities were the place of societal emancipation, of modernity, where the world was appropriated. And that spoke to me; I wanted to be there. As a child of the young Federal Republic, I thought of social mobility as normal for anyone who wants it and is committed. Only much later did I see that there are barriers, social selection processes, standing in the way. I barely encountered these. I believe that today, an immigrant child or a young woman from a Muslim immigrant household – so long as their parental home doesn’t hinder it – would in principle have the same opportunities as I did.