"Wherever I go, I find myself confronted with the accusations of double standards," said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell at Oxford University in May. At last year's Munich Security Conference (MSC), French President Emmanuel Macron said: "I am struck by how much we are losing the trust of the Global South."
Eisentraut makes this clear in her brief: The criticism of Western double standards is often justified. For example, countries from the Global South point out that the US and other Western states insist on the principle of the territorial integrity in Ukraine, but did not respect this principle during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Western states have often disregarded human rights by carrying out illegal detentions as part of their war on terror. And the Europeans have made common cause with North African autocrats in order to prevent migration to Europe.
However, Eisentraut also points out that critics from countries such as China and Russia often use their accusations to relativize their own violations. Or they use them to justify an approach to foreign policy that is no longer based on moral principles at all, but only on their own interests. The result is that the value of universal rules is being questioned around the world.
You're right! But I see this as a perversion of education. Education should not be a job training programme. It should teach you how to think and learn. It should be a place where you "learn how to learn" to put it more accurately.
So if you learn how to use LibreOffice in schools, you should be able to adapt when you arrive in the workplace and use MS Office instead - especially if you are still young.
And in my opinion, having experience with two office suites makes you more productive in the end anyway. I think it helps teach you how to translate capabilities from one product to another and makes you more knowledgeable about how each of them works. At least that's what happens to me in my experience when I learn two analogous pieces of software.