Learning for Life

When you hear the word „SCHOOL“, what do you think of?
Joy? Encouragement? Acceptance? Trust? Love?

I don’t. Most of us don’t. And I realized how sad that is when I was flying to Helsinki and back last week. Or rather, when I read the newspapers, as I always do on the plane.

Somewhere between Düsseldorf and Helsinki a small article caught my eyes: In Tokyo, parents can track wether children safely arrive at school with a card that originally was developed as a ticket and payment card for public transport. When the child uses the RFID card to check-in at school or leaves a train station, or arrives back at home, the parent is notified with a text message or email. (See here)

Sounds like a good idea for parents? Hm. You could also see it as a service that lives off parental fear, a service that manipulates parents into feeling either “assured” or “worried” without making the way to school safer.

The other piece of news jumped at me and everyone else who passed by a German newspaper stand last Thursday: Tim K., a 17-year-old boy had murdered 16 people in a shooting spree that started at his former school in Winnenden, a small town in southern Germany. The boy was described as “inconspicious”, “average” and “shy” by those who knew him. Apparently, he did not have close friends and some suggested that he had been mobbed at school.

We need better security solutions, more stringent gun control laws, experts were quoted in the news. Other experts said that no security measures could have prevented the killings. It reminded me of the RFID security card in Tokyo: We long for more security, but technological solutions or legal restrictions may not be the answer.

Clearly, for Tim, school had been a place that was associated with problems, frustration, anger and hatred. Better security for the school would not have prevented these associations.
But imagine Tim had associated his former school with joy, encouragement, acceptance. It would have been impossible for him to even think of school in combination with shooting and killing.

For me, the massacre of Winnenden tells more about the current educational system than about gaps in security monitoring.

Schools that encourage children to be responsible actors and creators, rather than victims or recipients, schools where children feel accepted and loved and can develop their individual gifts may sound like a naive dream. Yet, I think societies must invest in these dreams, in educational reforms, school infrastructure and a holistic learning experience. Not only in order to prevent school massacres, but in order to instill creative energy, constructive power and respect for others in the next generation – qualities which our communities and in fact our earth need so badly.