Wednesday, October 14, 2015

School Project Story

I noted in the German news this morning....some parents getting hyper in northwest Germany over school activities.

Generally, most all schools run community projects and 'herd' the kids through some forced participation....so that they get the idea of being part of the bigger community.

So, there's this school in the Kiel region which decided to send their 'herd' to a refugee project.  These eighth-grade kids (from a school in Lubeck).....were directed for one week to go over to a refugee center and either help put up fresh sheets on the refugee beds or to assist in the kitchen with lunch.

You can look over the participation project....roughly a week....running from 8:30 to early afternoon.
Once the note came down....one parent read the whole thing....asked questions....and then got infuriated.  Couldn't the refugees make up their own beds or run the kitchen assistance project themselves?  There weren't any real answers.

So, this got out on social media and got the attention of hundreds of parents in a matter of hours.

After you sit there and examine this whole project.....it's mostly an attempt to get sympathy built up within a group of people (students) and that they feel connected to the refugees, and a part of their lives.  Some intellectural education player probably looked at the negativity building up and this was the 'fix' to get young people enthusiastic about the evolution going on in Germany.

A type of project that might be repeated around Germany?  I kinda doubt it.  If you showed up in Wiesbaden and suggested this....half the parents would ask if the refugees were invalids or disabled.  A fair number of the kids just wouldn't buy off on participation and ask for waivers or claim 'illness' during the week.

As a non-German....it interests me on how society changes are put into effect and how the public reacts different over the past twenty-odd years.  In the 1980s, people would have quietly just accepted the school project.  Today?  Germans are more and more skeptical of what projects are about and how these tend to fit into some agenda.

1 comment:

Claudia said...

That is a good one.