Post photo: Pupils in class | © Shutterstock
The last conversations with interns and students as well as my on-site observations at schools are slowly but surely making me doubt whether we still need schools, at least in their current form.
Most of the schools and their equipment in Heilbronn are more than out of date and so it is not enough to replace the boards once after 50 years like at the RMG and perhaps to abolish the sports facilities altogether and further simplify the curriculum.
Maybe it's long past time for a kind of open curriculum and we could reduce school attendance to four years for the more intelligent students. There they demonstrate sufficient intelligence and the ability to learn. With this proof you will receive a library card and mandatory Learning objectives and learning content. Until the minimum learning goals are met, the students are tested once a year and, if they repeatedly fail to keep up, they are integrated into traditional school life.
Cities that actually want to do something for their children could expand the city library into a holistic learning center and also ensure that children and young adults have sufficient sports facilities available.
As is usually the case here in Heilbronn, simply “locking the children away” - preferably in containers - and restricting their freedom of movement more and more by, among other things, eliminating or decommissioning sports facilities and only hoping that no child will be there during school hours Starving, having an accident or dying has little to do with successful education policy. It doesn't help that everyone who was there most of the time and didn't hit any teachers gets a school leaving certificate.
But if that is our primary educational goal, we could save on teachers today and replace them with entertainers.
