“Together” school festival inspires students to dream big!

Hagen, Germany. Racism and xenophobia are often caused by ignorance and the lack of knowledge about different cultures and religions. The fear of contact prevents students from approaching these allegedly “strange” people, so the majority does not to get the opportunity to form an own picture of refugees and migrants apart from only watching them from afar or listening to alarming news reports. Being aware of ubiquitous issues is fundamental for developing into a rationally thinking, open-minded and critically questioning adult. Especially in times of the European refugee crisis, education about society and culture is crucial.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to arouse the enthusiasm of young students for additional learning events, so they miss the chance to get inspiration for taking a closer look on social issues. This inspiration is a thing, school often lacks to impart in its lessons besides the book knowledge, which is considered to be text-heavy and boring.

Our task as the SV (Student Representation) of the Fichte-Gymnasium Hagen is to implement projects that facilitate the daily school routine and strengthen an efficient atmosphere at our secondary school. In response to the mentioned problem, we decided to bring as many different aspects of a peaceful and respectful living TOGETHER as possible to our very own school. We sought to conceptualize a project which gives the students the opportunity to broaden their horizon apart from the usual lessons.

The outcome of several SV-meetings was a school festival combined with the educational aspects of a project day named “MITEINANDER”, meaning “TOGETHER” in German. All of our 1020 students and 80 teachers attended it and also relatives, friends and students from the other SoR- (School without- racism) network schools took part on the 22nd of June 2017. Consisting of different workshops, an open-air stage program and many campus activities, the event could attract more than 2000 guests on this very hot summer day.

The internationally active rapper and peace educator 2schneidig illustrated in an interactive hip-hop workshop, which risks and consequences subliminal racism in school entails, while also talking about his own experiences with discrimination because of his Nigerian roots. It should be self-evident to everybody that hatred and violence towards people because of their different looks, beliefs and customs are inacceptable. Respecting differences does yet not imply to succumb to self-evidently negative aspects by entirely adapting own convictions to recent developments. In fact, it is disconcerting to us that some people seem to be satisfied with the current societal situation. We neither seek to let bigoted racists into the adult world nor do we want uncritical hypocrites, who are blind for the painful reality. When talking about lectures or any kind of presented information in general, especially young students tend to simply accept these individual stances as the truth. Students should be able to regard problems from different perspectives and to evaluate given “facts” by themselves. This concerns particularly topics like religion.

Asking, doubting and discussing were greatly appreciated in the workshop about Protestantism and religious freedom by university professor Dr Ernstpeter Maurer and the fascinating “Inside Islam” workshop by our converted teacher Mrs Herminghaus. The mainspring in these workshops was the remarkably high inquisitiveness of the students. The cultural encounter with a Syrian refugee family made it possible to listen to genuine stories and resolve fears on both sides.

But not only was the confrontation with foreign culture implemented. Several well-grounded cooperation and teamwork games empowered the cohesion in the own classes actively. Further, letting the students perceive their class community as a whole that builds up on individuals made the European motto “United in diversity” tangible. The barriers of reducing people to a single one of their properties automatically fall when words become secondary. This finding became apparent in the handball workshop by the professional handball club VfL Eintracht Hagen too.

Acting as a group and taking the will of every member into consideration also played a key role in theatre pedagogue Miriam Walter’s theatre workshop about courage and the sculpture art workshop by Andreas Felix Kroll. In the latter, the local artist created a room installation together with the students, which was made out of school chairs depicting human equality.

The artistic performances on the open-air stage were the heart of the campus program. Be it traditional music, contemporary dances, or intriguing poetry slams, the students were able to showcase their artistic approach on the topic “living together” to the guests and their schoolfellows in many different ways. Several classes and courses prepared booths to present their project results, having worked intensively on music videos, photo series and posters about integration for many weeks before the actual festival.

Because eating and drinking are an important component of culture, we offered a broad variety of culinary delights from North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Dishes like Fried African plantain and Asian fried noodles allowed our guests to experience delicate diversity with their own taste buds.

Both students and adults enjoyed the campus activities comprising information booths, quiz games and other fun activities offered by our partner organizations as well as an enthralling magic show.

At 6:30 pm, the festival slowly ended with the mellifluous sounds of Italian ballads, just in time to evade the rain that was announced to follow after temperatures exceeding 30 degrees.

The school festival did certainly celebrate cultural diversity and offer an entertaining program, but its higher purpose remained to raise the students’ awareness about social issues. The controversial points might have only appeared intermittently, but we hope that they appeared clearly enough to create the desired lasting interest in the minds of our visitors. The school festival might be forgotten in some time, but so should not the conceptions it presented.

How often do we all watch documentaries about the haunting and deplorable fate of our world’s majority, but let our alleged immediacy fade after seconds as soon as we return to our daily routine? We should not let consciousness about the way our world currently works be ephemeral, because the path towards change marks its beginning in our own minds. Knowing this, we should also keep in mind that getting closer to our goal requires constant endeavor in the implementation of new projects, the endeavor in reminding us all of what happens beyond that ocean or, simply said, behind our own curtain of privileged Western life.

We thank all of our stakeholders, who enriched our project with artistic and intellectual value, for their participation. In the end, our deepest gratitude goes to OBESSU, because only with the Seeds for Integration funding, we were able to make MITEINANDER come true.

Having experienced such a great success encouraged us to come up with new projects for our school in the future and we highly recommend you to do so too! Every good idea can be game-changing in the way young people think about migration, affecting their future political attitudes and ultimately the future of our whole society.

Article written by Tim Vitan Chaiprasert, Student Representative of the Fichte-Gymnasium school Hagen.

If you want to find out more about our work or contact us, please visit our website: www.sv-fichte-gym.de