You can find the report here in the Januar newsletter of the ECSWE by Karen Chapman.

Nice contributions are from Hans Gunter Bartel, director of Circus Waldoni from Darmstadt. As a teacher, he wanted to create more movement for his children, because his children had no longer basic movement abilities. He developed a circus programme which explores the many sided possibilities of diversifying movement in the class, while avoiding competitive elements. Beginning with this project for children with difficulties, after already 4 weeks teachers and parents noticed the improvement of behaviour of the children. So they changed the program in order every child could participate.

Ernst Schuberth, founder of the Freie Hochschule in Mannheim tells about an extremely aspect of following the Waldorf Academy, which is doing social work every week, including assisting at an institute for less able children. In that way every teacher will develop an attitude of knowing and adopting to questions of this area. But it also functions as what the students has called 'a work of meeting' (begegnungsarbeit), because the students has learned a lot to.

Albrecht Smelzer, Director of the Institute of Intercultural Pedagogy sees the roote of early school leavers in the school system. They have observed how normally talented children fail in the school system because of language difficulties: the teaching methods are too abstract, intellectual - everything is written, marks are based only on this written work, and as a consequence, immigrant children are doomed to failure. Schmelzer sees the following 7 aspects as crucial:

1. A fear-free learning environment. In the German education system there is very early selection (after Grade 4), and it is difficult for children who fail to gain access to grammar school(Gymnasium) to overcome this early setback. For older pupils, the worry of not finding a job when they leave often influences negatively their attitude to school.

2. Learning in mixed groups. Classes remain together without any streaming at least until Grade 8. This can be done and it doesn’t determine less learning success.

3. Whole-day school. This is a very important factor for intercultural togetherness: the children must have a lot of time to be together.

4. An international College of Teachers. Teachers with direct experience of immigration or an immigration background can better understand the condition of their pupils. (In the Mannheim Intercultural School half the pupils are immigrant children.) The teachers must learn to talk together, to understand each other’s cultures and life styles, to work together.

5. The German language. Great care is given to the use of German; vocabulary and new concepts are taught through images, so that all the children can identify with what is going on. This is a very effective method: even children who arrive in the school with noticeable deficiencies, overcome them within 2 years. In the classes there is always an atmosphere of multilingualism.

6. The class teacher teaches all main lesson subjects. Through his continued presence the children gain a sense of security: he is a mainstay for their difficulties. Their defensive attitudes gradually dissolve and they begin to trust their teacher.

7. And what about the other subjects? How do we tackle Religious Education, for instance? Why divide the children just when we are talking about “re-ligere”? Intercultural pedagogy is alive, new things are always happening. Everywhere aspects of specific cultures turn up; teachers must always have an active interest for everything, be open-minded and able to differentiate the answers they give. They must learn to take a wider view of problems. Making the effort to understand another human being is a task that is never-ending: “We are on the other’s tracks, we are getting nearer to him, but we will never quite reach him.