Contributing:
Pupils Solve their Problems in the Class Council

In this section we present examples for "democracy at school" that are easy to put into practice. They originate from the bestseller by the former Head Mistress at the Helene-Lang School, Enja Riegel, with the characteristic title "Schule kann gelingen!" (School can Succeed!).

"Democracy at school" begins with everyday things. The "cleaning rota" at our school reflects this (refer to the Cleaning Rota page). Besides this the pupils are required to take over offices (refer to the Contribution page). The basic concept is to entrust responsibility to the pupils - in small doses at first.

This responsibility also extends to other and more difficult areas - and this involves learning democracy in the narrow sense. The aim is to get the pupils involved in planning, making decisions and solving their disputes themselves. A class council is set up to this purpose in accordance with the suggestion made by the French pedagogue Célestin Freinet.
 

Class Newspaper and Class Council

"The class council is a fixed ritual at the end of each week at the Helene-Lange School. Preparations are made for it using a class newspaper which offers pupils the chance to enter wishes, positive comments, but also criticism and disputes, during the course of the week. Everyone knows that everything that is in the class newspaper will be discussed in the class council. If a dispute between pupils is not solved beforehand and the entry not struck out, then the class holds council on it" (pp. 64-65).
 

A long and stony path...

This does not of course succeed straight away. It requires a lot of patience before pupils (and teachers) are capable of constructive solutions to disputes. "At the age of eleven there are children who are not capable of voicing their arguments or listening to them. Nearly all are incapable of leading a discussion or summing something up. (...) 'Give children a voice' as Freinet has formulated and promoted it requires assistance right down to the smallest detail in formulation" (pp. 65-66).
 

The Course taken in a Class Council

Besides convincing examples of successful solutions to problems in the class council Enja Riegel suggests what this process could look like in individual terms. "The pupil who head the class council (...) says: 'I herewith open today's meeting of the class council with the topic of our class newspaper.' The teacher sits next to the pupil and points to the first point. 'Toby kicked me in the shins three times yesterday.' Initially the child who wrote the criticism down says something on it and then Toby, so that he can justify his action, and then contributions can be made by the class.

The leader of the class council asks what a solution could look like no later than when the arguments start to repeat themselves. At the end he closes the class council meeting and records the topics which can no longer be discussed and which need to be dealt with next Friday. Initially some pupils will be disappointed or angry that their topics are not dealt with. However after some time all learn how to deal with brief time available in an economical manner.

Sometimes a class council meeting ends in chaos or in a bad atmosphere. But this is all part of the process. Without the difficult first steps towards independence a school would not succeed in having a girl or boy lead the class council for a period of about three months, administer the speaker's list, pass on the word, structure the discussion or drive towards a solution" (p. 66).
 

Problems of the Role of the Teacher

It is obvious that the class council cannot just be introduced and then left to function on its own. A great deal of patience and courage to fail in the start-up phase is required just as much as the careful support of the process by the teacher.

"The very first steps in this process of learning and patient practice of democratic forms of behaviour are much to important to be skipped. The teacher has to maintain an difficult balance here. One the one hand he is - with his authority - the guarantor of 'good' order (...) during the first few weeks and months during the first few weeks and months (...). On the other hand he has to make sure that a class learns to solve its internal problems and disputes itself" (pp. 66-67).
 

A Show of Hands Does not Suffice

Frequently the practice of "democracy" at school is limited to a show of hands concerning a question. That this falls far too short should be immediately clear and is accentuated by Enja Riegel:

"It is a mistake to think that children learn independence and considerate behaviour merely by voting on everything possible, even when this appears to be democratic. Making a decision ultimately always means adopting responsibility for oneself and others. This embraces specific basic rules which cannot be invalidated even by way of a majority decision. Something in the line of the strong under no circumstances being allowed to humiliate the weak, or even subjugate them, or that violence at this school is not accepted " (p. 67).
 

Clear Rules

The goal of the efforts at the Helene-Lange School is to get the pupils to live and learn at their school in as independent a fashion as possible. They should adopt responsibility. The forms the prerequisite for their making codecisions. Enja Riegel also makes the limits clear as a balance:

"Democracy in a school means above all increasingly organising learning and living together in an independently and self-responsibly. A show of hands is sometimes helpful here when one has learnt to talk seriously to one another beforehand.

The freedom of the pupils to make some decisions themselves has its limits as everyone needs to recognise. Pupils who denigrate the tone, disfigure the walls, or hurt their fellow pupils must understand without question that their behaviour is unwanted, and that the school will monitor the observation of specific rules if the class does not succeed in doing so alone." (p. 69).

[All quotations from: Enja Retainer, "Schule kann gelingen"! (School can Succeed!) "Wie unsere Kinder wirklich fürs Leben lernen" (How our Children Really Learn for Life). Helene-Lange School Wiesbaden, "Handbuch politische Bildung" (Manual of Political Education), "Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung" (Federal Centre for Political Education), Volume 446, Bonn 2004]