Adopting Responsibility:
Pupils Clear Up and Clean the School Themselves

This example shows that "democracy at school" starts with everyday things. It concerns the pupils and the teachers at the school making the school "theirs", and concerns a different perception moving away from a teaching institution which one is obliged to visit, and which remains foreign as an external sphere.

Head Mistress Enja Retainer, who was the central character responsible for the successful reforms carried out at the Helene-Lange School since 1982, laments the one-sided orientation of school life towards knowledge and learning in her bestseller "Schule kann gelingen!" (School can Succeed!) and describes the starting point for her deliberations as follows:

"... School is needed for much more. How in any other way can pupils learn to deal with others in a respectful manner who they have not chosen to be with, and to work and live with them? Where else are the democratic skills of children and young people practiced?" (p. 61).

Enja Retainer also considers school to be a "citizens' school". Above all this means practicing skills in democracy and practical participation, but primarily begins with adopting responsibility:

"[In school] the 'how' of taking over joint responsibility must be experiencable, just as how one uses one's own skills and capabilities to the benefit of all and not just to one's own benefit. To me what is worse than the below-average performance of the pupils is that at too few schools the pupils are not entrusted with any serious responsibility" (p. 61).
 

Adopting responsibility...

Responsibility begins with the small things, with cleaning and the lesser offices that the pupils adopt on an everyday basis (refer to the page on Contribution), then leads on to joint, constructive solutions for dispute in the class council (refer to the page on Class Council). Enja Retainer criticises that no even the tiniest amount of responsibility is carried over to the pupils:
 

... Doing the cleaning yourself

"This starts with the dirt. It is cleaned up by the cleaning ladies, who non of the pupils know and who give rise to considerable costs for those who finance the school, which has to be saved during renovation work or when buying teaching material. Why do the pupils not clean the school themselves?" (p. 62).

The Cleaning Rota at the Helene-Lange School

The following text excerpt suggest that there is much more to the "cleaning rota" than just cleanliness:
 

Creating Atmosphere

"The classrooms, the common rooms, the hallways assigned to the years - every year has its own revere at our school, which the hundred pupils and their eight teachers are all responsible for, so that it stays clean and 'nice' and that an atmosphere reigns that promotes learning.
 

This includes the plants that the pupils nurture themselves - all five classes drive to the palm garden or the nurseries in the area and bring back small shoots that are then planted in the school and grow with the children during their time at school. They need to be cared for by the pupils and the teachers, even during the school holidays.

Posters and photos hung up by the pupils, pictures painted in art lessons and project reports from maths lessons, or test results from physics lessons all count as part of this.

As well as the cleaning: wiping down tables, cleaning window ledges, wiping the blackboard, vacuuming. At the end of each day when lessons come to an end over one hundred pupils start their weekly cleaning, which sometime takes a quarter of an hour, and sometimes half an hour.

The effect on the pupils is certainly convincing. If everyone knows that my neighbour or I have to cater for order ourselves today, everyone takes more notice of their surroundings. (...) Our pupils should adopt responsibility for their environment within the bounds of their capabilities, which also means work. Real work, where it becomes clear straight away what happens if it is not carried out" (pp. 62, 63).

[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, "Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung" (Federal Centre for Political Education), Publication Series Volume 446, Bonn 2004]