Schoolyard Violence

First there was the case of the teacher who was attacked by a pupil for intervening in a playground disagreement. Then came a shock high school shooting followed by a spate of copycat threats, and last week, a near-fatal stabbing at a school in Hamburg. Besides, there are hundreds and thousands more horrific, if less prolific, cases of schoolyard aggression happening up and down the country on a weekly basis. So what's got into Germany's schools?

Roman Rüdiger, managing director of the board of the violence prevention group, Buddy, says it's hard to tell if the amount of overall violence at schools across the country is really on the rise. What has changed is the "quality" of the violence, said Rüdiger.

"The threshold is much lower than it used to be, and violence has become more brutal, more organized. The old-fashioned playground scuffle has now been replaced with attacks which lead to grievous bodily harm," he said. What was once a rite of passage is now seen as the dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable social behavior.

No manners, no values

Lars-Oliver Lück who heads the Berlin & Brandenburg Anti-Violence Centre and who has extensive experience of trying to help youngsters back onto the straight and narrow, says the causes of today's violence are manifold, but cites a combination of insufficient positive life experience and a lack of traditional values as two fundamental factors.

"You have all these children from underprivileged backgrounds who are emotionally neglected and frustrated. When it comes down to it, they would rather be victimizers than victims, they would rather do the hitting than be hit," Lück said.

"There used to be different values, but our society is too much of a gray zone nowadays. Children are no longer taught to be punctual or polite and many boys don't have the positive male role model which they need for the development of their own self-perception."

Lück says the upshot is that young boys in particular, although he stresses that "girls are catching up," make role models of gangster rappers or imaginary figures from the media, who give the impression that they achieve something through aggression. "For kids who want social power and control, serious violent behavior is the way to achieve it," said Lück. "They know no boundaries."

Happy slapping

The advent of "happy slapping" is a case in point. The violent import, in which random people are filmed on mobile phones as they are made the victims of unprovoked violent attacks, started in the UK in 2004 and has since made it into Germany's playgrounds. Although, as Roman Rüdiger points out, new generation mobile phone have not actually increased the incidence of violence, they are an added enticement for the violent-minded in that they offer them the chance to show off what they have done.

"For people who think violence is cool, it's like recording their greatest moments," says Russell Buckley who runs the Mobhappy Web site dedicated to mobile technology. "But the technology is not to blame. The violence was there before it came along, and this is just a different manifestation."

Nonetheless, it is another issue for schools to have to deal with. Many have already started implementing strict rules about phones on school premises, and some have launched campaigns for "clean cell phones." But as Lück says, it is unrealistic to expect teachers and directors to resolve the problems which started outside the school gates.

A different perception

Rüdiger, who has been active in trying to fight the culture of violence with one of peaceful coexistence in schools for several years, says what German school children really need is to learn how to learn.

"Things are changing rapidly, the knowledge we need today is different to the knowledge we will need in 10 years time. With that in mind, we need to teach them to learn in order to give them some perspective."

Lück takes it one step further in suggesting that German society needs a complete rethink.

"If parents were willing to look at this situation and consider what they could do to change it rather than sinking into a collective depression, if they could be optimistic and strong in the face of the problem, then we'd be getting somewhere."