Kimberger also wants to make parents more accountable, up to and including the imposition of administrative fines «when there really is no other way.»

Kimberger also wants to make the parents more responsible, up to and including the imposition of administrative fines «when there really is no other way.»

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Because of «the good, dear little ones»: «Bullying», ie physical and psychological violence between students, already exists in elementary school! This is shown by a new study on the subject of aggression among children of elementary school age. Terrifying: up to 40% of the students feel they are victims of violence!

As the study shows, there are great differences between individual classes – on the one hand, highly aggressive with many victims and perpetrators, on the other hand, very peaceful ones.

For the study, almost 400 children in 18 fourth grades at eight Upper Austrian elementary schools (smaller and larger schools in rural and urban areas) were interviewed. It was found that, depending on the class, between 4.5 and 40 percent of the children felt themselves to be victims of aggression, between zero and 21 percent were perpetrators – that is, they stated that they had hit or purposely bumped into another child, Threatening a child with beating or using force to take something away from them, insulting a child in front of classmates, excluding or refusing to play with them during break while working together. Between zero and 46 percent felt they were both perpetrators and victims.

Details of the study Moira Atria, Christiane Spiel and Manuela Lehner from the Department of Educational Psychology and Evaluation at the Institute for Psychology at the University of Vienna carried out the first inventory of aggressive behavior at Austrian elementary schools.

They pay particular attention to the distinction between open aggression (behavior that physically harms others or threatens to harm them) and psychological (relational) aggression (e.g. spreading rumors, being excluded from one’s own social group for reasons of revenge, or deliberate) Ignoring a child who is angry with you), on the other hand, placed on the democratic everyday culture in the classes.

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Timo Steyer is the face of around 1,113,500

Pupil of Austria

, when it comes to representing them in relation to politics. The 18-year-old has been with the

ÖVP

-nearby student union of elected federal school spokesman. News.at asked the young Viennese to talk to him about the ban on cell phones in schools, the integration problem, the concerns of today’s schoolchildren and education ministers

Heinz Fassmann

questioned.

News.at: Have you got used to it yet? How can the job be reconciled with the school? Timo Steyer: I have now settled in well and find my way around my new position. I am fortunate that my involvement in the school is supported and that I can therefore coordinate my presence at the school (Sacre Coeur Commercial Academy in Vienna Rennweg).

What are the tasks of a federal school representative? The most important task is definitely the representation work before the ministry and the school partners. As a federal school spokesman, you are the first point of contact when it comes to the pupils’ opinions. In addition, together with the federal student council, I also set content-related focal points that are important to us as the student council.

What’s on your agenda? What needs to be changed immediately in school? It is particularly important to me that with 360 degree feedback (note: a program for evaluating teachers in feedback form), a program is worked out quickly that can soon reach the classes. The process must now be started here. For this purpose, we as the federal student council have also presented a 7-point plan. I would also like to pay close attention to the issue of political education. Modernizing the curricula is also important to us. There are curricula that are 18 years old. For example, space should be created for digitization in the classroom and interdisciplinary teaching.

“The school should prepare us for later life. Unfortunately, this is not really the case at the moment. «

What is going wrong in our education system? School is supposed to prepare us for later life. Unfortunately, this is not really the case at the moment. Topics such as basic economic education and political education are given far too little attention. In addition, the possibilities of digitization must be integrated much more strongly into teaching in the 21st century.

What’s going well? The greatest advantage our school system offers is definitely differentiation. The numerous opportunities offered by the various areas of vocational and general education as well as teaching serve as a model for many other countries. This means that everyone can really choose the ideal training path based on their strengths and interests.

There are many problems in the area of ​​integration. What are your approaches? One can clearly see that teachers are not adequately supported here. It is therefore important that there are more support staff in the form of school social workers and school psychologists.

Are the German classes the right solution? The language barrier is the most important one that needs to be overcome for integration to work. That is why it is so essential that you first learn the most important basics of German before you start regular classes. Because there is no point in attending classes that cannot be followed.

© APA / Punz Timo Steyer: «Many of the pupils’ concerns mainly concern the future.»

What are the most common concerns among students today? Most of the worries concern the future. What do I do after school? Am I going to study or work? Am i well prepared for life? Here the school has a duty to focus better on the topic of career orientation.

Lessons start at 8 a.m. is ok? Or should that be later? This is an issue that must be decided directly in schools. There are already schools that start at 7:45 a.m. or 9:00 a.m.

Does it make sense to ban cell phones in schools? How is it at your school? The cell phone can be used at my school. Sometimes we also use it for short-term research in class. Here, too, each school location has to decide for itself whether a ban makes sense. In general, I am against it, as we cannot get by in a digital world without these tools in professional life and therefore have to learn how to use them at school. Therefore, critical media consumption and responsible use of cell phones, tablets and the like should be dealt with in class.

Going back to grades was a good idea? Of course, grades create a certain degree of comparability and show a clear picture. Nevertheless, it is extremely important to me that there is additional written feedback, especially in elementary school. Because especially in elementary school, pupils and parents must be informed about the areas where things are going very well and where there is still a need to catch up.

Your certificate to Minister of Education Heinz Faßmann? The Minister of Education takes the concerns of the student council seriously, which of course makes me very happy. You can also talk to him on an equal footing, and I have also found working with the ministry to be positive so far. I am particularly proud that some of the ideas and suggestions that the federal student council has been calling for for several years have been implemented by him.

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Crime scene school. If you hear the Freedom Party calling for education camps and security detectors in our schools, this paints a bleak picture. But she has

Violence in Austria’s schools

actually increased so much? What is the most common form of violence there? And which countermeasures would be useful? Students, teachers and experts answer that.

847 reports were filed in the 2017/18 school year for acts of violence at Austrian schools

registered. A number that seems neither surprising nor representative of the real extent. «I assume that there are many more cases that are not even reported, because the escalation level has to be very high for a report,» says Schüler and

Federal school spokesman Timo Steyer

to News.at. Christiane Spiel, professor for educational psychology at the University of Vienna, also agrees with the student. According to the education expert, these numbers are only the tip of the iceberg.

© APA / Punz Pupil and federal school spokesman Timo Steyer: «The majority of the student body has already come into contact with violence in school.»

Austria in the negative top field

In fact, Austria is in the negative top field in all WHO surveys (HBSC studies) on this topic in recent years, as far as the percentage of perpetrators and victims is concerned, Spiel told News.at. The majority of the student body has already come into contact with violence in school, a survey by the federal student council also showed, Steyer also confirms this trend.

«Violence was quite normal, like eating snacks elsewhere»

But has this violence actually increased in the domestic educational institutions? Or was the willingness to use violence always high? «The sensitivity and attention to the topic has changed,» which has increased the willingness to advertise, explains Spiel. The teacher Viktoria Hausmann (name changed by the editorial team, the teacher would like to remain anonymous) has not seen an actual increase in the 20 years of her teaching activity so far. Rather, the – quite high – willingness to use violence has always been there. «Back then, the children were already very violent and impossible to deal with the teachers,» says Hausmann of her first years of service in a – then still – secondary school in Vienna-Floridsdorf. Violence was also the order of the day in a new middle school, a so-called “focal point school” in Vienna-Favoriten, where she taught afterwards. “It was completely normal, like eating snacks elsewhere,” she reports. The rescue had to come every week, be it because of injuries in gym class, girls who tore their headscarves off or fights in front of school.

Interesting:

Why children bully each other

Different causes

These were tough years for Hausmann in which she put a lot of energy into it until it finally became too much for her: «I just couldn’t anymore.» Now she teaches in a new middle school in Lower Austria, in the vicinity of Vienna. And the picture is completely different here, says the teachers. There were hardly any fights, the children from migrant families, who were mostly responsible for violence in the city school (probably also because there were proportionally much more), are much better integrated in the country. So are Austrian children less prone to violence? No, Hausmann contradicts this assumption. The causes for outbreaks of violence lie elsewhere, however. If acts of violence among immigrant children are mostly based on the “injured honor”, ​​then the moods among Austrian boys tend to get high when it comes to sports, such as a lost football game, reports the pedagogue. For both of them, however, poor school performance is often a trigger. «You can then often only defend yourself through violence or put yourself in the spotlight,» says Hausmann.

«Number one is clearly verbal violence»

The teacher also sees no differences in the form of violence that is exercised in terms of origin: «Number one is clearly verbal violence,» she is sure. Education expert Spiel also agrees with the teacher: «Verbal violence, that is, insulting, threatening, verbally putting down» occurs most frequently, she knows from her own surveys.

New form of cyberbullying

However, a special form of violence has increased, namely cyberbullying, ie «interpersonal violence using new media» such as sending mean, threatening SMS messages, bullying on social media or posting embarrassing photos on the Internet, explains Spiel. Hausmann can also report on this – in combination with physical violence – and tells of the case of a 13-year-old boy who was beaten up by a group of classmates on a school trip to Schönbrunn. He was also filmed – and the video was then distributed on the Internet.

Interesting:

Cyberbullying – «The smartphone is a weapon»

Consequences not expedient

Cruel cases like this are, of course, the exception, but teachers often only hear about cases of bullying less severe than this when it is too late, says Hausmann. Pupils rarely or never go to teachers to report an incident or to seek help themselves, says Hausmann. This is why people usually only react when something has happened – often too late. «The thugs were suspended for ten days, that was it,» says the teacher. However, this punishment was of no use: “They still act like they did back then.” Consequences – no matter what kind – are generally not expedient for such students, explains the teacher.