Section 5
Examples of good
practice
During the preparation phase for DOmino
a questionnaire was sent out to youth organisations, youth
services and youth initiatives asking for descriptions of
innovative peer group education projects. We would like
to thank all those who answered this questionnaire, we regret
that we could only include a small selection of the project
descriptions.
In the following, you will find five project
descriptions showing different approaches of peer group
education as a means to combat intolerance and violence.
Those projects reflect the different approaches described
in Section 2 of Domino, i.e. projects in formal and informal
educational settings and peer led or 'grass roots' initiatives.
The addresses at the end of each project description will
help you seek further information.
5.1. The Peacemaker-project in Offenbach/Germany
An example for peer mediation in schools
A peacemaker is a person who helps others
to end quarrels. In many cultures, especially older ones
such people are highly regarded. They have various names,
but they all have the common role of finding solutions for
quarrels without violence or injury. Such human traditions
are important in our modern societies, where problems are
more complicated and conflicts are more confused than ever
before.
We have therefore taken this traditional
model for a project on conflict resolution in the schools
of Offenbach, Germany. The project is being run by the local
Youth and Education Office, part of our National Youth Service,
which organizes educational events to co-ordinate the activities
of the different institutions that work with children and
young people in our town.
The peacemaker-project forms part
of a larger pilot project, "violence-prevention",
and was developed on the basis of two theoretical approaches:
peer group education and mediation. This project was also
grant aided by the European Steering Group of the European
Youth Campaign.
The significance of peer group education
in formal and informal educational settings for projects
outside the school curriculum.
Peer group education in schools
has a long history. The idea of helping relationships between
students in formal school settings has been utilized by
teachers for centuries. Some authors trace peer teaching
back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, others just to the
Middle Ages. It was not until the end of the eighteenth
century and the beginning of the nineteenth century however
that peer teaching started to be used on a large scale in
Great Britain and America. In the other European countries
it was practiced but to a lesser degree.
With industrialization knowledge of reading
and writing became a necessity even for the poor, but there
were neither teachers nor schools to satisfy the requirements.
It was in this context that educational approaches such
as Andrew Bell's Madras-system and the Monitorial-system
of Joseph Lancaster were put into practice. Under these
systems teachers taught a few students (monitors) who then
became responsible for passing on what they had learnt to
the rest of the children. The method used group teaching
in a very formal and usually very authoritarian style but
in the situation it was very effective.
However as the educational system of the
western world developed in the nineteenth century, the monitorial
system became less appropriate. Only in the smaller one-class
schools were the methods of peer teaching still practiced.
For the Developing World, especially in Latin America it
continued to be a valuable way of teaching people to read
and write. For this reason peer group education was for
a long time identified as a cheap method of teaching basic
literary skills.
In educational discussion however, attention
was not paid to the benefits of peer group education. Benefits
which we now see as valuable in the modern school system:
children who do not respond well to adults will often learn
more from peer tutors; and the tutors themselves benefit
by learning the skill of teaching. The idea of students
learning through helping each other is a positive alternative
to the traditional system of learning through competing
with others.
In the last twenty years the benefits of
peer group education have been rediscovered in the educational
debate, especially in Great Britain and the USA. Today in
our developed education systems in Europe we have no lack
of schools and teachers to teach the fundamental skills,
but outside the field of "fact-learning" the formal
methods are rarely effective. We are seeing more and more
open discussion among young people about violence, intolerance,
abuse of drugs etc. It is this latter context where peer
group teaching can be an important addition to formal education
and can significantly contribute to the humanisation of
schooling.
The necessity of conflict resolving in
a constructive way for children and young people and the
process of mediation.
For many young people violence is
the most effective way of resolving problems. They get no
pleasure out of violence but to them there appears to be
no other solution. They learn from adults that it is acceptable
to eliminate competitors for ones own success. They see
films which show that you only achieve in this world through
violence and they don't want to be considered weak in their
peer group.
We would think that children and young
people can learn the non-violent attitudes and that they
are capable of resolving many of their problems themselves.
However it is evident that our abilities to handle conflicts
in a constructive way have not kept pace with the technical
and social development in our societies. It is therefore
necessary to break through this cycle of violence and counter
violence among young people. There are various models to
handle conflicts in a democratic and non-violent way.
One of these non-violent approaches is
"mediation", solving a conflict through a third
person. A third person can help the fighting parties to
find a solution which suits both sides and create what is
known as a win-win situation. The mediator leads the opponents
through a stage-by-stage-process to clarify the problems
and the motives and to find an acceptable solution.
The method of mediation was developed in
the USA and has been used there for 20 years in various
fields - in neighbourhood quarrels, in marriage conflicts
and also in the so-called offender-victim compensation in
youth criminal law. The most important condition - and also
the most important restriction - is the voluntary readiness
of all participants to take part in discussion and to look
for a solution. The mediator can help both parties to find
solutions, but he/she can't settle their problems for them.
The structure of the model project "violence-prevention"
in Offenbach
In June of 1993 Offenbach Town Council
asked the Youth Office to develop a programme against violence,
racism, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism. The background
was the increasing racism in Germany in the nineties and
the success in the local elections of the right-extremist
party, the "Republicans". In the last local elections
the party won 15% of the election votes in Offenbach, and
in some districts more than 30%. The council recognizes
that this is a potentially dangerous situation for Offenbach,
especially taking into account that is the town with the
highest rate of migrant people in Germany. Every third resident
in Offenbach does not possess a German passport.
The Youth Educational Office began to work
on a pilot project, which was accepted last year and is
now running. The main objectives of this project are:
a) The implementation of a system of constructive
problem resolving in the schools and youth institutions
of Offenbach.
This is done by using three working methods:
• to make "conflict profiles"
of classes or groups of young people in schools, kindergarten
and youth centres, in order to find out the existing problems
and conflicts.
• to develop programmes for children
and young people to handle conflicts in a constructive way.
The most important programme of this type is the "peacemaker-programme"
which involves conflict mediation and training for constructive
problem resolving.
• to train teachers and social
workers in the methods of conflict resolving. In this step
by step training the teachers learn the methods of counseling
children and young people with problems.
b) The building of an infrastructure for
tolerance and human rights education.
c) The setting up of a local network and an information
service for schools and youth centres
The Peacemaker-Project of mediating conflicts
between students
The basis of this project are the experiences
of peer group education. It involves the transfer of mediation
into the educational process and the trust in children to
solve their own problems.
What happens in a peer mediation process
is something like this:
Two students have a quarrel. There is not
necessarily violence, but there is unhappiness and tears.
They each decide (and it must be their decision) to ask
for the help of a mediator. All four pupils - two disputants,
and two mediators go through a stage-by-stage process which
involves the mediators listening to the disputants, identifying
their feelings and needs and then agreeing on a course of
action. The culmination comes when the disputants sign a
short contract and shake hands.
This scenario shows the mediation process
when it is introduced in a class or a school and helped
by the teachers. In the next three years we hope to create
the conditions for this type of process to be put into practice.
As a first phase we have developed a training
programme for the students and the teachers. In the process
of building this training programme we saw that not all
students are able to act as mediators, either because they
are not interested or because they have too little appreciation
in their group.
We have therefore developed the training
programme in two ways. We have trained a group of delegates
from various classes (10-12 years old) in a course made
up of two 2 days and three afternoons of 3 hours in mediating
conflicts. After the training we introduced them as mediators
in their classes.
In a second course we worked with a whole
class for 5 units of 3 hours and held an election for the
mediators. With the chosen students we have then gone through
a separate training programme of mediation. The students
who completed the training course received a certificate,
or a "peacemaker-card". In this process we have
seen that it is very important that the teachers help the
students in their class and that other teachers and parents
accept the mediators. We now run training courses for the
teachers who help the students and information meetings
for the parents. These activities were the basis for a constructive
atmosphere at the "Schiller-Schule" a large secondary
school where the project was first introduced. In the second
phase we established the developed training programme in
the other classes and began to implement the peacemaker-programme
in the following steps:
• We run a training course for teachers
from 6 classes. The teachers learn the basic exercises for
problem resolving in a constructive way and the basic rules
of mediation.
• These teachers then run
the first parts of the training for pupil up until the election
of the mediators, where approximately 6 students from each
class are chosen. This is known as the run-phase.
• Then we build two courses
with the elected students from these 6 classes and go with
them through the mediation training course. These courses
are lead by educated trainers without the teachers.
• When the trained mediators
are introduced in their classes we monitor their activities
and organize regular meetings for mediators.
• At the same time we organize
various meetings and activities to encourage discussion
between the schools about these projects. Such activities
have included a prize-competition, schoolyard-theatre and
other events.
The project was started in October 1994.
The first experiences we have made are very encouraging
and we are often astonished how quickly the children have
found new solutions to conflicts.
For further information contact
Jugendbildungswerk des Jugendamtes
der Stadt Offenbach
Landgrafenstrasse 5
63071 Offenbach, Germany
Tel.: 069/85000911, Fax: 069/85000946
Email: jugendbildungswerk@jugendamt-of.de
Website in German:
http://www.offenbach.de/Themen/Leben_in_Offenbach/
Kinder_Jugend_&_Familie/Jugend/ Jugendbildung/Jugendbildungswerk
If the group would like to think about how they could tackle
racism by developing an anti-racist policy for their own
school, club or organisation, then they may like to do the
activity, "Responding
to racism" in Compass.
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