Teaching Students about Violence Prevention

When an anonymous call came in 2011 with a serious allegation against a long-time colleague, I was alarmed as part of the school leadership of a Waldorf school. What exactly was to be done? One thing I learned in this situation was that we were able to guide our school through this crisis in a good way because I was very well connected in the community, had contacts who advised us and organised many appointments with us.

Every occasion will be different when violence is involved, but action must be taken in every case and almost always immediately. It's a bit like the fire brigade: when there's a fire, it’s too late to start training the staff and refuelling the vehicle first. This must be done beforehand. And that is the reason why every institution that deals with people needs a safeguarding concept that has been developed in the institution and appoints people who know and can handle the procedures in this safeguarding concept in a calm and goal-oriented way.

It is important that future teachers should be trained on the topic of violence: what forms of violence do we find in daily life? How do we address this issue? In the broader context, students should learn what a safeguarding concept is, why a school needs a safeguarding concept, how it is developed and kept up to date. A few weeks ago, a student who is writing her Master's thesis on the topic of safeguarding concepts in Waldorf schools told me that the school where she is currently doing her internship does not have a safeguarding concept and that she has now been asked to help develop one. So this is the situation. And the student who received this assignment is not the first of my students to be affected by it in their internship or first job.

The background to this is that we are explicitly committed to the topic of violence prevention and safeguarding concepts in the teaching at our university. We have already introduced two courses: there is a course on violence prevention in the Bachelor's degree programme in special needs education, and a course on the development of safeguarding concepts in the Master's degree programme in counselling and leadership in the field of special needs education and inclusion. For the Bachelor's and Master's degree programmes in Waldorf education, the compulsory integration into the course of study is pending. Until now, these courses were part of an elective programme.

Helpful in this respect was a study day for violence prevention and safeguarding concepts which was a learning and discussion event for the students of all study programmes at the Mannheim location. On the day there was also a discussion on the general anti-discrimination guideline of Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences with an integrated concept for a complaints office for discrimination and sexual harassment, which we had prepared in the equal opportunities commission of our university. In future, this will also include a differentiated safeguarding concept and form the basis for the planned establishment of the university’s complaints office for discrimination and sexual harassment.

According to a statistical projection, on average two children in each class may be affected by sexual violence (Tiefental, 2020). This does not include children and especially adolescents who experience violence in complex other situations. Our task as teachers is not only to protect the children and young people, but also to teach them how to deal with such situations and learn to say stop. However, our educational task also includes professionally supporting children and young people in their development. For this, we have to ensure safeguarding concepts and offer children and young people safe spaces and contact persons.

Perhaps not every (small) teacher training institution in Germany will currently be able to call on experts for these topics. In such a case there is the possibility of resorting to online courses, for example the online training course Was ist los mit Jaron? (What's wrong with Jaron?) – a digital foundation course to protect pupils from sexual abuse (was-ist-los-mit-jaron.de). The Ulm University Hospital Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy also offers detailed online courses on the topic (elearning-kinderschutz.de).

Every teacher training institution is entitled to expect participants to show that they have attended one of these courses. Then at least the knowledge is there which the new colleagues can take with them to the schools. Ultimately it is simply not enough to have a safeguarding concept. Colleagues have to be trained every year, just like in first aid: we need this knowledge of how to act, immediately and automatically retrievable, as a matter of course. Because we will not prevent incidents of violence, but we can train our professional and calm action.

I have a dream: every person who deals with little and big people in a (special needs) educational setting will have knowledge about personal boundaries, violence prevention and safeguarding concepts from the coming school year onwards. And my commitment here is: every person who leaves our university should have this knowledge ...

Literature: Tiefental, Anja (2020). Ein bis zwei Kinder pro Klasse sind Missbrauchsopfer. Deutsches Schulportal. Robert Bosch Foundation. (27 March 2023)