Vision: Smart Prevention

My vision of prevention in the future, in the digital world, is that all actors network and cooperate nationwide, which unfortunately is not yet happening. This would enable us to create great synergy effects, learn from each other and there are enough fields of activity for everyone. Nobody is going to take anything away from anybody, but I have the impression at the moment that this might be an obstacle to cooperation. Then another vision is that more money should be made available for prevention, because I do not believe that demanding higher penalties and stricter laws will achieve the desired effect, because by then it will already be too late. That is why more money for prevention would certainly be important. Ideally, training materials or prevention concepts should be made available as OER, i.e. as open education research, so that everyone can benefit from them nationwide. And also to ensure the creation of these materials and their provision through state funding. And finally, what is very important to me, cyberbullying, for example, is of course also transferred into the classroom atmosphere. Even if it takes place in the digital world, it is transmitted into the classroom, and that’s where I think school social workers are very important today, and will be very important in the future. I hope that school social work will become a permanent element in schools and that it will be recognised, respected and financially secured and not remain tied to ESF funding. And thus become a stable pillar in the school. I am also very concerned about a current development, what is shared in WhatsApp class groups from the fifth and sixth grade up to the eleventh and twelfth grade: Swastikas, Hitler salute pictures, “Willst Du Spaß brauchst Du Gas”, pictures of Anne Frank with “Lolokaust” written above them. These pictures, these stickers are shared, a hundred times. Pupils think it is fun, but it is a criminal offence to share such content. Parents do not know that children share such things today and therefore cannot react to them at all, and that is why we have to educate, sensitise and communicate the criminal offences.

• https://law4school.de
• https://praeventionsverein-medien.de