«Parents, believe in your children»
Ernst Fritz-Schubert likes to talk, quickly and a lot. And when he does, his eyes light up. The retired headmaster welcomes us to his picturesque, over 100-year-old house on Philosophenweg in Heidelberg. Lovers used to meet here for a rendezvous. The cosy atmosphere and lovely ambience contrast with the trenchant remarks of the elderly gentleman with the unusual double name. «School has to be more than just a qualification centre,» says Fritz-Schubert as he makes coffee. "I see school in this form as a complete waste of opportunities. Children lose the feeling of being effective themselves, of really being needed.
Mr Fritz-Schubert, did you like going to school?
I don't have fond memories of my own school days. My curiosity and desire, which had driven me as a five-year-old with a sugar cone, quickly turned into helplessness, doubt and fear. I started school younger than the others and didn't perform as well. «Try harder! » - I heard this phrase again and again. But no praise for how well I was doing.
You say that you would have preferred to hang around rather than bury your head in books.
Because I was rather slight, my mother and my teachers only considered an apprenticeship in an office. So I ended up working in a tax office and was bored to death. To compensate, I bought expensive cars to boost my self-esteem. The turning point came during a general education course during my military service. A German teacher encouraged me to do my A-levels and study economics. That changed everything.
Is that why you invented happiness as a school subject?
I was simply fed up with the fact that school ranks just behind going to the dentist in terms of popularity among schoolchildren. Nine to thirteen-year-olds said they were particularly happy during the holidays, at Christmas and with their parents in general. They are least happy at the dentist. And at school. So I teamed up with a few colleagues. We developed a concept for a subject that has been on the curriculum at vocational schools and business schools in Germany since 2007, in parts of Austria and temporarily also at the Ingenbohl boarding school in Switzerland.
What do you want to convey to children?
That in addition to superficial material happiness, there is also lifelong happiness, which is characterised by one's own values.
Is school making our children unhappy?
School is an artificial event. Teachers usually dictate everything and pupils get more ready-made answers than questions to take home. As a result, they lose the feeling of being effective themselves, of really being needed. However, alongside self-esteem, this is a key factor for personal development and for happiness and well-being.
But children are usually born happy.
That's true, and most parents do their best to ensure that they become happy adults. But it doesn't always work. «Meaning well» is far from «doing well». All children have unsuspected resources, and discovering these together with them is one of the most important tasks of parents and educators.
«Poor grades should not diminish parental love.»
All parents want their children to become strong.
Yes, this does not contradict the socially desirable teaching of values such as freedom, equality and solidarity, but merely describes a different path to the same goal.
What do you mean?
Pleasure and achievement are by no means opposites. Mastering life doesn't just mean acquiring the necessary skills to survive, it also involves enjoying life, the ability to savour it and to laugh at yourself when the desired success doesn't materialise. It certainly doesn't help our children if we raise them with a raised index finger or remove all obstacles from their path.
Defeats can also be successes.
Exactly. But only if the necessary energy is mustered for a new attempt. This requires positive emotions above all. Children who come home after a bad grade or an argument cannot go straight back to business as usual, but want to be comforted and recharge their batteries in the security of their family.
Are children afraid that bad grades will displease their parents?
All children want to please their parents. This makes it all the more important to teach children that poor grades do not diminish parental love and appreciation.
Do you want children to develop positively at school?
Children and young people need holistic experiences in order to stay physically and mentally healthy and to really feel at ease in the community. However, they can hardly have these experiences today. How often do they still climb trees, throw themselves into a haystack or pick a bunch of field flowers to bring home to their mum? That's why in 2007 we started to realise our key school objective of «physical and mental health for pupils and teachers» by introducing the new subject «Happiness».
Was there a special moment for this idea?
When a student told me that I was the first person to trust him. This confidence and trust is, so to speak, the continuation of basic trust and is responsible for how valuable we feel as human beings.
«School is an artificial event.»
What should the subject of happiness teach children?
We want to strengthen the pupils by showing them the prerequisites for a successful life. The subject is not designed to maximise performance, but rather to help them develop their personalities, for example by teaching them early on how to deal with challenges, avoid stress or cope with periods of extreme pressure.
Does personality development not take place at home?
Parents define the mainstay, so to speak, and create the conditions. The school develops the supporting leg and opens up new opportunities. If the supporting leg is not firmly developed - for example through isolation, the media, our multi-option society - children quickly become outwardly independent, but their inner psychological needs are not recognised or not satisfied. They are then insecure and seek reassurance elsewhere - through lots of friends or material things that represent self-worth to the outside world.
How do children become happy?
If you help them to discover their own potential and believe in themselves.
What can parents do to help?
That is the crucial question. What do we want for our children? That they are disciplined and function well? Or that they lead a happy life? There have never been so many so-called problem children. They are hyperactive, spoilt, aggressive, want to be top models or superstars and hide away in Hotel Mama. But are we really surrounded by little bullies or nest-builders? No! Fearing that our children will fail in a meritocratic society, we focus too much on their problems. But if children are only shown their weaknesses, they become unhappy and discouraged.
You talk about an outdated school system. Can you briefly explain this?
We have a pedagogy that is 200 years old and is based on a different social system: an upper class, in which people reflect; a middle class, from which craftsmen emerge; and a lower class, from which servants and maidservants should emerge. We have an emancipative society in which social background should be neither an advantage nor an obstacle. School is therefore all too often used to adapt people to economic and social conditions that no longer exist. School teaches something other than what is needed now.
What do you suggest?
To finally free ourselves from this antiquated construct. Every child has potential, even if they come from a class that is not destined for an academic life. We should ask ourselves: do I want to waste all this potential?
What do you think about the current error culture at school?
I have nothing against troubleshooting. But I wonder whether it should be the main focus. Understanding a culture of error correctly requires learning from mistakes. For me, a real error culture means that the teacher becomes a guide and offers alternative options. In other words, showing the children alternative solutions instead of commenting negatively on them. Today's exaggerated «fault-finding» only generates negative emotions. Everyone withdraws when they hear that they have said something wrong. In terms of evolutionary history, fear, anger, disgust etc. are supposed to protect us from something. But if I receive encouragement and positive emotions, this leads to an opening up. That's what I call developing potential.
Do you remember an example from your school days?
The teacher asked me in first grade: How do clouds form? I said: by the locomotive. He simply replied: «That's rubbish.» But my answer made sense to me because we lived on a railway line and I saw locomotives emitting clouds of steam every day. But my teacher at the time completely ignored this realisation. The solution would have been to say: Yes, that's interesting, how does a locomotive work?
«Children's inner needs are often not recognised.»
Was your potential discovered at school?
No. After my father told me that grammar school was out of the question for me, I initially stayed at primary school and then went to a commercial school because I was told that I would find my home in business. My parents and the school told me that this was «my» path. I wasn't meant to do anything else in this school system, which was organised into classes. Things are certainly different today, with many parents believing that their children absolutely have to go to university.
Is that wrong?
Not in principle, but excessive expectations can make children unhappy. Such children feel left behind and simply go to school in order to fulfil their parents' expectations and not lose their relationship with them. It leads to great dependency if self-worth is only linked to grades and performance. It doesn't surprise me that many young people live their free time to the full, partying and drinking until they crash. No one can withstand this pressure to fulfil expectations in the long term.
So what should parents do?
Listen to their intuition and follow it. Realise that children can do a lot. That they are not only judged by their school performance. Don't say: good grades, good child. This chain of causality simply cannot be successful.
What makes a child successful?
That you believe in it, realise that it is doing the best it can. Parents should detach themselves from the school system instead of reinforcing it. The child shouldn't think: If I get a 6, I'm great, if I get a 4, I'm just barely, but okay, and if I get a 3, I'm worth nothing. This lack of value means restriction, negative feelings. You quickly fall into such a grid. I've observed this with my daughter.
In what way?
Her primary school teacher recommended her for grammar school and told her: «You'll manage somehow, you're good at languages, but not so much at maths.» She really believed that. But things changed in tenth grade. She occasionally studied with a nephew of mine who was studying physics. She thought that if I understood what he was learning, I would be OK. And she understood more and more. She achieved the highest grade in maths at A-level, then started studying science and graduated with a doctorate.
And your second daughter?
In first grade, she had difficulties switching from free learning to structured learning. My wife at the time literally pushed her through school so that she didn't remain seated, it was horrible. This drill was of little use. The turning point only came when my daughter went on an exchange year in the USA. There she took all sorts of courses that made very few demands on her, such as babysitting and German courses and all that sort of thing. She came back and wanted to stop school first and do something practical. We persuaded her to hold out for another two years until her A-levels. She agreed, but on the condition that she would never again be subjected to this homework and study drill with her mum. And what happened? She graduated from high school and became a special needs teacher.
«A child's self-worth should not only be linked to grades and performance.»
What did you realise?
Both daughters followed a path that was more or less only hindered by the school and to some extent by their parents. My conclusion: you should have confidence in your children and not attach so much importance to what you are told at school.
Many parents have an ambivalent relationship with school.
Exactly. How absurd is that: they don't think much of school, but they rate the results very highly. Then the child has to say to themselves: How stupid is that?
Did your pupils think the same?
Yes, of course. I remember one boy. He was a migrant child, couldn't speak the language very well, and he was tall and corpulent, a kind of dull bear. Neither gave the impression of being particularly bright. So he said to himself, I'll get my self-esteem from my strength, punch in and get respect that way. It was only through the change of perspective that we encouraged in the school subject of happiness that he came to a different attitude. Not being able to speak the language is a hindrance, but you can change that. It was therefore initially a question of helping him to find his strengths of character, perseverance, creativity and perhaps also the ability to moderate himself. When he finally knew what he could do and what he wanted, the language problem was solved very quickly.
How did the happiness lessons achieve this?
We create key experiences that become good experiences. Our scientific research has clearly shown that, compared to other fourteen to seventeen-year-olds, students in happiness lessons see more meaning in life, have more confidence in themselves, value family and school more and know much better what they want or don't want.
You are an advocate of humanitarian education.
Yes, we need to enable students to deal with everything that happens in their world. Intelligence is not only shown in good grades. To master life
To master life, you need the creativity to develop new ideas, the analytical ability to assess these ideas correctly, the social skills to put these ideas into practice and, ultimately, the ability to recognise whether they are really beneficial to the community. We must finally realise that life is much more than an academic event.
Knowledge without insight is useless?
You might be able to become a millionaire on television with it. But otherwise it's of little use. Pupils also need to learn to distinguish between the important and the urgent. Not everything that seems urgent is important. The important WhatsApp, the important appointment, the date: children rush through life. Unfortunately, this also means that the really important things fall by the wayside.
So what is happiness?
Happiness is an ideal state that strives for repetition or continuity. Sometimes it falls from the sky without us doing anything. It ranges from a small moment of elation to a meaningful, successful life. The meaningful life must be felt by each individual. I find that you feel it particularly well when you make a difference, when you are mindful of the things you encounter, of people and of nature. Sensing is also about not taking yourself so seriously and forgetting about yourself. And that you can enjoy and relax. Last but not least, for me it also involves realising that you can also grow through suffering and defeat.
Are you happy?
When I look back, there are many happy moments and reasons to be satisfied and grateful. But for me, happiness is also the joyful anticipation of the future, of what is yet to come and what challenges me.
