Cheering news that a kindergarten in Schleswig-Holstein is giving\u00a0toddlers a say over things such as\u00a0what games to play and which food to have for lunch. \u00a0The Times quotes\u00a0Kristin Alheit, the Social Democratic Party social affairs minister of Schleswig-Holstein:<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung people can and should learn about democracy. \u00a0When kids take part and are taken seriously, that shapes them for life.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Indeed. \u00a0In our jargon, this is student voice at work, except that these children don't talk about their preferences. \u00a0Rather, glass beads are used for the votes. \u00a0When deciding on which flavour of cake to have\u00a0they are\u00a0asked to place their bead on a table next to an apple, piece of chocolate or a lemon. \u00a0They can also decide on wider school issues such as a new piece of playground equipment by delegating two class representatives who serve on the school kindergarten council.<\/p>\n
Heike Schl\u00fcter, the deputy head of the school said that the children can differentiate between, and deal with, various situations very well. \u00a0But she added that\u00a0there were clear limits on what the children could decide for themselves and they would not be able to vote against items in the school constitution. \u00a0Nor, presumably, in favour of changing the constitution.<\/p>\n
The children had taken up their voting rights enthusiastically, Ms Schl\u00fcter said. \u00a0The main stumbling block to a democratic kindergarten, she said, were\u00a0the adults who were used to retaining all the power and were reluctant to adapt to the majority view. \u00a0As\u00a0accepting\u00a0the tyranny of the majority is a key democratic principle, cake seems a good place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cheering news that a kindergarten in Schleswig-Holstein is giving\u00a0toddlers a say over things such as\u00a0what games to play and which food to have for lunch. \u00a0The Times quotes\u00a0Kristin Alheit, the Social Democratic Party social affairs minister of Schleswig-Holstein: \u201cYoung people...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}