Of procrastinators and know-it-alls

Pilot investigation into the Fridays for Future demos

The discussion about the legitimacy, meaningfulness and legality of the FFF movement of German students is being conducted with great intensity both publicly and privately. rheingold spoke with about two dozen students - participants and refusers of the demonstrations - to make an initial cultural psychological assessment.

Hope for tangible impact from students

The students report the hope that their protest - combined with the mild, civil disobedience of refusing to attend classes on Fridays - will have an impact on our society and culture as a whole. From the weekly demos, ideally a momentum should go out into the world, which should make us as a whole society pause and rethink with regard to the threatening developments in climate, world nutrition and environmental pollution. The arguments put forward are partly somewhat sweeping ('...must immediately stop blowing CO2 into the air'), but partly also underpinned with learned knowledge and facts about the state of research and assessment of the global situation. Obviously, the students have done their homework in terms of argumentation!

Truancy - between politics and school reality

The discussion about the cancelled school time seems very 'German' overall. Whereas in other countries barricades have been set on fire during protests and demonstrations and people have suffered serious injuries during riots, in Germany, at least during the FFF protests, things are remarkably calm and peaceful. And even the participating students struggle with the 'truancy issue'. Should I risk my good grade(s)? Even mess up my Abi? Or isn't this very sacrifice a symbol of my seriousness and determination?

Thus, opinions are divided even among students: To some, the public as well as private discourse around truancy is just proof enough that it is necessary to move protests to school hours. To others, this is uncomfortable. It seems to them - analogous to the concerns of many adults or officials from politics and school offices - inappropriate and self-defeating. Although they mostly agree with the goals, demands and questions of the FFF, these students refuse to participate and, if it takes place, attend the Friday classes. In general, however, one notices the students participating in the Friday demonstrations: At least they are comfortable in their own skin. This results in a somewhat hesitant basic tenor, which has not been handed down in this way in earlier, more vehement youth protest movements (68ers; 'punk' movement of the 70s and 80s).

Paradoxical popularity of the leader

The figurehead Greta Thunberg is obviously much more in the public discussion and especially among adults than among the students themselves. The former attribute almost magical influence to the young woman from Sweden on her teenage followers. The students themselves follow the activities of the 16-year-old rather distantly and with a certain degree of skepticism. Is she really as selfless and committed to the cause as they say? Or is she rather pursuing egoistic goals, or is she even controlled by influential forces? Her appearances at the UN or with the Pope are therefore hardly met with a positive response from the young climate protesters, and it can be assumed that a possible Nobel Peace Prize for the young woman will rather be interpreted as proof of her "defection" to the "adult camp".

Questions and demands meet constraint arguments

The big 'Gretchen questions' of the students to the adult world are: What do you think about creation? How important are the environment, climate and nature for you? How can a healthy diet be guaranteed for more and more people in this world? Do you care at all about what comes after you? In what condition will we soon have to take over the world from you?

It is registered with frustration that the adults, above all the politicians who speak out, always put forward similar arguments against the protest students and their questions and demands: Continuing with as free a market economy as possible, unwavering belief in technical progress, the primacy of securing ancestral jobs (especially in the energy and automotive industries), the right to cheap flights to sunny vacation areas, and much more.

A gap is opening up here, the actual explosive power of which has not yet been fully explored. Analogous to the Brexit, where young Britons realized too late that their elders had voted them out of membership in the EU, young people all over Europe are becoming aware that many measures decided and implemented by adults today will determine their future to a considerable extent. And if these adults fail to fulfill their duties and obligations, it is not they who will have to pick up the tab, but those who follow them in life.

The core of the matter: community of fate with different maturities

Recognition or fear of the long-term impact of today's decisions and actions is at the very core of the FFF protests.

What young people are realizing today is that as a society, regardless of age, we are all in the same boat, but some have been for much longer than others. For this circumstance, the students demand a say and participation, in the decisions to be made today for the future. They want to develop as personalities and fear to find worse conditions and circumstances for this development in the world of the distant future.

This image of a community of destiny with different durations is a new facet in public discourse. And it certainly turns students into teachers - and, ideally, adults into students or listeners. The fixed pillars of role assignment - on the one hand, the students who are supposed to learn and not waste their class time on protest activities far from school; on the other hand, the (all-) knowing adults who, as experts, supposedly know everything better and don't need to listen to lectures from some pre-baccalaureate students - are thus beginning to falter.

Growing from conflict into opportunity

The great opportunity of the current FFF protest movement is to enable new questions, discussions, and solutions by softening roles.

If everyone did their homework, dropped principles that were too German, two camps would no longer be more or less hostile to each other. Instead, we could learn from each other. In this case, the missed school lessons would have been doubly worthwhile: We would have a new climate for discussion without senior teachers, know-it-alls and verbal blue letters, and we could work together on the important questions of creation in order to look together into a future full of opportunities.
And everyone would have learned something important - in the school of life, where we all sit on the bench for life. Freely according to the motto: Non Scholae, sed vitae discimus! We learn not for school, but for life!