Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: is a teacher’s summer break a privilege, or is calling it that itself part of the problem — and is talent a privilege too? In Room #910 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme “Power and Privilege,” guest Ria brings 40 years of teaching experience into a raw, personal conversation about power abused and power withheld: a teacher who failed a student out of spite, another who engineered a symbolic standing ovation to right an old wrong, and Yasemin’s own story of seven failing grades, a staffroom revolt in her favor, and a scar that outlasted the school system it was made in. Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning. Yes, today we’re kicking off with the room theme of power and privilege, and I’m very, very curious. Today we want to look at the question, how do privileges influence our power relations? I’m totally curious about that. Is it even the case that certain privileges influence power relations? So is there a connection to be seen there? Maybe you have specific examples you can use to show that. Or maybe you’ll say, to what extent should that even be connected at all, I don’t see a connection there, and maybe have various aspects with which we can back that up. In that sense I’m really curious what comes up today, what comes together, and I’m curious which direction the room develops together through the various impulses. And you’re all very warmly invited every morning to join, step into the exchange, and simply look together which direction we move in today through the dialogue, so to speak. Yes, and today too, as always, we have all the recordings running in the background the entire time. That means whoever joins and steps into the interaction on stage automatically agrees that it’s recorded and also published. And we have three small room rules for the interaction. First, a profile photo in which you’re recognizable, last name, and at least one sentence in the bio. And whoever doesn’t want that for whatever reason can of course, as always, use the chat and bring in questions, thoughts etc. there, so that we can take that into account over the course of the room too, as far as it fits in. With that I’d like to mute myself and just see who wants to open the reflection or the reflection room with me this morning.
A very good morning, dear Rea.
Good morning, Yasemin. Good morning, everyone else. I have the privilege of being on vacation now. I get to and can speak in this room again. That’s very, very cool.
Wonderful. Yes, the vacations start at different times in the different federal states. And with us in Hesse it’ll still take a little while, the last day of school isn’t until the end of next week. So, well, how nice. Great, I’m happy for you. What do you say about the topic of power and privilege? What’s the connection between power and privilege from your point of view?
I already had the pleasure briefly yesterday and found it highly interesting, unfortunately I couldn’t stay that long, when Jürgen talked about power. And I don’t know how far and how intensively you went into it, but since yesterday, not just since yesterday, for some time now, especially through the deep discussion about terminology, I’ve noticed that the word power, even though it was always fairly clear-cut to me, is actually quite multi-layered. So I’m not entirely sure now whether I’m approaching the topic too one-sidedly again, but that doesn’t matter for now. I googled privilege, and the first thing that comes up is that it’s from an Old High German word stem having to do with a special right or an exception to the law. And that immediately brought something to mind for me: a really good teacher doesn’t have vacations. They do go on vacation, but organized around follow-up work, and they keep thinking about their work, about what they’ve accomplished, about what they want to accomplish. And in that context it’s of course a topic that has to do with school. We teachers, and some might argue against this, have the privilege, or have the exception to the law, that we accompany people, support them, and in many situations do things that teachers are entitled to do, which legally have a certain exception. Students have an exception that restricts their general rights — Jürgen could probably formulate that much better — are restricted. We teachers also have restricted basic rights as civil servants, but I don’t want to look at it from that perspective right now. We teachers have the duty of care and supervision, and that was transferred to us by the parents. The parents hand over to us their duty and task of raising their charges and preparing their children for life, and at the same time making them fit for life in this community. And that’s a great privilege, I feel. And at the same time it organizes a very great power. And I always say, and I don’t exempt myself from this at all, the problem, maybe in Germany, maybe everywhere, I don’t know, but I think it has a lot to do with the German education situation, is that above all people become teachers who themselves carry a deficit within them and want to make up for that again through certain power structures in their heads. There are situations — my students still stand up, let’s say, at the beginning, when I come in, I want to greet you and I want to do that on equal footing, and you at the same time show me that you’re prepared for class. So if you’ve unpacked and you’re prepared and want to start talking with me, then we all stand up and briefly greet each other and then you may sit down. And I do that with the older ones too sometimes, especially with the older ones, because they know exactly that, so if someone deliberately sits down already, I say, no, no, no, no, no, I decide who sits down. What do you think, why did I become a teacher? And then we all laugh and then I immediately say, sit down, and then a spell is broken. Of course that’s a bit of a parody of this power privilege, but since the students know how I otherwise operate, they use it to lighten things up and also to internally cut this power rope a bit. And that’s a fascinating matter for me, because over the many years I’ve now been a teacher, 40 years, I’ve found that exactly this bringing out of power, or this leaving aside of this power business, and this privilege, has led me to a style and manner of teaching that even now, at 62, incredibly helps me go into my classroom every day with little pressure and a lot of joy. And these three premises, these three basic rules, for me, are first this reverse mentoring: I learn from you, you learn from me. With that I take the power of imparting knowledge, which the teacher actually has, away from myself, and I say, you can teach me an incredible amount too, and I’m very happy and glad about that, because otherwise I could never access this knowledge, because it comes from another time, from a different generation. The second, we learn together from mistakes and from fear. The bigger the mistake, the bigger the opportunity to learn from it. The bigger the fear, the more intensely we know that behind the fear there’s something very big, very beautiful, and very interesting. So come on, just go through it. And emotions are necessary, emotions are allowed, and you can show them, and if you’re angry, you can show me that too, then we’ll manage that together too, and if you’re sad, it’s exactly the same, and if I’m sad, you can see my tears. And the third is appreciation for oneself and others, and especially in this term appreciation, I believe, this power-and-privilege situation of the teacher dissolves in such a way that you can work in a manner that’s fun for both sides. That was my basic idea to start with. Thank you.
Yes, fantastic. Thank you so, so much. There were already so many aspects in there, and a very, very nice example you opened up from your professional life in that context. And the one thing I immediately thought of when you said, we teachers don’t really have vacations in that sense — the term immediately came to mind, with students too, people always talk about vacation, semester break, and they always used to say so nicely, it’s not a semester break, but a lecture-free period, in which, so to speak, time is set aside for other things. That’s just a term that occurred to me right away. I find what you just described totally exciting, and maybe we can also look a bit further at that, this was essentially about the teaching profession, where certain privileges are given per profession, so to speak, legally regulated too. And then there’s also this background of being a civil servant, so to speak, which also grants various privileges in quotation marks in various contexts maybe too. And you put it so nicely, also these two terms you used in that context, this bringing-out or leaving-aside. Especially these two terms I found very nice in this contrast, as to what that then ultimately leads to, or doesn’t, or also what it makes possible. So I’m really curious what the others have to say about it too. You’re all very, very warmly invited to just come join and step in. I think it’s a wonderful example we can work our way along. But we can also pick up further examples or impulses you’ve had on this room theme of power and privilege, and maybe look into various areas here too. So in that sense I’d be really happy if we opened up further perspectives too. And Jürgen has already joined too.
A very good morning, dear Jürgen, what do you say about the topic?
A very good morning, dear Yasemin and dear Ria. I won’t say anything about the topic itself for now, but rather thank Ria for her contribution. I’m glad to find you here on the platform again, and I enjoyed listening to you. I found this comparison of greeting each other on equal footing especially absolutely fitting. What triggered me now was the continuation regarding examples from the professional context, which Ria of course addressed. And a mental light bulb went on for me there, and I’d like to briefly share an example with you. I’d put it in brackets as “leading with privileges.” In my early days as a specialist consultant, it was considered a privilege that certain subject-matter specialists sat on the same floor as the executive board. And it was a very special distinction when you were positioned quite close to the office of the chairman of the board. That was definitely also seen as a privilege throughout the entire company. Meaning, privilege regarding the question, first of all, connotation, good and bad. Both sides, in my view, are present, and then privileges under the aspect of the acceptance by the non-privileged, I think, is also a very interesting topic. What was connected with this — and now comes the connection via leading with privileges — what was connected with this proximity was the obvious possibility, through the deployment of interpersonal strategies, to get very close, not to the board itself, but to the front office, to the assistants in the front office. And connected with that was preferential access to and supply of information. And that was the expression of the privilege, if you will, the resulting size of this privilege. And years later it became clear to me, and I also then communicated this topic in a certain context, that it was quite consciously deployed as a leadership instrument, to quite consciously steer information to certain people via a supposed privilege, who would then act accordingly ahead of a decision. That was the trigger you set off in me now, and I wanted to share that with you. Thank you so much for listening, everyone.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. And through both examples, two concrete examples from my own life came to mind too. On one hand the example of a teacher from my past who kept saying, I’m a civil servant, and whoever wants to pick a fight with me can go ahead, and we’ll just see who outlasts whom. And the second example that directly came to mind in this corporate context, through the example you brought in, Jürgen, is that actually, in one of the companies — and this is true of many others too, but in this one I noticed it especially, maybe because the hierarchical structures were more pronounced — where I personally worked many years ago, that proximity to the board wasn’t just represented on the level of “who sits in this front office” or something, but this proximity was also expressed, for example, through the floor distribution. So the board sat on the top floor, so to speak, in the building, and on the same floor sat those who were particularly close to the board, and then on the floor below that and so on. That means, depending on which floor you were on, a kind of status distribution was made, so to speak. So similar to what you just described with the front office. And I wanted to bring that in too, just value-free, to see whether anyone else wants to connect to it somewhere. And yes, I’m curious, are there any connecting points you’d like to make?
Yes, Jürgen, gladly.
Yes, I probably, or certainly, didn’t express myself correctly, dear Yasemin. It’s absolutely identical to your example. It was the position on the floor, not the front office. The front office was basically the information transmitter, deliberately placed there, because getting an appointment with the chairman of the board was of course tied to the respective subject-matter context, but getting the information was tied to this front office. And the privilege of getting that, of being able to use this information channel, that was the expression of, well, we called it the golden floor, of sitting on this golden floor. So it was an exact parallel.
Yes wonderful, thank you so much. And the better, in quotation marks — you also talked about the strategies — the better the relationship, in quotation marks, with the front office assistants was, usually those were women, the easier it was, for example, to get appointments, or maybe between appointments to get the opportunity to speak with the board or similar. That means, through various strategies, also to exert influence, in quotation marks, on how certain things are handled. Very, very exciting. Great, great examples. Ria, would you maybe like to connect too?
I just had a chilling effect when you told this example about the teacher. Many years ago there was a very bitter incident at my school involving a teacher who acted like that. I knew a student, she was in her 13th year, going up to her final exams in 12th grade. She was totally fascinating. She was a student with backbone. She was a student who committed herself incredibly to the community, who also helped organize the graduation ball. And she also acted in the theater. I had a drama class. We put on really great plays together. And in that 13th year she got a new German teacher, and I don’t know what happened there. She probably said her opinion, and this woman didn’t like that. The woman was relatively young. I tried at some point to talk to her, when I noticed something wasn’t quite right there. I also spoke with the student and told her she should please hold back so she doesn’t endanger her situation now. In the end, the student had previously been at a C or C-minus level, and the teacher ultimately failed her both in the exam and in the resit, so that she didn’t pass her final exams. She was on the graduation ball committee, my son was too, and it was clear she wouldn’t be coming to the ball. She was distraught, she was done with the world in that moment. And then there was a situation — I’ve always been a bit good at organizing, at emotional elements. And then that evening, right at the start of the event, when the event began, we darkened the hall and, for each child, for each graduate, projected a short image onto the wall, and along with it this incredible image, this incredibly beautiful music. The Final Countdown from 1986, my son is from that class year, or that birth year, like all the other students at that time too, we played this music and had all the students of that year pop up, and in the first third of this music and this presentation of the graduates came this student. I still get goosebumps today. And in that moment the people in the hall stood up and applauded. And the teacher left and never came back to the school. Sometimes we too have the longer reach, even though in that moment we wanted to show the teacher what she could do. And in the end we leave children with school scars that never heal. But we get them back at some point. Because at some point, when the students are grown up, they remember these school scars. And then they can defend themselves. And we teachers should never forget that. In the end our reach isn’t long enough. And we also don’t have the privilege to punish people like that. I’m sorry.
Yes, thank you so, so much. And I think that every one of us has probably had certain experiences too, whether that’s in a school context or in other contexts, where it’s exactly about these power positions, where power is also played out in one direction or another. I personally can also remember very, very strongly having had various experiences too, especially in the context with the teacher I just talked about. There I got to have my own experiences in another context too. A close friend who accompanied me for many years, including during school, also had experiences. With my friend it was like this: she actually didn’t achieve as good results in math as required. She was pretty much on the edge there. Her other grades were all great or middling, that was fine. She had no difficulties, only in math — I mean, it was math or physics, I can’t remember exactly anymore — in one of the two she had difficulties. She was at a level where, after this level, she had the option of dropping the subject. So you had the option, after this level she was at, to actually drop this subject. She was present, also wrote all the assignments and everything possible. But the teacher refused to give her a single point, a single point in her upper-level report card, purely because she was present. And that led to zero points on the report card. That means the topic resolves itself. And because this student had already had to repeat a year at some point earlier in the upper level, I believe, this led to the fact that, because she didn’t get this one point, she had to leave the school and ended up with a diploma that wasn’t at the same level. And there were many, many conversations about that, also due to this personal closeness. That of course did something to the person, and of course also had a really, really massive influence on this person’s life. And of course you can see that differently, in the evaluation too. One person might say, well, okay, but just giving one point so the person can drop the subject — maybe some might see the teacher as being in the right, to say, if the requirements aren’t met. So you can evaluate that differently. So that’s interesting too. How is that then handled, or how is it viewed? Is an eye maybe turned, in quotation marks? As I said, because it wasn’t reason enough not to give at least one point, since attendance alone was fulfilled, and participation, and that was present throughout the entire school year. It wasn’t like she was indifferent or refused something there. And the second example that comes to my own mind is in connection with the teacher I mentioned briefly earlier, with this “I have the power and whoever picks a fight with me can go ahead and see who has the longer lever.” There it was actually the case, for whatever reason — I had a conflict in the meantime with another friend during that time, and the teacher for some reason had a good relationship with this other student and decided to take her side, even though it had absolutely nothing, the whole matter had absolutely nothing to do with the teacher. Completely unprofessional, and he then decided, apparently, to make my life difficult. At a time when I personally had been out of school for a longer period for health reasons, including a hospital stay and so on, and then had to massively catch up on the school material and so on, because it also took a while before they found out what was actually behind it, and in fact the doctors, for a while, because they couldn’t diagnose anything, didn’t immediately believe that something was actually wrong, but assumed that maybe it was just a student going through puberty who maybe didn’t feel like going to school, which wasn’t the case though. And then it got diagnosed. I was then out for a correspondingly longer period, and then we had to see, can I, can I manage to catch up on this gap, or do I maybe have to repeat the year? And I can still remember very, very well that due to these absence periods I was at some point at seven — it was seven subjects, before it eventually went in the direction of school conferences and such — seven subjects behind, when I came back. And it’s not so easy to catch that up again. I gave it everything I had and managed, I don’t remember exactly, to get that down to three or four subjects behind. And of course the teachers also noticed how much, yes, how much energy I put into actually managing that. While the teachers, as a group, evaluated that really very positively and looked very positively at these developments that had taken place, there was this one teacher who had decided to handle it differently, and he actually made this school year hell for me. It started with the fact that I had to make up an exam I’d missed for health reasons — that was fine too. But I didn’t get the same exam, as it turned out, but rather I got an exam I had to make up from an advanced biology course. And I wasn’t in advanced biology at all, just a regular course. And then it also came out, through an exchange with someone from the advanced course, that the teacher had said during the exam, to the students, that there wasn’t enough time. So they should feel free not to do the last question. That means the last question was simply dropped due to time constraints. And I had the same amount of time available. For me, though, the last question was included in the grading. And when that came out, there were of course some discussions. But no one managed to do anything about it, in quotation marks, because at first it seemed as if the teacher had the longer lever. And comparable to what you reported, it was very, very interesting though, because the counter-leverage effect then arose in the class conference, because all the teachers, unanimously, all the other teachers, voted, against the backdrop of these developments etc., that they were of the opinion that Yasemin can manage this, and that’s why we’ll move Yasemin up and give her the chance to continue here, what she managed in six weeks, namely bringing it down from seven subjects to three or four behind. Whoever manages to catch that up in a period of six weeks is also capable of continuing here and not having to repeat the year. And I was then unanimously — so the teacher was more or less forced, probably by the group dynamic that had arisen, I know that from other sources. I had a good relationship with my math-advanced-course homeroom teacher, or grade-level teacher, so to speak, who told me that later. And there was a lot of head-shaking at that point. But this united stance also achieved, so to speak, this power, or this abuse of power that had taken place here, in quotation marks, being undermined, not to say, the power being used or tipped in the other direction. So I’ve had personal experience with that too. And that really sits deep, that sits very, very deep, Ria. I can totally relate to what you told too, with these scars. I remember that a few years later, not many years, a few years later, I was standing at a traffic light and sitting in my car, and I still remember this impulse I had when I saw that this teacher was in the car behind me at the traffic light. I would have loved nothing more than to accidentally shift into reverse. So you do carry these scars with you. Of course I didn’t do it, but I remember it very, very well, and so there are probably very diverse memories, contexts, in which we’ve experienced such situations ourselves, how powerless you feel in these situations, and at the same time also this aspect you mentioned, how powerful a united unit can also be in this context. Whether that’s at school or in other contexts — maybe you have one thing or another too, I’m also directly reminded now of tax officials or something, tax audits or similar. There too you experience some things, then we had the thing with the floors, with companies. So there are many, many examples we could certainly also open up from our own experiences too.
Ria, gladly, you wanted to connect again.
Yes, dear Yasemin, I don’t want to give another example now, otherwise we’ll slip into a school criticism session, which also isn’t necessarily good. But it became very clear to me, also in connection with this traffic light story, power and privileges only ever function within a certain system. But if we step outside this system, if I as a teacher go out on the street, if I as a teacher go shopping, if I as a teacher go to the doctor or to the tax office, then I no longer have these privileges. Then I’m just a completely normal person. And when I — this has happened to me so often — my grandmother always used to say, you always meet twice in life. But then the person I might have, in some way, so brutally scarred, sits there, and it has nothing to do with the person at all, it has to do with my relationship to certain things I’m annoyed about and where I actually just want to blow off steam. I want to vent and use my power and my privilege to harm someone who actually has nothing to do with it, in some form. That’s my perspective, that’s my opinion. Then suddenly, 20 years later, I’m sitting in front of that person and I want something from them. And that person won’t have forgotten the scar. And with that I produce a new conflict that I didn’t see at the time when I had the chance to be empathetic or powerful. And I wonder why my application isn’t going through, why it isn’t working, why the other person isn’t budging, why the other person — maybe I don’t even recognize them anymore, but they recognize me. And I’m always very, very careful there. It has a bit to do with the universe. Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself, and so on and so forth. You can have differing opinions on that too. But power and privileges only function within certain systems, and in other systems I don’t have this power and don’t have the privileges. And then I have to think very carefully, or get to think carefully, about how far I can play out this power in my closed system, in this small world, or should play it out. Or whether maybe, by virtue of my personality, which might actually be a different one than what I’m showing in that moment out of anger, defiance, or whatever, might actually be a different one. And that’s what I wanted to bring into the calculation a bit. There we’re jumping, so to speak, into various system structures. But I think Jürgen might have an even better idea there, or can formulate it more constructively.
Yes, thank you so, so much. And before I gladly play the ball back to Jürgen, another example popped up for me in this context too. They’re not different systems, it was still within the same system, so to speak, but we also have power and privileges, not only when we’re teachers or civil servants or similar, but also in various positions. And in the past — I’d like to bring this in as an example too — I conducted many personnel selection interviews, on various levels. So in the concrete example I’d like to give you as an impulse, I conducted preliminary selection interviews. So the personnel interviews were divided into different levels, or in the application process, and there was a preliminary interview, and afterward it was decided, based on this preliminary interview that took place, which happened over the phone, whether the person would move into the second stage, namely being invited to an in-person interview on-site, or not. And then in this second, on-site appointment, depending on whether everything went well or not, it was decided in turn whether the person got a job offer or not. And the situation arose that someone called to apply, or to have an interview. He had of course already applied and then took part in an interview, and didn’t realize at all — but I noticed — that this was a distant acquaintance, so someone, a person I knew. And of course we’re not entirely free of — well, it’s not always easy to free yourself, so to speak, of certain information you might already have from everyday life regarding these people, unconscious bias can kick in there and so on and so forth. So I neither had a bad relationship with this person, nor was I close enough to them, but nevertheless something was going on in the background for me, where I had the impression, I don’t actually want to make this decision at this point at all. So the interview didn’t go super well. Normally, from my perspective, it would certainly have been a rejection. But I didn’t want to make this decision at this point, which led to me deciding, against the backdrop of the reflection that was running in parallel in my mind in the background, well, we have a two-stage model anyway. Maybe there are aspects flowing in here that I have no influence over, and I don’t want to stall or disrupt the application process because of that, and maybe cause a loss for the company, in quotation marks, without being aware of it, and I decided then, since it was a bit on the edge, to say, I’d rather let her through to the second level, and then there are people sitting there who presumably don’t know her or haven’t already had an encounter with this person, and are freer in their decision, and don’t have some unconscious-bias thing kicking in somehow or similar. And then I later followed the whole thing, without having commented on it in any way or having exchanged with anyone about it, and found out that the person actually didn’t get a job offer. But especially in these application and selection processes we also have power and privileges that arise per se through this situation, that individual players are sitting there who actually decide, for example, whether someone gets a job or not. So that’s what came to mind for me in this context.
Jürgen, would you like to connect to one point or another again?
Thank you, dear Yasemin. Yes, I’d like that. I’d like to communicate to you something that’s happening in my mind too, and you can surely back this up very well from neuroscience. I have to, with all force, push back the impulse you just set most recently and put it in second place, because I’d like to say something about Ria’s earlier remarks first, which were also complemented by an example from you. And if I want to establish a connection, or rather I’ll try to establish a connection, to our topic, regarding our topic power and privilege, then I asked myself, where’s the connection now regarding your remarks, especially Ria’s, concerning school. And if you were to ask me, I’d answer that what happened there means the negative expression of a power position, in which a privilege was suppressed, was subjugated. And specifically, I’d set the privilege as synonymous with talent. Basically, through my power position, I deny a talent its unfolding. Which of course has the consequence, dear Ria — let me complete the sentence — that this privilege doesn’t die upon crossing or leaving a system, meaning school. If — and now comes the qualifier — if you agree with me that talent, meaning the particular ability, capacity to do or also think something, whether innate or learned through a very specific socialization, that one calls talent a privilege. That’s currently a question I’m asking myself, whether that lines up in terms of terminology and content. That’s my feedback to your previous — not to your most recent, dear Yasemin — to the previous remarks. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so, so much. Ria, what do you say to that?
I’m still thinking. I don’t know now whether I’ve fully understood Jürgen. It was about the question of talent, so what a child brings with them. And I completely agree with him that through the abuse of power in school, talents, special abilities, don’t get developed in many situations. If I take your example now, maybe a special ability was developed there, namely resilience, holding on, gritting your teeth, carrying on. Maybe that wouldn’t have come out at all in this situation if the teacher hadn’t pushed against it so vehemently. But you felt in that moment, I can do this, I’ll manage this, and I’m on the side where I also get people who then support me, because I’m fighting. On the other hand, in these situations, very, very many talents get lost, because many children struggle with very low self-worth or other difficulties, and then say, well, there’s no point anyway. And then talents get buried, special abilities get buried, or you never even notice you have abilities. And I still think, well, let me put it this way, and then of course it’s also true that the person can’t unfold that in other systems either, because it’s been buried so deeply that they no longer even recognize that they have special abilities, or they forget them, or they — and that’s why the responsibility that connects with power and privilege, maybe that’s the third word in the trio, this responsibility, when you have power and a privilege is connected with that power, or the other way around, that’s actually the tipping point, whether you engage in abuse of power or whether you develop or use the power for the benefit of the community. Maybe in that direction.
Yes, I find that great, especially because so many different aspects have come to mind for me too, and I’m totally with you. For me it led to resilience, staying power and so on, and made me strong, in quotation marks. Not strong enough to take action against this teacher, but at least strong enough to hold on and carry on. And many years later a situation arose in a work context, where for some reason there was suddenly a bad relationship with a boss of mine, and she did everything she could to get me out of the company. And here something repeated itself, in quotation marks, something parallel that had already happened before, while as a young girl, so to speak, I wasn’t able to take the next step and go against it again on another level. There I was maybe too young, too inexperienced, and then also, due to this poor health, not able to push it through. But it apparently accompanied and occupied me for many years, and then in this second round, on a completely different level, at first without a connection, in quotation marks, but then also gave me the strength.
…listened very attentively and always had a bit of a problem with the topic of privilege and then the examples, which often tended more toward abuse of power. And then it occurred to me — we’ve talked a lot about school, I wanted to say something from the business world too. What I picked up on our side in business, in banking, was often that basically it was again this topic of top overruling bottom, but people were made small and people started to disengage. And then people wondered why people weren’t giving their job their full enthusiasm. And that’s certainly, as Ria says, the scars, on the other side once more. And I think we have a really big problem in our economy, that at least in the old world it’s often top overruling bottom. And we don’t actually have good exchange, but simply just, this is your job, you have to do it, and if you don’t do it right, then we can talk about other things too. That’s what I wanted to say. I unfortunately have to go now soon, I’ll still listen to you a bit, but I have to head back down. Ciao.
Yes, thank you so, so much, and I’d like to look at drawing cross-connections again in a moment, because we’re also a few minutes before nine already, so we also have the opportunity to round off the room together again with a closing round. Jürgen, would you like to connect again?
Yes, I wanted — we unfortunately have to, my dears, go back several steps — namely I actually wanted to answer fairly spontaneously the question, or the statement, from Ria, I’m not sure whether I understood Jürgen correctly. Dear Ria, what I meant with this attempt, or the question, is talent a privilege — what I’m getting at is directing the view at the terminology. I mean that very often what’s connected with privilege — privileges are received, and privileges are distributed within a network, indeed, either defined as power or as rule. But with the connection to talent, I actually wanted to point out that you can also have privileges in a positive sense. That would have been my additional explanation to your reflection, on whether you understood me correctly. Thank you.
Ria, would you like to connect to that directly?
Yes, I always admire Jürgen, with what cross-connections, or also what very structured and constructive lines of thought, he establishes connections. And I have to honestly confess, talents, so innate abilities, that’s an area that’s discussed very differently by many scientists again and again, which of course also concerns questions of heredity and environmental conditions and so on. Karl Marx said at some point, man is the ensemble of his social relations. That reflects a completely different way of looking at it. That also moves, for me now, into a very different mental space again. But if I follow Jürgen now, then it becomes all the more important to say that whether you possess a privilege, whether it’s forever, so if it’s now a special talent, or just for a short time, that you handle it responsibly and consciously, and that you use it so that you don’t hurt others with it. And maybe it’s a privilege that I can say, over more than 40 years, I found a profession I love above all else, and which has given me, to this day, the opportunity not to burn out in this profession, and not to throw in the towel in this profession at some point like so many, many others, and also the opportunity, in this profession, to see myself getting healthy again and shrugging off serious illnesses, because through the students and also through my colleagues I get, in part, the strength to draw new energy. And when you really see these privileges in this question of responsibility, you also have the chance to turn the privilege into a precious asset. And I’ve only really recognized that properly now, through this thinking out loud, that was really more thinking out loud just now. Thank you, Jürgen. That’s incredible. Okay.
Yes, thank you so, so much, and I’d like to bring in something from neuroscience in this context too, since we’re talking about this term talent. On one hand, that it’s markedly less pronounced what, in quotation marks, influences talents from the cradle, so to speak. So the proportion of what’s stored, in quotation marks, in our DNA and so on is markedly smaller than was assumed in the past. And the second aspect that maybe also plays an important role here is that a talent that’s present per se doesn’t lead to this talent, in quotation marks, coming into its full power, and that this depends on whether these talents are used and encouraged or not. That means a talent we bring with us per se — and here we’re back at this internal system, external system, maybe to build the bridge again, and we’re back at this experiencing and so on — can ultimately have a different effect or handling for each person. That means, even though someone brings a certain talent in a certain area, that doesn’t lead to it — because it might be misjudged in a system, for example, and go in the wrong direction — that an abuse of power, for example, takes place there and leaves scars, that it can then just as well unfold outside of the system at that point. That means the existing talent per se doesn’t yet lead to it being able to unfold its power and also being usable. And in that sense you see how complex a human being, in quotation marks, is here again, and that it’s not just what’s given to us in the cradle, but that there are so many external influences that also, so to speak, play a great role here regarding how certain talents are then used etc. And that’s then also not just this — and that’s also an important insight, I think — not just this one situation or this one experience, but against the backdrop of the experiences that have been made up to that point and how those were stored, that also plays a really massive role in this context, in which direction, in quotation marks, a personal story then develops further at that point.
Yes, and with that I’d like to play the ball back to Jürgen and see, maybe you’d like to connect to one point or another here again, and then gladly formulate the closing word for today’s room.
Thank you, dear Yasemin. I’ll do both together in one. To come back once more to your last remarks, I’d maybe say something a bit provocatively: a recognized talent is a special challenge to the quality of the teacher. I’d like to leave that in the room, so to speak. Mind you, I clearly said that might be a bit provocative, and please don’t understand “special” as exclusive, but rather a very specific kind requires a very specific manner and approach from the teacher after recognizing it. It was once again an hour stolen from paradise. I want to bring that up again, because this hour deserves it. Heartfelt thanks, Ria, dear Yasemin. I wish you, as always, a nice day. Thank you and ciao, until tomorrow.
Yes, thank you so, so much. Ria?
Just briefly. I don’t know if I’m allowed to, but I’d like to bring in, at the end — since it got quite deep — a little joke in connection with genetics, what you said about what talents make up in the genes. There’s a wonderful game I recently played with students, called Kahoot. You can play through questions with phones, similar to multiple choice. It also had genetic things in it. And then it asked, A, B, C, or D, with which biological element do we have 50 percent genetic overlap? Chicken, pig, coffee, banana. I congratulate you all, we’re all 50 percent bananas. I had to laugh so terribly hard at that, and once again realized, if I hadn’t played that game, I wouldn’t have known that. Because all the others have almost 90, 99 percent overlap with us. And in this small, funny form you recognize, first, you’re allowed to earn privileges. Second, you shouldn’t abuse power. And for everything, it takes responsibility. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I thank you all for this wonderful room.
Wonderful, thank you so, so much for these great examples, great perspectives we opened up together today. And I think we can just leave it at that, including the closing words, to let it sink in and decide for yourself which impulses you’re taking with you and what you can do with them. And not to always already have an answer to everything, but to also really leave the room with question marks again sometimes. I found that really wonderful, to do brain-juggling on the highest level, so to speak, here. And just see what that does with you over the next few days. We have many, many great topics ahead of us that we’ll continue with. Tomorrow with the aesthetics of power. How do visual representations influence our perception of power — that’s the question we want to look at tomorrow. And in that sense you’re very, very warmly invited to join again tomorrow too, and open up the room from various perspectives in dialogue, and let’s look together where we move from there. In that sense, I wish you well and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. Until then. Ciao.
