#842 Self-Knowledge

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What actually is self-knowledge, and how does it differ from insight in general? That’s the question we explore in Room #842 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” 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 wonderful good morning to you all. Today we’re talking together about self-knowledge, so insight with “self” in parentheses. What actually is self-knowledge? We’ve now talked relatively generally about insight. What, in contrast, is self-knowledge? And in that sense we want to look with this focus on the self, so to speak, and talk about it again, and see what similarities, differences, and so on we actually find here. And beyond that, I mentioned yesterday that we could pick up on one thing or another that came up in the chat yesterday too. Let me check in parallel — I took screenshots, and we can look at those. Yesterday it was about aspects like measurability and so on, which we opened up in connection with personal or general growth. There were a few more comments or questions in the chat. Let me pick that up, I’ll just read it out. “My thoughts aren’t quite tree-shaped. This connection with the roots was pessimistic. My belief is actually lifelong learning, and thus growth. I share the view that personal growth isn’t a question of age. Even at 30, personal growth can be over.” And then we had, “It may be that measurability via grade exams, presentations, defense in the academic sense, in parentheses, isn’t optimal. Is there something better?” That was a question that came in, and then the English term was brought in too — “in English there’s the term ‘high potential,’ and now I’m thinking about how you can evaluate whether a person has ‘high potential’ or not.” And then we have, “it’s taught and learned so both sides function well in the cycle of consuming and producing.” So along the lines of, what’s the goal behind it, or the intention, so to speak. And now let me check if there was anything else we might have skipped. Right, those were the various aspects. I’ve brought those back in now too. We can gladly pick those up again as a starting point, referencing yesterday, and then continue here with what we have as our main topic today. So you have the opportunity to connect back to that too, if you’d like, without us repeating yesterday’s room or going deeper into it again, but so we at least have the chance to pick up one thing or another again here too. And then definitely to look at, self-knowledge, what is that actually from your perspective, and is there a difference in general between insight and self-knowledge. And with that you’re all warmly invited to join, to turn this monologue into a dialogue, as every morning, a reflection space where it’s about sharing your thoughts and then seeing where the room takes us together. And in that sense, another quick reminder that the room is being recorded in the background too. Accordingly, by joining, you agree that this is fine, and that it will be published accordingly too. And we have three room rules to follow. One is a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least a sentence in your bio. Anyone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to do that, of course has the option of contributing via the chat instead. So let me unmute for a moment and see who’d like to join this morning.

A wonderful good morning, Layla.

A wonderful good morning, Yasemin. I’m just thinking about where to connect now, and everyone else in the audience too. I was just thinking internally, well, that’s true, is there something better than grades, comparability, we already had that yesterday. That makes me think of the saying, criticizing is always easier than doing it yourself. So, is there something better — if there’s something better, then go do it, for everyone who criticizes such systems. I thought internally, it’s about, and we had this yesterday too, look, it’s about being able to repeat something, and repetition doesn’t mean, as you said, repeating knowledge, but if something worked well, never change a running system, then you try to repeat it, and we search for patterns. And I think that’s a point — we shouldn’t only go into measurability, because measurability very often carries comparability with it too. I once heard, the death of happiness is comparison. I don’t know if that’s true for insight too, but I could imagine it sometimes.

Yes, thank you so much. And regarding what might be better, or is it something else that could work better — here it quickly becomes clear that it requires a bit of a rethink, so to speak, because it’s sometimes even hard for us to answer that question. If you start thinking about it, you might not necessarily come up with solutions right away, because we simply don’t know it any other way, for example. So it makes sense to look again. And here we’re directly at comparison — on one hand you can look at how it works in other school systems, in other countries. There are certainly examples of that too. And even considering some fundamental aspects — we have rules we set up for ourselves at some point, among other things maybe against the background of how we evaluate performance today, that something like copying isn’t allowed. It has to be the individual’s own performance, which I want to measure here, so to speak. That’s why copying isn’t good, in quotes, and so on. So here too, possibly thinking completely anew in other directions. What if we said copying is nothing bad at all, it’s even desired, because we don’t want people to do something entirely alone, but in the sense of developing teamwork skills, for example, that they work in teams and in collaboration — there are certainly project work assignments and such. And why does the individual performance at the end then have to be attributed back to the person again, and similar — also questioning that critically — or what other possibilities would there be? So really thinking outside the box here too, and thinking through various possibilities and options again. Maybe we don’t even need proof of performance at all. That would maybe be an idea too. So does it have to be another form of proof of performance? Or can we simply say, XY attended school, and that’s fine? Maybe we don’t need to differentiate between lower secondary, middle school, and grammar school at all, but everyone goes to one school, and maybe there’s a requirement, I don’t know, so and so many years minimum, and those who continue get the next qualification, and those who continue further get the next qualification after that. Maybe we don’t need all of that at all. That would be another possibility too. Layla, what do you think about that?

That makes me think of the clique that exists, and of individualism. If we look at the example of group work, as a teacher I can say, it’s sometimes really a shame for the individual, because then you have people who do a lot, and you have people who do little, who assume group work means the other person does something and I’ll just coast along for this round. And that’s hard for the others, because they complain too and say, look, I’ve done so much, and the others are now relying on me to do it, because they know I’ll do it and that I’ll make the effort. So they ride the wave of the other person’s success. Fundamentally you’re completely right. There’s one type of school that’s very hard, or is very hard, to attack, and that’s simply the Gymnasium (grammar school). With others there’s already been some merging done. Here you have to say that differentiation — if you have Realschule students and Hauptschule students in one class, if you have different levels, then you have to individualize. And it’s easy to tell the teacher, well, just do that. Yes, but then please give me the training for it, give me the differentiation tools, which do exist. But with a class size of 32, it does become difficult at some point, you have to say that. Those are simply basic prerequisites. Whether you should do it that way — yes, well, then just continue. Good, that’s always tied to the topic of motivation. Would they continue? And I thought internally, wait, would you let yourself be operated on by a doctor who’s a leading authority? How would I even recognize that they’re a leading authority, if they just continued without any comparability or grades anymore? And it’s also a bit of this individualism — I’m being honest, I did a Hauptschule diploma, then a Realschule diploma, then my Abitur. Honestly, I’m proud of my grades, really proud, because I think it’s good that I do this well, or very well. And then I was given a stamp, and it said, this is very good, what you’ve done there. And that way I could define an achievement for myself. That you could do it differently, yes, we see that in other countries. I’d like to recommend Michael Moore here — he made something called “Where to Invade Next.” That’s a nice format where he looks at other countries and says, what should we adopt there, what should we conquer there. And it’s nice to look at these school systems too, how they change, and other things people do differently. I think looking outward is a nice and good thing. The question really is, what do I do if I don’t have comparability? How do I then recognize good performance? And how do I motivate people to spur themselves on? And of course you say, okay, we don’t have grades. So something in that direction — look, there are already schools that start with grades very late. There’s been the concept for a long time, there’s verbal assessment and such things too, even with grade advancement, where they say, from here to here, you automatically move up. And then you hear sentences like, from children, you don’t even have to try, I’ll get moved up anyway. Whether that’s a mindset, you can think about that. But the question is, how do you then manage that, because you said there’s no extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, just motivation. How do I manage that with motivation? Look, it’s like with universal basic income — people are afraid there too that people will stop working, which I don’t believe, because I think it’s in us to want to do something and to want to keep developing. But I have to mention the group work example again — it’s devastating for some, sitting there and trying incredibly hard, while the others really lean back. And you know that as an adult too. You know that. What Orphange has to, Streibe. I heard that once, I was sitting on the subway. It was about someone who worked a lot. I’ve heard it while waitressing too, that a colleague told me, oh, you know, Layla, there are always people like you. And I said, what do you mean? Well, people who work so hard, who work like a well-cleaner. And I know the saying too, someone once told me, oh, you know, I have the people for partying and I have the people for working. I was the one for working. And that’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why we have comparability too.

Well, I think a lot of beliefs come into play here. And I’d claim that no leading authority on the market is a leading authority because of that, or I definitely don’t recognize them by their school grades or their final grades. That doesn’t even get asked anymore. The longer we’re away from school, the less important school grades are. Nobody looks at that at all, except maybe when someone’s applying for something. And then we also have the situation that, especially now with demographic change and so on, where we’ll have a huge challenge anyway just to fill positions at all — so I think every employer will have to look around. They won’t be able to afford the luxury anymore of looking at school grades or anything like that. And the question is, why do I even need to recognize good performance in school at all? Who says it has to be that way? We’ve learned it that way. We grew up with it. Why can’t school just be school? Why can’t children just be children, and an institution where it’s possible to simply learn? And yes, we’re welcome to think about that. Motivation — but here too, I’d like to flip it around, because motivation is discussed a lot, including in a business context. And I can only say, whenever the question is asked, how do I motivate employees, I flip the question around and say, the much more relevant question from my perspective is, how do I manage not to demotivate people? Because honestly, when we hired these people, they already came to us, to the company, with a certain amount of motivation. That means something happens in the company that then leads to them getting demotivated. That means I’m allowed to look at cultural attitudes and so on, but I mustn’t always assume, in quotes, the individual has failed. And I think a lot of this has to do with the attitude we have, the beliefs we have, that play a really massive role here, what we take for granted. And I think a lot of parents will certainly know this too, especially if they have several children or such, that children learn at different speeds and so on. But that doesn’t mean they per se don’t learn at all. And some children, for example, take longer to learn to read and write, they might struggle more there. But then they’re better in other areas. And if you give them the time and don’t constantly go into this evaluation and comparison, then they don’t connect a negative association with learning, because that’s actually a kind of negative conditioning happening here too, with grading, because they constantly have a negative experience in this context too. And regarding lifelong learning, that’s actually not a nice imprint we’re giving here in the context of socialization, if we simply gave them the time, over the course of their entire school years, to work through certain things, to learn at their own learning pace, and the others maybe pitched in too, in the sense of, I’m not doing this for myself, but we’re a unit, a team, or similar. So completely different things could be fostered here too. I think there are a lot of possibilities, if we’re even willing at all to look at other possibilities and really get into rethinking. A wonderful good morning, dear Sabine. What do you think about the topic, or would you like to jump right into the aspect of self-knowledge?

I actually wanted to build on what you both just said. I have a really mixed opinion, and I wanted to give an example for that. I have three children, and the eldest was always different from the other two anyway. But with the other two I saw how it went one way and then the other way. The youngest moved from second to third grade. And in his old class, the teacher separated him from his best friend. He’s getting seated separately now. And he was a bit smarter than himself. And then he leaned back and suddenly had bad grades. And the motivation was, in the end, if the grades don’t matter anyway, then I can just lean back completely. So from that side I do think grades are a certain motivation too. We changed schools, and there he turned it around. Today, I think, he’s also motivated by grades, but because he does things — he’s currently in Canada — that he’s motivated, because he does great things. And then he sits down, I’ve already called him at night, and he says, mom, I’m finishing psychology, I find it so interesting. So I think he’s not doing it because of the grade, but because it’s interesting. And this chain, I don’t know if it’s not partly also driven by grades in the end, and brings a certain success for the individual, and thereby fuels motivation too. With my daughter, who also changed schools when we came back from Canada, she was always in this clique that didn’t have much interest, but there were other problems there too, and then we changed schools, and suddenly she had great subjects and got motivation through the subjects. So I think for her it wasn’t the grade in the end, but motivation led to good grades, because in politics, in business, she suddenly woke up in some working group like that and said, hey, this is fun, what do I want to do. So I think there are such children and such children, that’s why you can’t — but the question is, Yasemin, how do you want to evaluate that differently at a younger age at all? With my youngest, a lot of the class, I do think I can evaluate this a bit, they’re just cool and don’t feel like it. And I don’t know what else you’re supposed to do other than say, hey, get your feet down, we’re writing a test. I don’t know, I’m not fully on one side or the other. What we see in school partly, I’m totally with you both, that it’s nonsense to trample on people because they don’t need it for life. We had a mayoral candidate presentation yesterday, and it came up that we need to learn to learn differently. So those are things we’re hearing more and more often now. I think something’s happening. But won’t we still somehow use this different-learning thing?

Yes, and we’re ultimately allowed to question that. Really this evaluating per se. Because the question is always, how can we evaluate it differently? The question I’m asking is, do we even need to evaluate it at all? What’s the evaluation actually for? Honestly, if we look really hard at it, especially with this distinction, especially in Germany with Hauptschule, Realschule, and Gymnasium — we talk so much about so many aspects and equality and fairness and whatever, those are all such phrases that keep coming up in discussions. Isn’t this evaluating and this differentiating and putting people into different schools and so on, isn’t that already the first form, the worst form, of discrimination that already happens in school? We’re allowed to ask that question. These are small beings, and this happens quite early on, right after elementary school basically, after fourth grade, this stress already starts at the latest in third grade, where you’re already allowed to think, as parents, about which continuing school the child will go to later, and so on. We really start training people into this, in quotes, strange achievement-oriented society very early on, building up these constellations. And especially if we look, because the question was asked, one child gets excited about school grades and that’s why they learn. Our brain always asks two questions, we’ve talked about this before — one is, does this secure my existence, and the second is, does this improve my situation. That means the school grade per se isn’t the motivator, isn’t the driving force, but there are other aspects behind it that lead to me getting moving here, or not, or not engaging at all, to achieve something, in quotes. That means per se, if I manage, in relation to these questions — does this secure my existence, or does this improve my situation — to redesign lessons so that students per se feel that what they’re learning there benefits them, then I’ll trigger movement anyway at that point. I saw that Leina had raised her hand too, then Sabine, and then gladly Andreas too.

I just wanted to say, I’m really, Yasemin, I’m totally with you that it’s true, that you shouldn’t demotivate people, this division in the school system. I said, look, I was in Hauptschule, and there’s really this saying, I only just learned it recently, “Honk,” which means Hauptschüler ohne nennenswerte Kenntnisse [Hauptschule student without notable knowledge]. If I tell a kid I have a Hauptschule diploma, I do that at Realschule, then they’re not smarter than us. And there’s a competitive struggle there too, that shouldn’t be fostered. The problem often already starts even before the end of elementary school, because the elementary school recommendation has been dropped, but you have to think a lot, and of course there’s still, I think, a kind of fundamental recommendation, saying, well, could be, but you don’t have to listen to it anymore. But look, I know children, in Baden-Württemberg there’s the principle of the special-needs school, you can watch episodes of “Die Anstalt” about that. I know children who were at the special-needs school. That’s demotivating. And I think that’s a fundamental thing you have to think about, not just how do I motivate, but how do I demotivate. What you said, that you don’t look at grades anymore — I noticed I have a completely different relationship to that. For me it’s about motivation, it’s about performance. Yes, of course it’s also about evaluation, but evaluation in that case is feedback for me. I see it as feedback. Evaluation doesn’t mean you’re good or bad, or I want to demotivate you, but I’m giving you feedback on your current performance. But I never give feedback, and we said this yesterday too, on your potential. Because so often, as I’ve heard, people have told me nothing can come of me, or I can’t manage this and that, and I thought, how would you even know that? And I ran into my old teacher too, said, hello, colleague. And of course that’s connected to it, that can be incredibly demotivating. That’s why I’m completely with you, and have to say, for me it’s about feedback. And you should think about, maybe instead of how can I motivate people, and not just children, how can I not demotivate them? Because what you said, I find completely right. If I’m interested in something, if I go into a teaching profession, if I go into another profession, then I have a basic motivation. And then I arrive there, and under certain circumstances I get demotivated. And you should counter that, and that’s why I’m completely with you there. I think children are very fragile beings, who absorb knowledge like a sponge, but also negative beliefs. And we’re all responsible for that. Parents are responsible. Everyone who deals with a child is responsible. That’s as an adult. Self-knowledge also has a lot to do with how I see myself. And if I look at myself, on my keychain there’s something that says “Do it because they say you couldn’t.” And that’s really a motivation for me, when I heard that often. And it’s a shame that I heard this black pedagogy, that I heard these sentences. And I don’t want to pass that on to anyone. But I do think evaluation is also feedback. And so feedback doesn’t become a happy sheet, and can be motivating too. That’s why I’m still a fan of performance evaluations, but the division into school types — well, you could think about what to do with the Gymnasium. Can we have such a comprehensive school, so it goes all the way up to Gymnasium, that’s rather rare. And that you look at how do I manage to motivate people. So I’m completely with you. I just have, from my socialization, if I look at my Hauptschule book, Yasemin, I have a positive image of Hauptschule because of that, because if I look at it, there are things in my German book that we sometimes now do differently at Realschule. So I learned a lot, and I think dividing learning into good and bad, that’s not good. So maybe we should think about that fundamentally. I’m with you there. And I just think we need to think of good feedback, where the individual is seen in their performance too. That’s what matters to me.

Yes, thank you so much. I find this distinction between feedback and school grades quite nice too. Choosing a different term for it, on one hand, to look at it again. But even in a business context we definitely have feedback that can go well or badly. That’s one thing, to note. So just because I choose a different term doesn’t mean it’s automatically become something better. I find this differentiation you made again, “I evaluate the performance, but not the potential,” a nice differentiation too, that makes something clear. But that doesn’t work with the school grading system we have, because school grades have a goal, and the goal is to filter, which child goes to Hauptschule, which child goes to Realschule, and which child has the potential for — and now we’re at potential. That means we’re doing something completely different with school grades here. We’re not evaluating performance at that point, but because of the goal set here, namely to classify and see where things continue, I’m to some extent evaluating potential. Can this child manage to go to a Gymnasium, yes or no, or Realschule, yes or no, and so on. And accordingly I’m automatically evaluating potential. And at that moment, or this connection gets established at least with the student too. And self-images develop through that — self-images of what I believe I can do, who I am, and so on. And from this, a behavior or performance gets evaluated, and a self-image develops relatively quickly from it. And then we’re also at — no longer at an insight, but at self-knowledge, or at the self-image that develops here. And that ultimately has an effect later too, on how life changes, whether I believe I can achieve more here or not, or per se think I’m just bad at math, at German, or whatever, because someone talked me into it. Through my connection with school grades, the experience, pain, painful experiences I had, that I was laughed at or similar. So a lot of aspects come into play here. Sabine, you wanted to add something too.

Yes, really fascinating. Back to my youngest — when we moved here, we had two options. A friend of mine said, let him come to me in the afternoons, then you could put him in the better elementary school. And I said, no, we live here, we go to the school we belong to. And there he had an amazing teacher, and probably a teacher as amazing as you, Layla, because I think, from home, I don’t know if we could have changed much. The teacher changed things, and the teacher, in the end, also got great evaluations from the people who finished with a 5 [a failing grade]. But why do they finish with a 5? I think in the end those were partly the children whose parents didn’t speak German yet. So in the end it’s somehow a triangular relationship. From home you have to give the push, but you won’t be able to make the children smart and motivate them from home alone. They’re in school too long for that, I think. They also need to get some motivation from school too. And I have to say that for all children. In the end they were always motivated when they had great teachers. It wasn’t primarily the subject. And it always comes back to this topic, do we look a bit more at project-oriented learning, or do we just learn, so cramming. And what I also wanted to say, I talked to one politician yesterday, and we came to the conclusion that we don’t want lateral entrants in the skilled-worker area for schools. And he said, well, we already have lateral entrants, we’ve always had lateral entrants, namely the parents, and he said, we notice that, and that’s a bit of the problem, I think, where the parents participate, and that doesn’t mean it’s a spoiled thing where the parents don’t take care of anything either — the teeth have to interlock, and I think that’s really important, and not with pressure, you have to write one now, but motivating the children. And there we’re back at the word motivation. How do I do that? I think it’s a kind of triumvirate.

Yes, thank you so much. And beyond motivation, another aspect comes in here now, because you mentioned the parents. If the parents somehow pull along, we mustn’t forget here that we also bring together children from different social contexts in school. That means they also have a different background. And this also leads, among other things, to a child possibly being disadvantaged at that point, because it was, in quotes, born into one family or another. That means, in doubt, the child couldn’t do anything about it. Yes, we can now evaluate what the parents are doing or not doing, that’s nice, but ultimately that doesn’t help the child at that point. And especially if we think in the direction of equal treatment, equal educational opportunities and so on, then we can’t lean back and say the parents have to pitch in here, but then we’re back at a mandate of the state to look at how we can still take these children along equally, foster them equally, and so on, and not disadvantage them at that point through some grades, just because they don’t know better, because they can’t do better, in quotes. So that’s another really interesting point here, I think. Andreas, a wonderful good morning. What do you think?

Good morning everyone. Yes, so many fascinating aspects have already come up. I’d like to relate to each one a bit, because the topic of school and young people is exactly the topic I engage with every day. And I’d like to start with the fact that when we talk about potential, we all have huge potential for the first nine to ten months, when we’re in our mother’s belly. And then the day of birth comes, and equal opportunity and potential unfolding and potential multiplication basically factually stop. Because if I’m lucky, I’m born into a wealthy family. And I don’t mean wealthy in terms of money, but I’m born into a family whose environment ensures I can maximally unfold my potential and that I’m supported. And there are a lot of people for whom, at the end of the day, that’s not the case at all. And then this aspect of evaluation maybe comes in too, which I’d like to add as a second point. If we look at history a bit, we can look at demographics, there was a time in boom periods where we had far too many people for an economy that was just booming, with far too few jobs. Now, to simply reduce these potential applicants or people entering this job market, it makes an incredible amount of sense to evaluate, because then at the end of the day I can rest on the fact that there’ll be few high potentials with good grades. And there’ll be a lot who become somewhat uniform. And we create a kind of workforce army. And I want to deliberately put these words in the foreground, because they should resonate. And what we’re just noticing now, also with this demographic change, is that this reduction doesn’t make any sense at all anymore. When I talk to teachers, what stands out most often is that the content from the education ministry is so extensive, especially eventually in secondary schools, that I don’t even have time as a teacher anymore to look at what potential a person has, what they’re like, because the school grades don’t say anything about what potential I bring or not. They only look at, for a society of comparison, how I’m positioned on a certain topic area that’s currently being pushed into the foreground, so to speak. It doesn’t take into account what environment I have, it doesn’t take into account whether I’ve learned to learn in recent years, whether there’s someone who’s shown me how to get by in this system. What makes much more sense, also in the future, and I think the school system, if we’re lucky, will develop in that direction in the coming years, is the focus on the topic of enablement, and on being enabled in topics that are relevant after school. I think everyone of you, and gladly the listener too, can ask themselves, from the past, how many people do you recognize who were incredibly good in school, who had very, very strong grades there too, and who, at some point, when the day came that I absolutely condemn, when at some point in May school ends, and we suddenly assume that an 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old is an adult, because school is over, and they now have to know what happens — there are a lot of people in the past who had great grades, were extremely successful in this tight corset with requirements, with guardrails and guidelines, and who then suddenly had problems finding their way in the real world. And then there were a lot of other people who maybe weren’t so good in this evaluation, so didn’t have good grades, but who could unfold after school and were suddenly incredibly successful with trend topics that others didn’t even see. And I think it’s about us thinking much more about the fact that all people have potential, we have to think about how we can enable them for the future, that it’s especially about the topics that are relevant. And we notice, especially, anyone who has time can look at current talk-show topics, how little knowledge there actually is about AI, GBT, and other topics, how broadly young people and these trend topics get judged, because we all tick the way we always tick, that we look at our own past and suddenly evaluate the future with these results. And we’re so behind on all these topics, we’re so skeptical, we have prejudices and actually believe that through ChatGPT we’ll all suddenly lose quality and get dumber. Well, in doubt, the dumb one gets dumber, who wasn’t supported in learning, who wasn’t enabled to deal with all these topics, and the smart one gains time, who was prepared for this topic of enablement. How do I deal with all this content, and how am I positioned even faster and better in the future, and I actually think that’s the point, that we live in a society where we all evaluate and think in boxes, and now I’d like to end my monologue with a last sentence. Let’s take a simple example from school time. There’s a new teacher, and Layla has now dealt with a class for years, to stick with one persona. And now there’s a student who unfortunately had a bad grade, and now a new teacher comes and only looks at the grades that happened in the past. What will happen to this young person when the teacher suddenly sees, there’s a student who has failing grades everywhere? How will they probably be treated in the future?

Yes, a really, really valid point. I’d like to pick up two aspects that popped up for me. One is, I’d like to underline again, because we talked earlier about painful experiences and such — I’d like to pick that up again. By the way, painful experiences don’t just come from bad grades, but definitely from good grades too. I remember from my school days, there was a classmate of mine, with whom I still had contact many years later, and he told me, looking back, that was really a horror scenario, school — he was an A-student, finished his Abitur with a 1.0, but wasn’t loved for it, quite the opposite, he was, in the harshest sense so to speak, excluded and teased and called a swot and had really a lot of negative experiences, and he said that stopped the day school ended, and with belonging to the university it was suddenly a completely different world, and he suddenly had completely new experiences. So this discrepancy can’t be bigger. He was able to reinvent himself at university, so to speak, and build a new self-image too. So also seeing this side too, definitely — it’s not just about bad performance, students with good performance also have really clear painful experiences here too. And then I had a second example. I’ve forgotten it at the moment though. So I’d like to bring Layla in again, she’d raised her hand. I’ll surely think of it again in a moment, then I can pick it up again. And then I’d also like to build the bridge again, also to this aspect

of self-knowledge. If we just look back at our own history, how was it for us? We also got school grades, had positive and negative learning experiences, developed a self-image over the course of our school years. And when did the insight come, ah, that actually fits, or ah, that doesn’t fit at all? So corrections, so to speak, through the self-knowledge I gained over the years, making corrections for example. Maybe we can try to really build the bridge to the topic of self-knowledge again there too. Yes, I saw it. Layla, and then gladly Sabine.

Yes, that would have been my point too, because I think we’re actually very much in self-knowledge, because what is the other person? The other person, my counterpart, if we’re “zoon politikon,” is a mirror. And we don’t always have a mirror image that’s authentic, but we have a distorted mirror image, we only have a cutout. And that’s a point I’d like to address. And Andreas, I had to laugh so much, because I watched that show too, and I’ll send a greeting out to Mr. Lanz and his guests too. So all good. And yet I thought, I engage with it a lot, and I thought internally, there was this show, and a sentence was said like, “the youth are brutalized,” and I thought, oh, you know what, they’ve said that for hundreds of years, the youth are spoiled, the youth are this and that, and you’re making young people responsible for something that’s a systemic problem, a systemic problem like, let’s look at the media, we talk about the fourth estate. Let’s look, we say, it’s TikTok, that’s what young people use, they send videos back and forth. But why does a child have their phone at night, I ask myself? What about the supervision? That doesn’t mean I have to play secret agent and install a camera in my child’s room, but no, this is my child. So look at what they’re watching, look at what videos they make, look at whether their location is always shared, whether they post things like “my brother is the best,” “I live here and there, that’s where I get my döner from.” My honest opinion, that’s a very strong disclosure. And data protection doesn’t just apply to children, but what I keep noticing in my work is that education for parents is really important first and foremost too, because a lot of parents don’t even know the age limits of certain media. And then to say, okay, there’s brutalization among children, this and that happens — should we lower the youth criminal law, so criminal responsibility age? No, it’s a systemic problem, and you teased that, Yasemin, and that’s exactly the point. And now back to self-knowledge. Look, I know that too. They called me a swot too. That wasn’t nice. I said, well, at least I strive for higher things, but it wasn’t nice. And I sometimes matched my grades to my classmate, who was my best friend. She only had 5s, and I only had 5s. Even though I could have been better, certainly. And that’s exactly the point, that we go into this motivation. And I think grades also create self-images. The other person creates self-images. I always resisted the idea that the teacher is so important, because I think, I once thought, precisely because I was called a swot, I once thought about where’s my home, where’s my homeland? And I came up with the saying, my brain is my home. That’s how it is, I always carry that with me, and I’m proud of it. And no one could ever take that away from me, no matter how much I was teased. And about the school system, Yasemin, I wanted to say something briefly. Everyone would say now, that’s open upward. My sister, who also studies to be a teacher, said, Layla, it’s also open downward. And that’s true. What Andreas said, that we come into the world and then there’s no equal opportunity anymore, that’s true. And I resist very strongly against terms like “educationally disadvantaged household,” because I think, I think you just have to create conditions. I think we live in the age of individualism. But we should also look at the system too. And I can change a lot individually. But we also need to change something systemically. And we can’t make children responsible for something that, if you look at the media landscape and the development, instead of complaining about it and then saying, well, it’s like this and that, and look, they’re brutalized. I’m close to writing a book too. I’ll do it with ChatGPT, Yasemin. I even have a title already. Maybe you’d like to supervise it, because I actually think we need to work on it systemically, and we can’t now look for someone to blame, but should approach it solution-oriented. I think that would be what would help, instead of saying the youth are brutalized, TikTok is to blame, that’s to blame. Look at the media landscape, then look at — well, I have to say briefly, in the discussion I thought, look, terms get used. The term “MILF” gets used. It’s foodporn. Terms are used from “in your face.” Terms from pornographic depictions just get adopted into everyday language. Nobody thinks about it. In official shows really. And then people want to make the youth responsible for something that’s been in our everyday language for years, that’s in the media landscape. And then we say the youth are brutalized, seriously, apologies.

Yes, thank you so much. My second point has now come back to me too. I’d like to give Sabine the chance now, and then bring in my second point as an example, and then bring in Türkan too. Sabine.

Yes, I happened to see Markus Lanz too, and of course I have to say you’re both completely right, I completely agree with you. Just the problem is, if you have a little girl at home like that, how do you manage that partly? And there I’m back at the point that the parents are the third pole. You have to make sure you have a good connection with your child, and that you also manage, on that track somehow, to bother the child, so they’re not on the internet 24 hours a day. But mostly it ends up coming back down to, no, you’re not allowed, and then, all the more. And they portrayed that quite well, that they were on the street, and if there’s an AirDrop that randomly comes through, and it says, do you want to accept this? Then I’ll accept it, without even knowing what’s happening there. So from that side, I’m completely with you both. It’s certainly not the fault of the young people and the media, but certainly the education, and I’ll say the third pole. Because I mean, everyone says, we have to do it differently from the start. Yes, of course we have to do it differently. But where should that come from? And especially, where should it come from short-term? Because I mean, if you have kids today, your kids are your priority first. And you say, you want to lead them onto the right track. And then I have to think about how do I lead them onto that. At home we always had the motto, before I spend anything big, I invest in education. Because that’s the only thing I can give my children. Everything else I can’t give them. Whether I buy them the fifth brand-name T-shirt or a brand-name T-shirt at all — that’s fine. But that also mostly comes through the parents, that this gets shaped. And that’s why I do believe it’s a triangular relationship, and that we need a really good connection there — I mean, our eldest always helped us too, because she was very open very early, and showed our youngest a documentary on Netflix about what kind of crap can come out of that. I didn’t even have access to Netflix at the time, so I couldn’t have shown him that. And what I also wanted to say, Yasemin, what you said earlier — I’ve had that experience too, my godchild is hyper-intelligent, or whatever it’s called. And he had milk poured on him in school. He was always the very best. He managed that well. He’s now — they don’t come from the highest background at home. Today he’s a junior professor and did his master’s at two universities, because he simply shook it off. But how many children can shake something off, and how many children fall by the wayside because of it?

Yes, absolutely. And we can observe that too, for example with children who are highly gifted or such. There are similar scenarios that can play out there too, or with children with ADHD or such. There too, definitely repeated experiences that parents have to go through too. So I always say, children among themselves can also be really, really cruel. It’s not necessarily just the teachers or such, in quotes, that has to be said too. So a lot happens here. So the second example that came to mind, because Andreas brought up that example, that it could be, for example, that a student learns with one teacher, and later at some point there’s a change, and of course they look a bit at the previous grades — I’ve brought up this example before. I’d like to remind you again that especially when transitioning from daycare to school, they wanted us to sign a slip so daycare and school could exchange information with each other. In principle I don’t think that’s wrong. It’s just about talking a bit about it, and passing on, in exchange, the impressions the caretaker had gained, so to speak, to the teacher. And we, as parents, quite deliberately decided against it, and didn’t sign this slip. You can’t imagine what kind of drama came out of that, because they tried to override it through the most various ways, and the result was that we ended up sitting together with Elias’s speech therapist at the school leadership’s office, to get into exchange. And it really went so far that, first, we got a call because they assumed we’d forgotten to hand in this slip, even though it says on the slip, if we agree, we should sign it and return it. So we hadn’t forgotten it. Then I clarified that and said, no, no, we deliberately decided against it. Then there was huge shock on the other end. That means, actually I have the right here to say, no, we don’t want that. And that wasn’t recognized in any way, it was a disaster. And then various levers were pulled and pressure was exerted, massive pressure. And it went so far as, along the lines of, I’d be harming my child with this, or we’d be harming our child with this. So accusations to the point of collapse basically. We still went through with it. We’re proud of it too, and think the decision we made was good. But not all parents know their rights. Not all parents are steadfast enough, at one point or another, in quotes, to know the framework well enough, to know their rights, and to enforce them too. And that doesn’t just happen with a transition from daycare to school, but it can also later be the decision about which continuing school, and so on. There are many, many, many relay points during a school career where it’s about parents’ awareness too. So there are a lot of points that come together here. And I found it really interesting that Andreas brought up that point too. And sure, on one hand it can help us to look at the previous grades. But that can also ensure that we go in biased. And ultimately we mustn’t forget, we’re all human, and we’re also subject to unconscious bias. That means it doesn’t necessarily always have to be positive that we look at the previous grades. Because we don’t always manage to just shake it off and say, we’re starting from zero with this child again now. Which might actually be an important prerequisite to let something new emerge here. And I’d like to bring up an example from my work context too. Anyone who’s been here long enough certainly noticed that I once had a mobbing situation at my workplace. And that changed almost overnight with a boss change. Before that everything was fine, no problems for years. And for some reason she apparently didn’t like me. So somehow it came to the point where she wanted to get me out of the company and set every lever in motion for it. And that was a year and a half of suffering with going to court and so on. And in the end she left. And I got a new boss, exchanged with the new boss. There was a clarifying conversation. And I’m so grateful, even in hindsight, for this person who then told me, I believe you, and I’ll make you a proposal. We’re setting everything back to zero, and you’ll get the chance from me to show what you’ve got. And with that I got the opportunity from him to start again at zero, and then a wonderful collaboration, ironing everything back out smoothly. And yes, we worked together great. There were no difficulties at all. And we could go back to reset, so to speak. And that was only possible because this person made it possible. Someone else might not have made it possible. And I wouldn’t have gotten the chance, because this backstory would have led to it possibly continuing in the same form. So that’s why, and here we’re back at what Sabine said earlier — it often stands and falls simply with the person who has a certain power at that point, and what they actually do with that power. It also has something to do with the exercise of power at that point. Türkan, a wonderful good morning. What do you think about that?

A wonderful good morning. I’m feeling a bit inspired by your conversations right now. And it just became clear to me again what incredible luck I had, that back then, after the orientation phase, so grade 6, I got a placement of Hauptschule level, belonging in the Hauptschule class. And then in seventh grade I was in a completely normal Hauptschule class. And there, my English teacher back then recognized, she’s not stupid at all, she’s just immensely shy, she doesn’t dare speak up. And that’s, that’s really unbelievable, but it’s true. And he said, this girl doesn’t belong in the Hauptschule class. She constantly gets top grades, she can memorize everything. And then he suggested I go into an IK class. I don’t even know if these concepts still exist. That was an integration class. At the time, here in Bremen, we were the pilot class. It was tried out with that, and we were a mixed class. That means six students sit at one table, two at grammar-school level, two at Hauptschule level, and two at Realschule level. And that way we could always look, in the most different subjects, at how we could support each other. The Hauptschule student, for example, was much more creative than the one we called “smarty pants,” because they were incredibly good but maybe so straight and cerebral that they couldn’t implement these creative things well at all. And that was an immensely great class. And to keep it short, at the end of the day, I got fostered like that, and I was given the opportunity that I later graduated from this Sec1 with a grammar-school-track diploma. That was, for example, a really, really great concept. And now, through your conversations, I actually realize, I gain the insight, what an incredibly great teacher, who didn’t say, just because she’s in the Hauptschule class, she’s a Hauptschule student. He recognized that and suggested that I should or had to switch classes, that I didn’t belong there at all.

Oh, how lovely. Thank you so much. Yes, we’ve really brought together an incredible amount today. You’re welcome to connect back to one point or another in the closing round too, if you’d like. I’ve got half an eye on the time. And I’d take screenshots of the aspects that were in the chat today too, and pick that up again, not tomorrow, but then accordingly on Monday, because we’ll continue with the focus on self-knowledge. And then we can definitely pick up one thing or another again and address it accordingly. Regarding Ulle’s question, I’d like to say, a year and a half of bossing didn’t have a negative effect. Wow, stable psyche. Well, of course it had a negative effect, in the sense that it was a hard time, yes, a lot of tears flowed and so on. But ultimately I made a decision, and that maybe fits quite well as a bridge to what we have tomorrow, namely our authors’ breakfast with Dr. Johanna Dahm and Kati Schaab, “Atlas der Entscheider, from decision to success.” That’s also about this aspect of decision. And really essential for me was that I had an experience in my school years, and back then I didn’t, in quotes, feel strong enough, partly for health reasons too, to stand up against a teacher, and that occupied me for many years afterward. And when that happened with my boss back then, that gave me the strength to say, no, I don’t want to carry this around with me for years again, I’ll take action here and I won’t let this slide. On one hand that meant a lot of courage, it could have gone badly too. On the other hand it also had repercussions in the direction of the board and so on, in quotes. Nonetheless, despite it being a bad situation and circumstance, in quotes, I still managed to achieve a very, very good result from it, being able to stay at this company, being allowed to continue taking on various responsible tasks at this company, which is anything but a given. And so, in hindsight, I’d say it also strengthened me incredibly, even though it was of course a very, very painful and above all completely unfounded experience from my personal perspective. My boss would probably see that completely differently. So, let’s gladly move into today’s closing round. Layla, Sabine, Andreas, Türkan, in that order gladly.

I’ll try to keep it brief. I’m leaving this discussion, and I have to say, I’m a bit sad. At the same time I’m glad too, because I also see very positive résumés, very successful people. And that’s what I want to achieve. I always tell my students, look, and female students, I don’t know who’s sitting in front of me. Maybe I’m talking to a future chancellor of Germany. And how would I know that? My brother also finished with a diploma. What does he have now? That was the basic diploma. What does he have now? Now he has a company. So one isn’t better and the other isn’t worse. And we’re quick to say

I went to the school of life. The other says, well, I’m an academic. And there’s a lot of clique-thinking there. And what I’d simply wish for is that we enable young people, who are very fragile, and we heard that today too, I know that from my own experience too. And both the parents, and everyone who stands in front of a child, just think about what you say to them, that has an effect, that’s true for adults too. And that’s incredibly important to me. And I can say, I’ve had painful experiences in school, I’ve had nice experiences. Honestly, right now I’m actually a bit glad about the painful experiences, because they enable the perspective shift for me. And I find it incredibly important that you make this perspective shift. Because Hauptschule is nothing bad. You can be totally intelligent at Hauptschule. I was, I think, smart at Hauptschule. I was also smart with Abitur, but I don’t know that. And it’s also about how do we evaluate intelligence. And yes, that’s why, I just wanted to say, I think we’re all doing our best, but school shouldn’t be painful. School should be nice, and it should lead to lifelong learning, and I’d wish that for all of us, and for your children.

Thank you so much, Sabine.

Yes, great round. I still have one thing open — what do we do short-term about it? Long-term I have hope that something changes, but if someone’s in a short-term situation today, that question mark remains. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Andreas?

Well, I think we can all establish, even through discussions, that we’re mentality-wise here just way too destructive, that we’re too cautious. And I’ll remind you of a lovely quote again: “The internet won’t catch on.” And with exactly this expectation, or this perspective, we’ve raced through world history for years, and are experiencing right now that it’s taking on a speed and complexity we can hardly keep up with anymore. And there I’d just wish for openness, not just to talk about it, but above all now to actually get into implementation. Everyone can only do that themselves, because if we hope or wait for it to happen from above, globally seen, we’ll be waiting a very long time, because we much prefer talking about it rather than acting.

Thank you so much, Türkan?

Okay, I don’t want to present anything new now, but maybe, Sabine, what you can definitely do short-term is question yourself. A saying spontaneously comes to mind that I once created myself, that assumptions are never the basis of a correct statement, and I think I give people much more of a chance to assert themselves if I already switch off the assumption in my head of how they are, what, where, why, and evaluation. That would be, for example, an approach we can implement right in our heads today and try out, what does that do and what does it look like afterward.

Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and I’d like to summarize a few words from what we discussed today in closing too. I’d like to remind you again, we talk quite often about emotions and so on. We evaluate all too often much too quickly. What kind of parent might someone have come from, if we discover misbehavior on the street? How impertinent, or whatever attributions we make. And we all too often forget that these children, ultimately, didn’t choose which family, which environment they were born into. And that’s why I personally find it really, really important to keep reflecting on ourselves here too, not just going into judgment and condemnation, but — and here we’re back at this short-term aspect — not just for ourselves and our children, but also asking ourselves the question. We’re allowed to remember many things we’ve experienced ourselves, remember many things we maybe observe left and right, and ask ourselves the question, who did you last extend a hand to? Whose mentor are you? Whose role model are you? And the same applies of course both to our own children, to children in our environment, maybe from the neighboring house or similar, if we don’t have children ourselves, or from relatives, all the way to maybe even complete strangers. So moving away from judgment and condemnation, toward maybe extending a hand every now and then, and maybe being a mentor, a role model for someone, or similar. And especially in relation to this short-term and long-term thing, I’d like to raise awareness again, especially on topics like ChatGPT or AI-powered aspects and so on. We have many, many discussions. You maybe don’t think of it that directly, or it’s not quite as obvious, about data protection and so on, but here we’re not just standing there as Germany, but also in international comparison, so to speak, but not just in the sense of comparison, but above all in the sense of competition. We’re currently observing how many companies are leaving because certain grievances exist, and so on. We maybe can’t necessarily change everything on the political level. At the same time, changes are needed in many places. So it’s all the more important that we go vote too, and so on, even if it sometimes really raises the question, maybe, of who should you actually vote for, or similar. I understand that, a lot of people have exactly these questions or question marks in their heads. At the same time it’s important not to go into resignation here, but to pitch in, whether that’s volunteering, whether that’s personal, in the form of a mentor or whatever, or with your own children, and so on — really not to resign here, but to pitch in, get into education and outreach, into exchange, step into dialogue, and see, even a small contribution is a contribution, in whatever form that contribution is, what contribution can I personally make at this point too. Because especially with these AI-powered tools and so on we now have, again, Andreas said it earlier, a massive complexity and speed that’s now being multiplied again. So we already live in a complex world. On one hand we’re partly not even aware how much AI is already running in the background, in everything we do every day. We weren’t really aware of that, so to speak. Now, through the market penetration of tools like ChatGPT, it comes into households too, and that’s changing something now. And of course we can discuss whether we want to ban it or such, but those are wrong approaches, because other countries will keep moving forward, and the more we insist on data protection and such here, the bigger this gap will become, and at some point we won’t be able to close this gap anymore. That means we don’t just have a problem on the level of school and the school system, which we’ve known about for a long time and where we’re not managing to bring about changes somehow, but we’ll feel this much more massively within the next few years, and I’m not talking about 20 years or so, but this is foreseeable. In a short time we’ll feel this more and more strongly. That means everywhere here we’re really allowed to get into a rethink now. For that it’s important that we make things conscious, address them consciously, go into reflection, and recognize possibilities and options from that, and make decisions too. For us personally, for our neighborhood together, also through education and outreach work and so on. And to try to push the fears, in quotes, aside. Of course also seeing the disadvantages, accordingly also certain regulations too, which certainly aren’t wrong, but not getting the wrong focus in discussions, discussing topics like abolition, ban, or whatever, because that doesn’t help us here, if we as Germany and as a society, so to speak, want to stay in the game and not, at some point, no longer be able to keep up. That would otherwise have really, really devastating consequences here. That’s why it’s all the more important to talk together about exactly these topics in exchange here, and to raise awareness of that too. In that sense, thank you so much. I’m really glad. It was really, really fascinating and stimulating. That’s why we went a bit longer today too. That’s not a problem, I think, for a Saturday. I hope you all have a lovely day today, whatever you have planned. And feel free to join tomorrow under the Bestselling Authors umbrella, when we have our authors’ breakfast tomorrow with Dr. Johanna Dahm and Kati Schaab. I’m really, really looking forward to that, especially also, among other things, not just because the topic is great, with Atlas der Entscheider, from decision to success, but also because I know that one or another from this community contributed to this book project too, and contributed as an author themselves too. So I’m really looking forward, on one hand, to this three-way exchange we’ll have. And you’re also warmly invited afterward, when we open the hand signals, to join too, and especially the co-authors to join too, to show yourselves and step into visibility too. I find that really great, and this aspect of walking hand in hand too. On one hand it’s, as I said, a great topic, and on the other hand it’s about letting the people who did really great work here become visible too, and I’m really looking forward to that, and we want to celebrate that tomorrow and let ourselves be inspired, get impulses. Atlas der Entscheider, from decision to success, with Dr. Johanna Dahm and Kati Schaab and all the others who contributed to this project. So tune in tomorrow morning at 8am again. In that sense, I wish you all the best and say ciao.