It was developed by a German teacher from Munich, Wunibald Heigl, and his pupils. By refuting prejudices, the A.R.T attacks racism and xenophobia where they develop. Although it was developed for Germany (using figures, videos, newspaper articles etc. from Germany) it might be the draft for a project, based on the German concept, which we would like to help you with.
Please feel free to contact us at bsp@baysem.de.
Extra-curricular political interest was the reason for the foundation of a pupils' club dealing regularly with controversial political issues (such as apartheid in South Africa, the revolution in Nicaragua, nuclear energy, the Gulf War etc.) at a Munich grammar school. One subject, which was dealt with repeatedly, was "right-wing extremism, racism and xenophobia", as many of the pupils had experienced discrimination against themselves or their friends because these were "foreigners" or "looked foreign". With some teachers' help (including mine) the students produced exhibitions against racial prejudice, initiated public discussions on German policy concerning asylum-seekers and distributed leaflets against racist propaganda of Parties of the extreme right. While the reaction of school authorities and some teachers was dubious in many ways these activities gained a lot of approval among local citizens (esp. NGOs working on a better mutual understanding of ethnic majority and minority issues) and many pupils.
As a result some students asked me for more and detailed information about "foreigners" in Germany and about Neo-Nazis. When we collected the material and worked out anti-bias-information for their classmates we also developed many ideas how to "sell" our facts to a wider "public" at school. For example we found out that: feelings, prejudices, sentiments often can be discussed more freely among young people than with teachers. Obviously "peer-teaching" could be a better anti-bias-approach than a lecture given by or a project supervised by a teacher. So my students (aged 15 and more) asked me as their "coach" to prepare them to offer to 12-year-old pupils a 90-minute workshop on subjects like "foreigners among us" or "Neo-Nazis - what do they want?" for a start into Anti-Racism-Training. To prepare that workshop my students wanted a seminar during a weekend to "train the trainers". So the A.R.T-Seminar was developed. There they could learn with my help to work in pairs (preferably one girl, one boy) with groups of ten to 15 younger pupils, to use the language of this group and to find the right mixture of "facts and fun".
Facts best go together with fun; the students realized that prejudices are often rationalized by distorted facts (e. g. foreigners being responsible for the loss of jobs of many Germans); however, you can't replace wrong figures by correct figures (or more realistic interpretations) without winning a person's confidence first and often a joke is the best door-opener. So my students wrote a sketch, made a (funny) video, found (or drew) comics, collected cartoons; I contributed diagrams, statistics, videos, etc. and wrote anti-bias games to play. We also compiled an exhibition "Total rechts" (Totally right-wing) which warns younger students of the danger of joining one of the thriving Neo-Nazi-groups in Germany. All this material has been compiled into an A.R.T-Box. This box is offered to classes or youth groups to choose their own set of material for a (one or several day) workshop together with a teacher or a social worker or together with some of my students as their trainers for an Anti-Racism-Training session.
This method of peer teaching in combination with an offer of facts-and-fun material obviously opened a new access to a field of education which has long been neglected in schools in this country. However this education is increasingly important for young people's development for a civil society especially in a multi-ethnical country such as ours (in Munich about one third of all young people have their roots in one of the cultures of ethnic minorities) to promote mutual understanding.
The effect of this endeavor has been acknowledged by many students, by radio and newspaper reports and by experts like teachers, social workers or psychologists as the following examples show:
"Presumably for the first time young people experienced a reflection on the subject (of racism) with their peers. What teachers and social pedagogues achieve only rarely - motivation of socially deprived youths to work on a crucial subject - was successfully done by the A.R.T. - Team on grounds of a common 'wave-length'."
(Ms. B., psychologist)