“Today we can simply feel what happens when we look away and don’t intervene. We simply left our youth to fend for themselves. Above all, we have left them to the Internet,” explains anti-aggression trainer Carsten Stahl. Platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram would multiply young people’s willingness to use violence many times over. According to Stahl, the biggest problem is that schools in… “I was just at a school again where a social worker was responsible for over 7,000 students and there were 1.5 to two million cases of bullying, violence, hatred and racism in the schools.”
Stahl: This is how we get the children out of the spiral of violence
Stahl has been passionately fighting to prevent violence among children and young people for ten years. Sadly, he can only laugh at the alleged “zero tolerance course” of German politics. When it comes to child protection, no party has covered itself with glory in recent years. Given the increasing number of cases, the question now arises as to whether anything will change.
“Will money finally be made available? Will all schools finally have social workers? A male and a female, because one or the other doesn’t accept or take a female person seriously? Funds are provided for preventative measures. And, dear politicians, will we finally talk about reducing the criminal liability of young people to twelve years? The time is more than ripe. It’s not five past twelve. It’s quarter past one.”
Only with consistency can one counter the trend that “one in five students in Germany now has a knife with them”. Stahl even thinks metal detectors in schools are conceivable.
And parents’ homes would also have to be taken into account. Mothers and fathers are the first role models to buy their children the “mobile weapon”. It is important to take into account that many children experience violence themselves at home. “These children are either extremely intimidated and then become victims of bullying and violence at school. Or they will go crazy and respond with violence,” Stahl continued. That is why the youth welfare offices also urgently need to be supported.
Stahl: “Never give up on youth”
Stahl himself works tirelessly with prevention seminars in schools to curb violence among children and young people. He therefore does not want to speak of a “generation without hope”. “I will never give up hope and faith in young people.” After supporting over 100,000 students, he sees what prevention, education and openness can achieve. “I see students confiding in each other. How perpetrators stop and accomplices suddenly show moral courage. How parents suddenly wake up. And how we enforce cell phone bans in schools.”
As a former intensive care offender, he himself is the best example that people can change. But only if you name the problem.
