The GS Göttschied is a model school for participation and democracy as well as a European school and has already helped to organize the opening of the state-wide Democracy Day several times. Last year, a 'School of the Future' town hall was held in Idar-Oberstein.
At the annual meeting of the Rhineland-Palatinate alliance "Democracy wins!" in Mainz at the end of March, the pupils presented a democracy bench to Minister President Alexander Schweitzer and later also to Education Minister Sven Teuber. "Minister Teuber regularly uses the bench for his social media posts," reported Council member Frank Schnadhorst, who works in the Ministry of Education. "And of course we also wanted to give our mayor a bench like this as a gift," said Headmistress Nicole Bier. She came to the meeting room with her colleagues Lisa-Marie Herrmann and Miriam Buchalik as well as the children from the Protestant religion group in Year 3 and pupil representative Leni. And they not only had the bench and the fence with them, but also the Unicef song 'You'll never get us down', which they rapped.
The handover was attended by representatives of the Idar-Oberstein Youth Welfare Office and Marco Zettel, European representative and head of the Europe Direct Kaiserslautern network. He and his team had developed the original idea for a children's rights fence, which was adapted by Göttschied elementary school. The pupils had several fence slats with them, each of which was designed with one of the children's rights from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of the slats was still unlabeled and the children asked the Lord Mayor to decorate it with a children's right that was important to him. He had already prepared something for this: It is particularly important to him that children have a right to participation and co-determination. "It is important that children can express their opinions and be heard in all matters that affect them - regardless of their age," said Frühauf. He thanked the children for their great presentation and their commitment to democracy and children's rights. The bench and the fence initially remained in the meeting room so that they could be shown to the councillors at the main committee meeting that took place that evening. "But of course we are looking for a suitable place so that we can also present them to the public," emphasized Mayor Frühauf.