The family’s tenth grader just spent a week in kindergarten at the behest of his school. He handed out food and later wiped up the leftovers from the floor, helped put on muddy pants and played soccer in the garden with little boys and girls while other little boys and girls clung to his legs. He looked for lost cuddly toys, encouraged the use of soap when washing his hands and suppressed his own gag instinct when two children vomited in a duet. He didn’t bring the gastrointestinal virus home with him, but he did bring a cough, a runny nose and a feverish middle ear infection.
The year before, the then ninth-grader spent a week in the social media department of a football club at the behest of his school. He assisted with player interviews for fan television and edited videos on the computer, prepared press conferences, posted training scenes on Instagram and researched the best goals of the season. He brought home a T-shirt with everyone’s autographs on it.
Which of the two activities is a job? And what nonsense?
Many high schools in Munich and the surrounding area send their middle school students to two internships. One is called a professional internship, the other a social internship. Which would answer the question: In this logic, promoting Bundesliga football is a job. And looking after children professionally is for people who want to do good and are socially committed.
It doesn’t matter what the internships are called, you could say. The main thing is that teenagers are given the duty to look after children, the poor, the elderly, the sick or people with disabilities for a week. Yes, that’s true on the one hand. On the other hand, recognition starts with language; words are the key to appreciation. Why can’t it just be called vocational internship I and vocational internship II, with the requirement that one of the two jobs must be a social institution?
This would express that the profession of nurse, educator or street worker is worth (and should be financially worth) just as much as the profession of designer, press spokesman or mechanical engineering professor. This wouldn’t solve the shortage of nursing staff of all kinds, but perhaps it would be a small start.
The tenth grader, who was actually “not really keen” on the social work internship, wrote in his work log: “Being an educator is tiring, but it’s a lot of fun.” The children’s recognition came to him in the form of friend books, which he filled out in the evenings. His answer to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”: something in the field of football.