Verena Friederike Hasel

What is the most important thing you can learn at school? Making mistakes. Because that’s when the brain grows.
First graders who do their first science experiment with chocolate High school graduates who spend 48 hours in the woods learning how to deal with loneliness. Seventh graders who read the same book all over the country to discuss it on Twitter. And a headmaster who greets each child personally in the morning.
That’s the way schools are run in New Zealand, a country that tops educational rankings, where erasers are banned because there’s no shame in making mistakes, and where the headmaster sometimes dances with students in the teachers’ room.

Verena Friederike Hasel is a graduate psychologist, journalist and author of, among others, Der tanzende Direktor – Lernen in der besten Schule der Welt (2019). In 2018 she won the German Reporter Award.

In the series School New Thinking

In cooperation with the GEW Rhein-Neckar-Heidelberg