About 1.5 years ago some students (including me) from our school participated in a federally supported project called “Jugend denkt Zukunft” (“Youth think Future” - and yes it sounds shitty in German, too, and uses bad grammar…).

Interestingly enough most articles that have been translated don’t translate the grammar error, too, examples here, here and here.

Let me explain what it is about: The school partners with a local company (or rather the other way around because it seems that the local company has to pay a lot of money (some 6000 EUR) to the organization - NGO, of course - to participate and you (that is if you are the students) are part of a “role-playing game”, in which you first learn about “mega trends” of the future and then in the last two days have to come up with new product ideas that have more or less (mostly less) to do with the company and its current product lines.

The problem is, if you have to come up with new products for a service-provider (computer-related would be paradise probably) or at least one that directly sells to end users, you’re lucky, because you can actually come up with something useful or feasible (maybe). But if you end up at a company that produces screws, you’re_, well,_ screwed.. because you’ll never find something that is useful or makes sense and has something to do with your company in a way that won’t leave people scratching their heads afterwards.

Another big point is that I pity the company that gets new ideas from a group of pupils that it couldn’t come up with on its own - lock a few of your employees in a room for a week and you’ll probably get lots of good ideas, too, - without having to pay 6000 bucks and you can still lay them off it they don’t ;) - but it’s all about PR and publicity and making yourself look good in the public eyes and less about being efficient and actually producing results or teaching the students anything except faking and presenting fake results.

But even worse they don’t consider the effects on the pupils themselves. Everybody congratulates them for what they’ve done and how innovative their fake products are (the products are mostly based on concepts and technologies that are yet to be invented) and how great they are after all. It’s like entering bizarro world if you’re used to the real world with real research and real products. The worst moment I’ve experienced was when some otherwise cool students started to bitch about not being placed better in a state ranking of the best “Jugend denkt Zukunft” projects and in their opinion“they didn’t get a prize because their product was too realistic and too innovative” - and I wanted to smack him over the head too badly but resisted in the last moment. Their “product” was an idea consisting of a couple of fake powerpoint presentations that contained no actual information what-so-ever and a wrapped book that ought to represent an eBook-like thing.

So actually all you learn from doing those projects is how to produce professional-looking bullshit. Not less but not more either. It’s sad and pathetic and the PR crowd probably cheers for they have taught a new generation that you can quite probably sell shit if it’s only gift-wrapped nicely enough.

My opinion might be a too pessimistic one but I’ve gone through the actual project week and felt pathetic, attended two nominations for the project a few months ago - first the state-wide nomination of the best projects in Bavaria (was sometime in October) and we were placed third - in your face, guy from above! - and then the federal nomination in Berlin (it took place last December) and we even won first place (with two other schools) and I still felt very pathetic and both times my main thought was “what the fuck? why are we rewarded anything for this fake crap?” (our school won some good money by the way).

Moreover the whole nominations were crap, too. They were meant to be “innovation fairs” (another crappy name, but I simply want to convey the bad wording of the German expressions they used) and the one in Bavaria was a run-away joke - a fair of 5 teams presenting 5 bad ideas and the winners were already chosen beforehand, so it didn’t matter at all. And it was sponsored by Wrigleys - I must mention this because we’re shown a Wrigleys’ video and a Wrigleys representative was there and talked and the big nomination in Berlin wasn’t better either. That one was sponsored by Vodafone and two other companies (sorry I didn’t listen this time at all) and this time there were maybe 15 teams and it was possible to win an audience award - at least we were told.. In the end it turned out that the audience award really wasn’t determined by the audience but by the groups themselves because in the final gathering before or after the sponsors talked each group’s name and idea would be mentioned and the ones who clapped and cheered the loudest would win. I shouldn’t mention they only had one microphone for measuring the noise level and it was in the front at the stage and as incredible as it may sound the group who sat in front - won - oh my god, what a surprise! But kudos to the group who came up with the whole fair scheme (except for the clapping idea it was mostly great) and also kudos to IFOK  for out-sourcing that to students, too.

The secretary for families and youth even talked at the federal nomination and congratulated us for being a new elite and the innovators of the future in Germany. So instead of actually encouraging real research and real projects they make us participate in a project that will at best help us to obtain credits by false pretenses later in our lives… but of course, you can argue that you should foster both (actual research and presentations of it) but I’m still shocked by the opinions of some students who participated and simply think that they actually are great because of it.

Cheers,
Andreas

But now I’ve ranted enough about it (and I want to finally get it posted)