When it comes to ghettos, oppressed women, and angry young men with too much energy and too little to do, few in Denmark are as well-qualified as sociologist, author, and journalist Aydin Soei.
This is why in 2016, the Copenhagen Municipality asked Professor Flemming Balvig, Associate Professor Lars Holmberg from the University of Copenhagen, and Aydin Soei to investigate student behavior at two schools.
Tingbjerg School, with its poor parents, their poor Danish language skills, and where 80 percent of students had roots in other countries, and then the neighboring Brønshøj School, where the parents were employed, and the number of students with an ethnic background was minimal.
Aydin Soei had previously struggled to get in contact with Tingbjerg School. Now Marco Damgaard had joined as the school principal, and the investigation sounded intriguing to him.
»They also had little to lose by participating. The worst the school could risk was that the study confirmed the existing prejudices«, says Aydin Soei.
A year later, in 2017, he stood in the teachers’ lounge at Tingbjerg School and presented the results.
»It was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop«.
It didn’t surprise him. He was shocked by the results himself. He had been convinced there would be significant differences between the responses from the two schools. There weren’t, except in one crucial area.
Unlike the students at Brønshøj, the students at Tingbjerg were surrounded by adults who underestimated them in every aspect. Parents and teachers thought the students were more criminal than they were, had few ambitions, and did not care about their school. This was not the case, and Aydin Soei calls it the most remarkable finding.
»93 percent of the students were happy with their school, but the students themselves believed that only half of their peers liked it. The parents thought it was a bit under half. The teachers and educators thought that only a little over half liked going to school«.
Anyone who has attended a teaching college has learned that high expectations for students yield better grades and better behavior, and low expectations result in the opposite. At Tingbjerg School, the teachers began discussing why they had been so wrong. Some older teachers believed it must be the younger teachers who did not know their students and had their opinions influenced by negative media headlines and various politicians’ ghetto-bashing. Some younger teachers thought the older ones were wrong because they were stuck in how things were 20 years ago.
»Everyone was pointing fingers at each other«, says Aydin Soei, who remembers exactly when the mood shifted.
»It happened when a teacher raised their hand and said: »Look at the numbers. 93 percent are happy to go to school. It must be because we are creating a good school in an area where everyone thinks it’s impossible. We should be proud of that««.
Cultural relativist mumbo jumbo
After that, teachers, students, parents, housing associations, and many others began a campaign with the goal of creating an encouraging and more accurate narrative about the students, the teachers, and the school.
»It might sound like some kind of cultural relativist mumbo jumbo, where you just dip a finger into everyday life and say, »we need to have positive expectations,« and then everything is fixed,« says Aydin Soei. He himself doesn’t believe in the long-term impact of researchers coming in to facilitate classroom conversations for a year or so.
»When Tingbjerg is the school district—likely in the entire country—that has seen the most positive development since 2017, it’s because it didn’t just stop at talk. The leadership made it a mission and goal to have positive expectations for the students, to get to know them, and to build strong relationships with them.«
If a teacher couldn’t commit to this vision, it might be time to find another job. Several did just that. Those who stayed had to be all in, ensuring there wasn’t a high turnover in the staff.
»It also contributes to a positive narrative among the staff. We can see that our students are happy to go to school«, says Aydin Soei.
Both the former principal Marco Damgaard and the current deputy head Anne Mette Færgemann confirm the decisive impact of the study on the school. Today, the results are clear.
Around 2014, only 33 percent of the parents in Tingbjerg sent their children to the local public school, and many of them sent their children to Muslim private schools. Today, almost 60 percent of the residents choose the school. In 2014, the school was heading towards 300 students. Now there are around 600 students.
»That is the most important number of all. The school was practically threatened with closure because the parents in Tingbjerg opted out of it. Now they choose it«, says Marco Damgaard.
Final hour with ’Skam’
When Julie Chrøis began as a class teacher nearly seven years ago, she had an ambition not to reprimand and be more gentle than strict.
»I might have a different view of children than some of the parents, so you could say that I probably did not blend in well initially, where I wanted to be very soft in my approach. I am still positive but also much more assertive and clear. The children need to feel my boundaries. If they cannot feel who I am and what I stand for, they will run circles around me«.
She has also been too angry sometimes and later thought that maybe it was not the best approach.
»Then I went back and apologized to the student, and it was perfectly okay. They understood why I got annoyed. But they are just children. They test boundaries«.
Even to the untrained eye, it’s clear that there’s a strong bond between her and the students in 7.E. They call her funny, kind, and talented, and she’s been with them for seven years now.
»I wouldn’t have stayed if we didn’t have a strong relationship. They are the most incredible students. We truly have children from all sorts of families and different cultures, and of course, it’s important to hold on to your roots. But we make a big effort, not just me but also my colleagues, to emphasize that they speak Danish, and in my eyes, they are Danes.«
The noticeable progress is also due to the school explaining to all parents that Danish and math are the most important subjects. Previously, many students were hopelessly behind when starting kindergarten because they had not attended nursery school and because their parents spoke another language at home. But in areas like Tingbjerg, schools are now required to language test all students. Not just when they start school, but every school year. Students who do not pass the language test after four attempts must repeat the same grade and continue to be taught Danish as a second language.
Democratic education is also a key term. When the children were younger, Julie Chrøis could not just assume they knew Danish children’s TV, children’s songs, or Disney movies.
»I had to introduce them to these things. I also taught them the national anthem in music. They don’t get that at home. Most of them don’t, at least«.
At home, they also do not watch a TV series like the Norwegian show ’Skam’.
It is about some high school students in Oslo and revolves around youth life, friendships, love, sex, sexual assaults, consent, and being gay or lesbian. It also features Sana, a Norwegian-Muslim girl, and her struggle to balance faith, identity, and friendships with her Christian classmates.
»A fantastic series«, says Julie Chrøis.
One day, when the class is off at 14:30, she puts on the fourth episode of the series around 14:00. The timing is intentional. Here, they are tired and unfocused and find it difficult to manage the last half hour. When the film starts playing, she sits herself at the back of the classroom. Then she whispers.
»They are a couple of years younger than the main characters in the series, and most of them love it. It deals with all the things that many of them don’t talk much about at home. Look at them. They are completely, completely silent«.
That is what they are. Completely, completely silent.
The ordinary school
This does not mean that everything is good. Although the district has experienced a decline in criminal reports in recent years – a decline that is larger than for all of Copenhagen – residents are still less secure in the area than citizens are in all of Copenhagen. Students still grow up in Copenhagen’s poorest parish, their parents are still more unemployed, earn less, and speak poorer Danish than the parents at an average Danish public school, and 86 percent of them have roots in other countries.
»Tine, Sofie, Oscar, and August«, do not go here, says Anne Mette Færgemann, the deputy head of the school. Precisely for this reason, the transformation is remarkable, she believes.
»We are challenged when it comes to inclusion. More children are supposed to be in the regular public school, even if they have autism or ADHD. We struggle with that, but so do all other schools«, she says, and that is the point.
Tingbjerg School is not a model school, but it is beginning to resemble an ordinary Danish public school.
»That is what we have strived to be for many years. An ordinary Danish public school with Danish norms, Danish rules, Danish problems, and results comparable to other schools«, says Anne Mette Færgemann, adding:
»We are not quite there yet, but we are close«.
In an earlier version of this article, we misspelled Aydin Soei’s name. Politiken regrets the error.
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