In European societies can be observed an increase of nationalistic positions. In several states right-wing populist parties had success in elections. In Germany there are movements like islam critic Pegida. Also in other european countries mistrust against citizen of islamic faith can be found. Everyday work at special education schools has shown, that also students with special needs can have prejudices against members of cultural, ethnic or religious minorities. Some of these prejudices are took over from their social surroundings. Because of their learning difficulties these students are mostly not able to recognize xenophobic or excluding positions or statements or to reflect those in a critical way. Because of this, students are more receptive to take over these or even extremist positions and might even get involved in xenophobic acts. In addition to this there is the problem, that these students often don´t know how to deal with certain situations in a proper way and might have a higher willingness to solve supposed problems with the use of physical violence. Also there is an increased danger for them to be instrumentalized or exploited by groups or parties which support these kind of positions. At last there is also the danger for them to get involved in criminal actions. Existing concepts created to be the used at schools dealing with subjects as "prejudices", "exclusion" and "tolerance" have been developed for regular schools, therefore the adaption for the use at special education schools only is partly possible. Reasons for this problem are the heterogeneity of the learning groups as well as their need of highly structured lessons and the use of methods which enable them to actively deal with the topics of lesson. During the project "Humanity first!" there will be weekly learning groups at both partner schools, especially for students who have shown by their behaviour or statements that they do need to work on this special subjects. Teachers of both partner schools will create, test, evaluate and optimize a teaching conception by the exchange of experiences made during the whole process. The final conception is developed for the use especially for students with special needs and it shall empower the special education teachers in many special education schools to teach this subject in an appropriate way. One of the two main aims of the conception is the possibility to deal with existing prejudices which are already shown by the students and give them the opportunity to get rid of those prejudices. The other main aim of the conception is to be used in a preventive way by improving the students ability to reflect statements and positions, which include excluding, intolerant and racist contents. Further the students shall be enabled to build up an opinion on their own, that is based on tolerance. This is also meant to be a preventive measure against the danger for our students to be instrumentalized by others as well as against the danger of becoming radicalized and maybe getting involved in criminal acts. To ensure that the results of the project as well as the teaching conception will be known and used by other schools and institutions than just the partner schools, the teaching conception will be described in detail in a reader. This reader and all created teaching materials as well as developed teaching methods will be made accessible to the public by offering them to be downloaded from the school homepages as well as on eTwinning and other educational internet pages. The distribution of the conception as well as its sustainable impact shall be guaranteed by the fact that the conception can be used at every school for special needs. Due to the facts, that the group of students
The Erasmus+-project "Humanity first - How to teach tolerance and reduce prejudice shown by students with special needs" was conducted by the Hans-Verbeek-School in Euskirchen and the OS Nad Lipom in Zagreb, Croatia. Both schools are special education schools with the focus on mental development. In the school life of the participating schools it has been repeatedly shown by students' statements in the classroom or during social interaction that many students with special needs are prejudiced against strangers or unknowns (such as people of certain ethnic groups, nationality or religion) too, partly from their environment or taken from media. Due to their need for support, these students are often unable to identify and critically reflect xenophobic or exclusionary comments. As a result, this group of pupils is more receptive to taking on such attitudes and to instrumentalization by groups or parties that represent and propagate such attitudes. In everyday teaching, it is often difficult to adequately meet the needs of individual students. The main concern of the partner schools for the Erasmus + project was to meet this need and the corresponding problem in the classroom. At the partner schools "Erasmus-AG's" were set up, in which the groups of students worked two hours a week on these topics in the classroom. The AGs worked with students from different classes at the age of 13 to 20 years. The selection of the pupils was based on the problem described above and was carried out in close consultation with the class teachers. A central goal of the project was to help the students recognize and overcome existing prejudices and to promote the development of a tolerant attitude. The promotion of the ability to reflect was of great importance to enable the students to recognize and reject stereotypes and xenophobic attitudes that might be brought to them in the future as well. This also required a boost in self-esteem to maintain acquired tolerant positions even when confronted with contrary positions or negative influences. In order to explain abstract concepts such as "prejudices" and "tolerance" to the pupils, the partner schools have subdivided the subject matter into sub-topics and created eight content modules. Starting with very tangible and basic content, the foundations for understanding more complex and abstract content were created and the requirements gradually increased. A ninth module "Encounter" was held as part of the short-term teaching, training and learning activities. In each year of the project, the project groups visited the respective partner school to deepen the acquired content together. In total, four short-term teaching, training and learning activities have taken place. Here, the students, mostly for the first time, had the experience to feel like strangers in another country. Together they made excursions to memorial sites, exhibitions and museums, where the students could learn about the consequences of intolerance, hatred and war. In Croatia, commemorative sites of the Yugoslav civil war were visited, while in Germany the Holocaust memorial Buchenwald was visited. As part of these visits, supplemented by personal reports of Croatian colleagues and other contemporary witnesses, the learning content became emotionally tangible for the students. In this way, the students could develop a basic understanding of the meaning of “prejudices” and “tolerance” during the project duration. Through learning objectives checks using worksheets and role-playing games, as well as behavioral observations in the classroom or in social interaction, it could be stated that work in the AGs strengthened the reflectivity of most students. The teaching work in the project working groups was evaluated within the scope of three transnational project meetings. The effectiveness of the methods used to determine students' learning prerequisites, the methods and materials selected, and the method of reviewing the learning objectives were examined. On the basis of the results of the evaluation and the experiences from the lessons, the teachers of the partner schools have developed a teaching concept as main result of the Erasmus+-project, which offers suggestions and material to other teachers at special needs schools, who also want to execute a teaching project on the subjects "prejudices" and "tolerance" at their school.