Preparing students for their future

When Christian Heinrich Fürst zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein, the owner of Schloss Wittgenstein, decided not to live in the castle anymore, he made the decision to offer it as a place for a school with a boarding home, instead. This school was founded by Josef Kämmerling, 65 years ago. As well as the boarding students, youths from the surrounding areas attend the two schools, also.

Students need the appropriate support to discover and unfold their potentials, this is one thing that Schloss Wittgenstein is certain of. According to them, students should feel at home at their schools; students, teachers and parents cultivate a familial relationship – that is how an agreeable learning environment is created. At the boarding home, students can do their homework together with teachers after school. If a student needs more support, there is the possibility to take extra lessons. There are even more educational aspects that distinguish the two schools from others. For example, in the bilingual education programme, political science and biology are taught in English. There is also a special class that teaches pupils how to learn properly, and students support each other in learning tutorials. On project days, students learn how to stay healthy, and there is also an ‘antibullying-team’ to help affected students. The motto of Schloss Wittengenstein is that learning should definitely be fun.

The schools offer a wide range of freetime activities. Every student can take part, but no one has to if they don’t want to. Different kinds of sports, like football, handball, basketball, dancing and cheerleading, invite the students to burn off energy, and on top of these, a riding school is part of Schloss Wittgenstein, too. There is also a school band, a firstaid service by students, and groups that commit themselves to rhetoric and legal studies.

Since 1954, the Institut Schloss Wittgenstein, with two private schools (‘Realschule’ and ‘Gymnasium’) and a boarding home in Bad Laasphe (North RhineWestphalia), has offered students a safe environment away from big cities and all of their influences. The schools’ aim is to recognise every student’s strengths and weaknesses, and to promote them in a learning-friendly atmosphere.

It should not be that children are only trained at school, and in the end, they do not know what to do with that knowledge: that is another conviction of Schloss Wittgenstein. Therefore, study and work orientation is of great importance at both schools, which work together with ‘hidden champions’, local companies that operate worldwide. The students can visit a vocational information centre and are individually consulted at the ‘Agentur für Arbeit’. On top of this, an internship of two weeks is taken on by students in the ninth grade.

Developing the students’ interest in the world around them is another top priority at the schools, and so they are offered the opportunity to go on school trips abroad: for instance, England and France were two such trips undertaken recently.