Super Diversity Feb18 2016, Amsterdam

Raimond Wouda on his project ‘School’

The bell rings, its break time. Students rush out of classrooms, stairs get clogged and every corner of the building is being seized by groups of youngsters chatting, laughing and eating their sandwiches. These are images of high school still engraved in my memory. Photographer Raimond Wouda captured these very moments in his exhibition School, which can be currently visited at The Wall.

School is a long-term project that Wouda initiated in 2003. At that time Dutch media focussed mainly on the negative side of high schools. ‘Articles about violence and poor quality of education were dominating the newspapers.’ A very one-dimensional view in his opinion: ‘The role of social life was completely neglected, even though it’s such an important period of a young person’s life.’ A blind spot, he concluded, so he took action.

Wouda approaches each school almost as a micro cosmos. ‘It’s life in its extremes, it’s all about hormones, finding your own personality, he explains. ‘That’s why it is so interesting.’ He aims to ‘mind-map the lives of today’s youngsters, to reveal the main questions they’re dealing with, how they feel about their future and Europe.’ In that sense Wouda takes on the role of an anthropologist: observing the social structures and unwritten rules within the borders of different European schools, but reflecting upon universal themes.

To the question if his experiences in high school are different from what he has seen in the European schools, Wouda answers: ‘It’s the same in many ways, but a lot has changed as well. The role of social media for example is fascinating. It plays such a large role in a student’s life nowadays; it’s their main source for news. Schools have to act upon this. But in general, students are still struggling with the same things as I used to do.’

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