A late afternoon in January, a 16 years old boy was attacked by four of his classmates from his own class, a 9^th grade in secondary school. The incidence took place in a rather small, rather wealthy town in Denmark, behind a local arena for sports, where the four boys had asked the 16- year-old to meet, apparently to solve some problems, which the group of boys had had in school about some common group work. The four boys threw a bottle of burning gasoline at the 16 year old, and his trousers caught fire. He walked all the way home in a condition, where trousers had burned away and his underpants burned into his skin. His parents brought him to the hospital, where he slowly recovered.  

The attacked boy is from an Afghan family, whose members came to Denmark as political refugees in 2005. The boy, Ali, has been a student at the same school since he was 7 years old, though not in the same class, as most Danish school classes are reorganized at 7^th grade. Thus, Ali got some new schoolmates when he was 14 years old. Ali has a father and a mother and several older and younger siblings, which are or has been attending the same school.

Ali is an extrovert type: he is attending the school gatherings and is an active boy. He plays football and is a member of a local fitness club. According to some of the classmates in school, Ali has the last two years and on a daily basis experienced bullying and harassment from lots of older boys at school: He has regularly been  pushed when he passed a group and he has in other ways been threatened, called degrading names and told to ‘go home to your own country’. In 8^th grade a larger group of boys gathered around Ali, clapping their hands to get him exited and frightened. Two years ago, he was attacked with stranglehold and threatened by death from a bay at the same school that is two years older than Ali. This boy was reported to the police by the school and later expelled from school.

The public does not know a lot about the attackers and their motives as they have been in police custody ever since the incidence. Some of their parents, though, have defended the actions of their children. They claim that the attacked boy has a positive (and thus unfair) special treatment from the teachers and the school in recent years. Some also claim, that there has been many problems with one special boy and that he therefore should have been expelled from school. Other parents underline that the other children in the class are victims too, as the parents in vain have asked the teachers and the school management to solve the problems, and they have felt that they have not been heard.

Questions:

• How do you think school had an impact and formed the children (Ali and his classmates) being teenagers, girls or boys, through their social interaction in the class? Could something similar happen in your school? How? And what could be done to prevent it by the school, the teachers and the students?
• What kind of problems might arise from how they feel about school and how they feel about each other?
• How can we imagine that other ways of schooling, learning and engaging could influence on how students feel about school, how each of the actors feel about themselves as individuals and as members of society and what students feel they will become?