Provide education in ethics (Ethical Literacy)

For the 1st quarter of 2021 we would like to report on a study by the ifo Institute about the positive impact of a mentoring program of our partner ROCK YOUR LIFE! 

ROCK YOUR LIFE! works - a beautiful study on the impact of applied ethics

It was only in the summer of 2020 that we introduced our partner ROCK YOUR LIFE! and its work. What Ethica Rationalis and ROCK YOUR LIFE! have in common is that both are convinced that practiced, ethical behavior produces positive effects for individuals and society as a whole. And now there is a very recent study by the ifo Institute in Munich from the beginning of 2021¹⁾, which proves that ROCK YOUR LIFE! actually works.

What does ROCK YOUR LIFE! do? 

ROCK YOUR LIFE! is a network that actively promotes educational equality and equal opportunities for young people. With its one-to-one mentoring program, ROCK YOUR LIFE! seeks to build bridges between pupils, students and companies.

A study conducted over several years by the ifo Institute in Munich of more than 300 ROCK YOUR LIFE! "mentees"²⁾ shows impressively:

The ROCK YOUR LIFE! mentoring program for high school students reaches the target group of educationally disadvantaged young people and levels out the disadvantages in terms of their labor market readiness and opportunities! School performance of the participants has improved significantly, and they have also developed a lot personally.

Which problems do the young "mentees" face?

They receive little support at home, some speak German only poorly, and they often attend "hotspot schools": severely disadvantaged young people often lack opportunities. But their opportunities on the job market can be considerably improved if university students support them as mentors, according to a study by the Munich-based Ifo Institute.

Students often get little help from their parents at home, according to Ludger Wößmann, head of the Ifo Center for the Economics of Education. "The program closes the gap in their labor market prospects compared to young people with more favorable backgrounds."

What did the Ifo Institute study consist of?

In a 5-year field study, the researchers examined how the potential-oriented mentoring of eighth- and ninth graders from main and middle-school (not high-school), respectively, by students as part of the voluntary "ROCK YOUR LIFE!" program had an impact. The results show improvements in many dimensions.

According to the study, one year after the start of the program, the mentors helped improve the youths' school grades in mathematics, patience and social skills, as well as their labor market orientation. An important aspect of this, he said, was that the youth viewed their mentors as somebody they could talk to about their future. "The positive effects are found equally for girls and boys," adds Sven Resnjanskij, co-author of the ifo study.

Family circumstances are not self-inflicted and are beyond the control of the individual, Wößmann says. Differences in family support are a major factor in social inequality, he adds. For example, according to calculations by the Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) in Germany, it can take six generations for the descendants of a low-income family to reach the average income. It should not go unmentioned that no positive effects of the program were demonstrable among young people from less disadvantaged family backgrounds.

"For severely disadvantaged youth, the expected income returns exceed the costs of the program many times over; we arrived at a ratio of 30:1," Wößmann elaborated. Elisabeth Hahnke, executive director of "ROCK YOUR LIFE!", emphasized another result of the study. Until now, she said, many had assumed that educational disadvantages could only be compensated at a very young age. "We now see that we can do this even at the age of 13, 14, 15, which is an absolutely positive, sensational result." Integration Minister Annette Widmann-Mauz says: "The results are an incentive for all those responsible for education. Mentoring works; building a bridge to education for young people from educationally disadvantaged families - whether with or without an immigrant background - and thus improving their chances in the labor market. We need man more programs like this.

The press conference with the ifo Institute in which the study was presented can be found here Link.

Footnotes:

1) The project was financially supported by the Wübben Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation, the Porticus Foundation and the Integration Commissioner of the Federal Government. Markus Warnke, Managing Director of the Wübben Foundation, says: "The results of the study are not only a compliment to the many volunteer sponsors, but also an obligation for politicians to support such projects."

2) The study involved 308 young people in 19 schools. They were divided into a participant group and a control group. The proportion of young people with an immigrant background among the participants was 58 percent, more than twice the German average (28 percent). One in four young people in the sample lived in a single-parent household, compared with 14 percent of the German average.