Alexandra Auer: "The Intangible Effect of Walls"

“breaking a mental wall can be a lot more difficult than simply tearing down a physical one”

Alexandra Auer shares her view between physical and mental walls. She gives the example of the Berlin wall and how it has affected Germany for decades as well as how it can affect children and their views.

She starts off by explaining how we build walls for everything. We use them as protection, and they are used to make us feel safe. Walls are supposed to provide us with security but instead, it separates us. It forces us to treat one another like the enemy. When the Berlin wall first fell, she felt as if the world had become a new place, a place without barriers separating everyone. Sadly, when the attacks started, the walls increased and became worse. This created a mental wall. Mental walls grow strong, and if the mental wall is strong, the physical one will be too. Typically, one comes with the other so if one crumbles, theoretically, the other should too. With the Berlin wall, no one knew who the wall was facing because there wasn’t an “us and a them”. All of a sudden, each side in Germany developed their own identities which created a separation between the two. A mental wall was built. But when the wall fell again, the mental wall stayed up. It was so bad that many eastern Germans had to reintegrate into their own country.

When Alexandra worked at a school, she was able to notice the mental wall that was built in the children. There were two schools separated by a fence. The schools teach almost the exact same thing, the only difference is one school is visited by a majority of Belgian children and the other by immigrant children. Because the schools were separated by fences, most of the children never made friends with the kids on the other side. Children should not be separated from one another, they should come together to learn from each other, and the more diversity between the children, the more they will learn from one another. When she asked a little boy if he would be friends with the kids on the other side, his answer was no, however, when asked if he would be friends with them if the fence wasn’t there, the boy said yes. When we build physical walls, we build mental walls, we assume they can solve our problems or our worries. The only thing they really do is “reduce the symptoms”.

Watch the full talk here!