Strong Nerves and the Ability to Handle Chaos

Abstract

The Hessian state government has developed and tested a model (JAMSA—young single mothers in career training) to give young single mothers without career training an apprenticeship in Germany’s dual system of vocational education. Hundreds of young women took part in the test model at ten different locations in the state of Hessen. The project’s goal was to encourage and support young single mothers in their completion of a company-based traineeship. Concurrently, the intention was to support those companies that trained young single mothers. Prof. Dr. Angela Paul-Kohlhoff and Dr. Uta Zybell, among others, followed the project model for four years. The two-volume work presents the results of the model and the consequences for practical politics. It not only sketches ways in which disadvantages for young single mothers can be eradicated, but also establishes general options for reforming career education in Germany based on experiences in training young mothers. Thus, at the top of the agenda for reform in career education is flexibility and individuality without the reduction of quality—and this applies not only to the book’s target group “young single mothers.”