All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

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Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung 2013/05/15
Reading time 1:45 minutes

A bicycle workshop for experimenting

Pupils learn how to service their bicycles on their own – Three schools cooperate with the Zedler-Insitute

It’s a particular education partnership: On the one hand, altogether three schools have decided to cooperate with a company; on the other hand this cooperation has helped one school (Marbach Uhlandschule) so set up a bicycle workshop. And in these rooms pupils are trained on the job on how to properly service a bicycle, how to replace inner tubes, adjust the gears or tighten spokes. What has started during the past weeks with equipping the bicycle workshop, will set off after the Whitsun school holidays.

According to Bernd Schlegel, headmaster of the Marbach school for children with special needs and “host” of the workshop, it’s a “little gem” that has been developed, as he underlined during the official presentation yesterday. From now on three pupils (one from Anne-Frank-Realschule, one from Tobias-Mayer-Werkrealschule and one from Uhlandschule ) will experiment and screw under expert guidance once a week. This job will be assumed by school social worker Mark Lange, also an enthousiastic cyclist, and Bernd Romhart, two-wheel master mechanic of the Ludwigsburg Zedler-Institut für Fahrradtechnik und –Sicherheit, the education partner of the schools.

Together with Bernd Schlegel, its founder Dirk Zedler has developed the idea of a bicycle workshop and he is sure that the participating pupils will learn a lot there. For the „bicycle guru“ (Schlegel about Zedler) the two-wheel market is a market with major growth opportunities, a fact which is proved already by the fact that last year 380,000 pedelecs, i.e. bicycles with electric motors, were sold in Germany alone. According to Zedler, 20 years ago no more than five engineers with a two-wheel technology specialization were working in the branch. Meanwhile, the career prospects in the branch have improved a lot. And in case the Marbach bicycle workshop would bring out a capable apprentice for his company, this would be also a welcome side effect.

Jan Trost, the Mayor of Marbach, was also very interested in the bicycle workshop equipped by Zedler and highly impressed. “This is a place where pupils learn for life, train motor skills and get to know the technical relations.” Mainly, for a lack of space no more than three pupils can experiment and tinker about at the same time. As soon as they will have learned the basic knowledge for servicing a bicycle, the team will change. One of the objectives is to keep the two-wheeled fleet of the participating schools in good condition.