Nena's New School

"Some people buy a yacht, but we've bought a school," Nena told journalists at a recent press conference. Housed in a quaint but run-down 19th century villa outside Hamburg, the school's founding committee also includes Nena's partner, music producer Philipp Palm, set to take the reins as school principal.

The private school will be the first in Germany to be based on the Sudbury Valley School, founded in Massachusetts in 1968, after applications to set up similar establishments in Leipzig, Munich, Düsseldorf, Dresden and Berlin were repeatedly turned down. So although Nena was at pains to stress to reporters that this is not "Nena's school," celebrity clout may well have helped get the project off the ground.

Stars and schools

She might be best known in the English-language world merely as the perky German girl with the mullet who warbled her way to the top of the charts in 1984 with "99 Red Balloons," but 47-year-old Nena's fame on her home turf can hardly be overstated.

A national treasure, she isn't the first celebrity in the world to decide education needs a revamp -- Oprah Winfrey beat her to it in January with the opening of her Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Like Oprah, Nena is frequently held up as a role model for independent-spirited women, and as a mother of four, she shares her interest in education.

But that's where the similarities end. Oprah has said her school is about "building dreams" and creating a new generation of leaders, while some parents are reported to have complained it operates much like a prison. Nena has a far more relaxed agenda -- one more likely to draw complaints that life for the kids is all play and not enough work.

Anarchy versus authority

Often ridiculed by conservatives as anarchistic free-for-alls where pupils only attend lessons when they want to and extra-curricular activities include nude bathing, the central defining aspect of the Sudbury model is its non-compulsory nature. The approach stems from the basic belief that every individual learns what they need to know through life, so there is no need to try and design a curriculum. A grade-free zone, the schools are run by meetings where the students and staff participate equally, while classes do not separate the students into age groups, but emphasize free age-mixing as a powerful tool for learning and development.

As she showed the press around the school, Nena explained that she sees this freedom and autonomy as integral parts of a good education and therefore sent her own children to progressive Waldorf schools, after realizing how unhappy they felt in "normal" schools.

"I want to send my children to a school where they can develop their full potential," she said. "Children look forward to starting school, only to be disappointed."

"How would you like to be stuck in a room with some person who tells you when you can eat, when you can go to the bathroom and when you should be quiet?" she added. "I cannot understand why society puts up with this."