26 July 2011
Skolan behövs av fler skäl än att den ger barn en utbildning. Skolan är ett mikrosamhälle där både det roliga, tråkiga, snälla och elaka samsas. Klasskompisen kan bli bästis och ovän under en och samma dag. Läraren kan vara elak och olämplig. Men oftast lär man sig ändå en hel del under lektionerna, rasterna, skolutflykten och idrottsdagen.
Det är i skolan som man först lär sig att umgås med nya människor, både barn och vuxna. Man lär sig även att ta kritik och att stå på egna ben i ett socialt sammanhang. Skolan är på många vis en nödvändig del av uppväxten och skapandet av den egna identiteten.
För några veckor sedan trädde den nya skollag i kraft som bland annat ökar restriktionerna för hemundervisning. Hemundervisning är en både bristfällig och socialt hämmande utbildningsform men eftersom det fortfarande förekommer i Sverige är frågan angelägen.
Det verkar självklart att föräldrar inte ska få bestämma sina barns utbildningar efter vare sig eget huvud eller livsåskådning. Jag tror att de flesta föräldrar nog har egna önskemål om hur den bästa skolundervisningen för just deras barn ska se ut.
Men det är få föräldrar som tar steget ut och själva tar på sig skolans arbete. Och det är tur då undervisning i hemmet hindrar barn från de nödvändiga sociala kontaktytorna som skolan kan ge dem.
Till skillnad från de som ser avskurenheten i hemundervisning som positivt, anser jag att skolans påverkan på barn inte endast är bra utan faktiskt nödvändig för att barn ska finna sin plats i samhället.
Och om man inte kallar det påverkan, utan i stället influenser eller varför inte stimulans, känns det plötsligt mer orimligt att förneka barn det. Vi behöver redan som små kontakt med andra människor; även, eller kanske främst, med de som inte liknar oss eller vår familj.
Det generösa utbud av friskolor som vi fått under senare år eliminerade också de sista hållbara argument för att hemskolning skulle vara bättre ur ett individuellt undervisningsperspektiv.
Jag anser att den skolpedagogik eller värdegrund som i dag inte står att finna i skolutbudet med största sannolikhet saknar existensberättigande som undervisningsform. Skolor genomgår ett kontrollsystem som visserligen skulle kunna förbättras men som dock genomlyser skolornas kvalitet. Det som däremot sker mellan hemmets fyra väggar riskerar att stanna just där.
Skolåren kan tyvärr vara jobbiga för en del barn. Mobbning, dåliga lärare och stressade miljöer är fortfarande allt för vanligt och det måste förändras. Men jag är övertygad om att det är risker värda att ta för att låta sina barn gå i en skola.
Vi kan, och ska, inte heller skydda barn från deras egen verklighet. De liksom vi vuxna har också rätt att ha en fast plats de kan gå till och där de kan vara någon annan än de är i hemmet. Skolan behövs av fler skäl än att den ger barn en anpassad utbildning, möjligheter till umgänge och att skapa den egna identiteten.
Skolan är ett barns första möte med livet som vuxen. I vilket det roliga, tråkiga, snälla och elaka även i fortsättningen kommer att samsas.
The school is required by more reasons than that it gives children an education. The school is a micro-society where both the funny, sad, good, and evil coexist. Classmates can be best friend and foe in a single day. The teacher can be mean and inappropriate. But mostly we still learn a lot in class, recess, school excursions and sports days.
It is the school that one first learns to socialize with new people, both children and adults. You learn to take criticism and to stand on your own in a social context. The school is in many ways a necessary part of growing up and shaping their own identity.
A few weeks ago, the new Education Act came into force including increasing restrictions on home schooling. Homeschooling is both flawed and socially inhibiting form of education but because it still exists in Sweden, the question is urgent. It seems obvious that parents should not be allowed to decide their child's education after either own head, or philosophy of life. I think most parents probably have their own preferences about how the best schools for their children should look like.
But there are few parents who take the plunge and themselves take on the school's work. And it is fortunate when home schooling prevents children from required social contact surfaces which school can give them.
Unlike from those who see avskurenheten in home schooling as something positive, I believe that the school's impact on children is not only good but actually necessary for the child should find its place in society.
And if you do not call it influence, but rather influences or even stimulus, it seems suddenly more unreasonable to deny the children. We have already as a little contact with other people, even, or perhaps primarily, by those who are not like us or our family.
The generous selection of private schools that we have received in recent years also eliminated the last viable argument for homeeducation would be better from an individual teaching perspective.
I believe that the school education or values that today are not found in the school choice will most likely have no right to exist as an educational form. Schools undergo a control system which, although it could be improved but which shines through the schools' quality. The contrast is between the home's four walls threaten to stop right there.
School years can unfortunately be difficult for some children. Bullying, bad teachers and stressful environments are still far too common and it must change. But I am convinced that there are risks worth taking in order to allow their children to go to a school. We can, and should, do not protect children from their own reality. They, like us adults are also entitled to have a fixed place they can go to and where they may be different than they are at home. The school is required by more reasons than that it gives children an appropriate education, opportunities for socializing and creating their own identity.
The school is a child's first encounter with life as an adult. In all the funny, sad, good, and evil will continue to coexist.
28 July 2011
It is the sacred responsibility of journalists to tell the truth and there was precious little of it in this article. Worse, it contains a vision of what the government not only won't do but cannot to do ensure the educational and social welfare of youngsters at school. More about that in a minute as we look at the state's curriculum vitae for failure.
That homeschooling is somehow "flawed", as the anonymous author of this article has put it, is shere bunkum, and either the author has no clue what homeschooling is (in which case he/she is a flawed journalist) or he/she knows but is entirely prejudiced to the demonstrated scientific facts. For it has been proven academically that homeschooling not only works but is usually better than the school system. Millions of homeschoolers around the world have totally exposed the lie that is being presented as truth.
And what is so "obvious" that parents should not choose the kind of education which they feel is best for their child? Who is to say what philosophical system is better or worse? Are there objective, scientific studies to prove that only one kind of education works or is best? No. And the whole point of home education anyway is that the child learns its way and at its pace so that in the end the child will choose its own philosophy and not the one forced on it in the unitary state system in Sweden. For let us be under no illusions: the Swedish state system is designed to produce children all thinking in one way, just as the Soviets and Nazis before them. Those that created this system may believe that theirs is the best way but it is, in the end, just a belief.
Many subjective value statements are made in this article that are framed in such a way as to accuse all other systems of being in some way not only inferior but also immoral. When the writer says that "the school's impact on children is not only good but actually necessary for the child should find its place in society" he/she is making many unsubstantiated claims. Who is to say it is "good"? By what measurements? And who is to say it is "necessary" except some tinpot dictator brandishing a whip? Since overwhelming evidence can be marshalled that shows that home education is "better" both academically and socially (I cite only two examples here), who on earth does this writer think he/she is? One thing is for certain: he/she is ignorant and biased.
Private schools are hailed as valid alternatives and choice for those who want state schools. Bunkum. Most cannot afford private schools. And free schools are just redressed state schools teaching the same curriculum. So what is so "unreasonable"? It is the author's premises that are "unreasonable".
The author exalts the "control system" as the state schools validator but who is doing the controlling and by what criteria?
Of all the articles I have read defending the state system I consider this to be the most dangerous one, and if this is a government-sponsored statement under the guise of some independent critic, it is all the more damgerous. Why? Because the author is openly admitting that some individuals don't matter, the ones that don't fit - it is only the majority that matters. He/she is admitting that school can be hard for some (murderous would be a better word) and that improvements need to be made (let's see them first - the academic and social statistics are appalling in Swedish state schools) - "bullying, bad teachers and stressful environments are still far too common", he/she says, and not a few children are destroyed by them. However, that does not apparently seem to matter any more because, we are being effectively told, that's "life" and what you can expect in the outside world. So let's treat vulnerable children as though they were in the outside world, seems to be the message - it's a tough life, so let's get the children used to it. It sounds like a jungle mentality and children suffer for it.
This article is a blatant example of the blindness of statist collectivism. Those that end up at the receiving end of bullies, bad teachers, and stressful environments do not apparently deserve anything better - they are to be sacrificed if needs be. There is, after all, thestate-sponsored child-trafficking system to be maintained. Tough on those who fall through the ever widening cracks in the system! With 20,000 children a year being seized by social services and forcibly given over to state-sponsored (and handsomely paid) foster parents (a lucrative business), most of whom are perfectly normal and whose parents are perfectly normal, this system is hardly paradise and schools - which according to this mythical utopian model are supposed to be shaping a new enlightened generation - is in reality just creating a social and illiterate holocaust.
School is a wholly unnatural environment and is nothing like the outside world and to claim that it is necessary for children's social development is, again, pure bunkum. The statistics contradict it. But one of the last statements of the author is probably the most frightening of all: "The school is required by more reasons than that it gives children an appropriate education, opportunities for socializing and creating their own identity" Appropriate according to whose political doctrine? The state's? Some faceless, unelected beureaucrats'? And what "identity" is being offered? A state prepackaged one with a limited range of choices, all state-approved. And what are those "other reasons" that it does not give? What are we supposed to make of that? For as the state has proven in the Domenic Johansson case, secrecy is the watchword - that "hidden agenda". No thank you, I want to know all the reasons for the way the system is set-up, and I want academic and social evidence that it works before I'll put any child of mine through some state school's doors.
The monolithic, conformist state as parent is the stuff of nightmares. The 20th century was overflowing with them. Haven't we learned our lesson? The state is not God, it doesn't - and cannot - know everything, and it only represents one point of view at any one time. And what is the Swedish state's point of view? See my politics page to find out.
Children and parents alike need authentic liberty, not the artifically packaged version full of poisonous additives. Children are not mere batch numbers for society but are individuals in need of protection (all of them), nurturing (all of them) and the freedom to learn in their own way (all of them). That any should be written off as "inevitable victims" is an horrific thought, in spite of organised attempts to remedy the situation (which have failed again and again), when parents who love and know what's best for their children are available as homeschoolers to lower and remove that dirty statistic. There is no doubt that some children thrive in schools but the majority put up with it as a prisoner adjusts and puts up with prison until it is time to be released. Hardly a recipe for "good" socialisation.
Homescholing creates children who love learning - institutional schooling creates children who come to hate it because they see it for what it really is - incarceration. But perhaps that is the kind of society the author wants to actually create - a giant prison for adults - and it is for that that the state school system is preparing its little prisoners for.
Onsdagen den 27:e juli 2011
Tidningen Skånskan publicerade igår en artikel på ledar/opinionssida där författaren skriver fördomsfullt om hemundervisning. Utan att anstränga sig det minsta lilla som behövs för att få reda på att hemundervisning faktiskt är ett fullgott alternativ till grundskolan, väljer tidningen att saklöst spola hela tanken om valfrihet. Man verkar inte heller känna till att hemundervisade barn ofta visar på ett rikt socialt engagemang och en mer än godkänd kunskapsnivå. Så här skriver Skånskan:
För några veckor sedan trädde den nya skollag i kraft som bland annat ökar restriktionerna för hemundervisning. Hemundervisning är en både bristfällig och socialt hämmande utbildningsform men eftersom det fortfarande förekommer i Sverige är frågan angelägen.
Det verkar självklart att föräldrar inte ska få bestämma sina barns utbildningar efter vare sig eget huvud eller livsåskådning. Jag tror att de flesta föräldrar nog har egna önskemål om hur den bästa skolundervisningen för just deras barn ska se ut. Men det är få föräldrar som tar steget ut och själva tar på sig skolans arbete. Och det är tur då undervisning i hemmet hindrar barn från de nödvändiga sociala kontaktytorna som skolan kan ge dem.
Det verkar som att Skånskan vill ha ett enkelriktat samhälle där ansvarsfulla föräldrar kriminaliseras genom lagstiftning. Det är mer än skrämmande att tio familjer på grund av nya skollagen redan tvingats gå i exil. Dock finns det lagar som även Sverige anslutit sig till och som måste följas. Exempelvis lär första tilläggsprotokollet, artikel 2 i Europakonventionen komma upp till prövning för att se om nya skollagen verkligen håller måttet:
Ingen må förvägras rätten till undervisning. Vid utövandet av den verksamhet staten kan påta sig ifråga om uppfostran och undervisning skall staten respektera föräldrars rätt att tillförsäkra sina barnen uppfostran och undervisning som står i överensstämmelse med föräldrarnas religiösa och filosofiska övertygelse.
