by Religious for-profit ‘free schools’ Swedish governments have for years now announced that they want to tighten the rules for religious for-profit free schools. Last year Minister of Education Lina Axelsson Kihlbom claimed that this would be “an important step in regaining democratic control in schools.” Goodness gracious! And to think that we still have to hear this nonsense. It’s mind-boggling. The fact that religious for-profit free schools are allowed to exist in Sweden in 2023 is deeply concerning. And to believe that increased control — a favorite solution proposed by politicians — would solve the recurring problems and violations of the school law that these schools have been associated with for the past 30 years is downright ridiculous. The
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Lars Pålsson Syll considers the following as important: Education & School
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Religious for-profit ‘free schools’
Swedish governments have for years now announced that they want to tighten the rules for religious for-profit free schools. Last year Minister of Education Lina Axelsson Kihlbom claimed that this would be “an important step in regaining democratic control in schools.”
Goodness gracious! And to think that we still have to hear this nonsense.
It’s mind-boggling.
The fact that religious for-profit free schools are allowed to exist in Sweden in 2023 is deeply concerning. And to believe that increased control — a favorite solution proposed by politicians — would solve the recurring problems and violations of the school law that these schools have been associated with for the past 30 years is downright ridiculous. The proposal is nothing more than political posturing.
It is completely unacceptable for certain parents’ interests to be placed above Swedish law and children’s constitutionally protected rights. Swedish schools should be a safe haven from attempts to turn them into a playground for all kinds of religious faiths and ideologies. Failing to safeguard schools as a safe haven is a betrayal of those who perhaps more than anyone else need society to stand up and defend their rights as citizens — regardless of gender, ethnicity, or their parents’ religious beliefs.
When yours truly grew up and went to school in the 1960s and 70s, there was still a fairly clear demarcation line between school — which took care of our cognitive skills — and the family — which took care of the upbringing and emotional needs of the upcoming generation — and society at large.
The school must ensure that it fully harnesses each pupil’s potential to live a life other than the one they live today. When continuity, stability, and traditions lose their meaning and self-legitimizing aura, this becomes even more important. The school must cultivate ‘the principle of hope.’ The school should be an island in a sea of societal routines. Learning in school must recognize the difference between pupils’ lifeworlds and the school itself as a starting point in order to function as a forward-looking bridge.
School is not society or family. The school should not be an extension of pupils’ lives outside of school. On the contrary, it should be an alternative. Something else. In its otherness, it should create conditions for the future, and not hold pupils’ horizons of experience in the present. The school should not provide self-confirmation for what pupils are but help them become what they can be.
When neither the family nor society can stand up, the school must be able to stand up and take care of the genuine emancipatory interests of the upcoming generation. A good school is an important prerequisite for young people to be able to realize their dreams of improving their conditions in the future.
The school should nurture knowledgeable citizens. A school with religious, ethnic, or profit-based motives is not a good school. The school should meet pupils based on what they can become, not what they are. The school should provide pupils with a compass for the future landscape so that they can learn to navigate in constantly changing waters. To fulfill ‘the principle of hope,’ the school must be an island of good otherness — unfettered by all kinds of identity politics and religious pressures.