jan, caligula & management by fear

Swedens Minister for Schools, Jan "Caligula" Björklund, dreams about the good old days when the Swedish students were godfearing, silent and obedient. He has suggested that Swedish schools should have separate classes for boys and girls and that they should teach more Swedish language, history and religion. Grades should also be reinstated - even for very young students. It's important to meassure all kids and put them in the right boxes. Will they become masters or servants? Jan Björklund and his grades - or maybe the subjective and random views of thousands of Swedish school teachers - will decide that from now on. No one will ever have to be in doubt where they belong when the fuzzy weed smoking hippies in the education system have been sacked! Thank Jan Björklund and God for that. Maybe some of you wonder why Jan Björklund wants Swedish school kids to learn more about religion? I know I do. Does he want them to broaden their minds and become more open to other faiths and cultures? Or is religion the same thing as christianity in his mind? Doesn't the kids learn enough about religion today? And what about history? I love history. But what does Jan Björklund want to do with that subject? More heroic Swedish warrior kings? Or more focus on the history of ideas, science, society and economy? History can be a whole lot of things - it can be a mind opening humanistic subject and it can be a propagandistic nationalist subject. Which way does Jan Björklund want to go? Unfortunatelly I'm not really sure and that frightens me. There are reasons why we abandoned the old school system. But our right wing government seems to have forgotten that. They ought to watch Alf Sjöbergs and Ingmar Bergmans Hets/Torment again. That was yesterdays school. Maybe todays school is a bit "fuzzy" but what's so wrong with that? The corporal punishment was leagal in Swedish schools until 1958. The school back then was about fear, diciplin, bullying, marginalization and memorizing instead of reasoning and critical thinking. That changed during the seventies. Todays school is by no means perfect - but the school of the forties and fifties was even worse. I had a tough time in school during the seventies and the eighties. Not that I'm stupid - but I just find it more or less impossible to memorize things if I'm forced to do it. I need a joyful and inspiring study environment to be able to learn anything. Especially if I have to learn things that I'm not really interested in. Otherwise I lose interest right away. I would have been a total disaster in the old school system. I think that todays school would have been much more suitable for someone like me. Todays "fuzzy" school at least acknowledge and tries to look at the individual needs of each student instead of forcing them to conform to some kind of norm. It's strange that it's a minister from the Liberal party who wants to force students to conform to a norm. It would be much better if our minister of schools looked towards the future instead of dreaming about a glorious past that never existed. It would also be welcome if our "liberal" right wing government started to discuss whos responsibility it is to raise the kids here in Sweden. Is it the school and the teachers or is it the parents? If the teachers didn't have to waste most of their time learning the kids basic social skills that their parents ought to have tought them then many of the schools problems would solve themselves.