About the presumed discipline problems in the school in Sweden…

from the film Torment.

[Updated during the day and February 23]. In a review over a dissertation on “disturbing students, correcting teachers – about rules, expectations and teachers' correcting measures against disturbing girls and boys in the classroom” (page 90 in the linked Pedagogical Magazine) a Marcus Samuelsson at the University of Linköping writes that already 50 years ago the Swedish pedagogue and researcher Torsten Husén was asked to make an investigation on account of the upbringing, or education, crisis that took its expression in increased difficulties making the students adjust/adapt themselves to the norms of the school.

In the investigation that came 1959 you could read about the almost permanent restlessness in many classrooms.

Problems with discipline are thus nothing new here in Sweden. We all know that, basically, the reviewer thinks.

"Except for one or two leading school politicians, thinking everything was so much better before"

he adds quite ironically.

Yes, the school politicians in our current government talks a lot about "lacking knowledge" in our students (on all levels), but how is it with their own knowledge? And their respect for knowledge? With their respect and knowledge about how it has been actually and what science has shown so far? I wonder quite ironically too.

See www.teachersolidarity.com - the Global Assault on Teaching, Theachers and their Unions: Stories for Resistance. Something I would want to blog about later too.

Also see earlier blogpostings on "neo-authoritarianism".

Addition later during the day: strikes me that what our current leaders are showing is ignorance.

Addition February 23: read about Torsten Husén, a pedagogical thinker, here (in English).

Addition February 26: a female Gestalt-therapist and physician thought teachers in training should go through therapy... Yes, the idea is right, but what sort of therapy is offered, and with what sort of underlying ideas about the roots of problems?