Only students that are thriving and feeling well are learning anything of value...

Quickly: Two books in one of my book clubs looked interesting, both written by the Swedish child and school physician Lars H. Gustafsson.

About the first “Student health starts in the classroom” you can read (in my amateur translation from Swedish):

“Only students that are thriving and feeling well are learning anything of value.”

Gustafsson writes about the school’s ability to meet students in a warm, emphatic and at the same time well-informed way.

One chapter is about the conception “normality” – what’s actually “normal” concerning children?

Do children with needs for special support get the support they need and are entitled to he also wonders. And are those at the same time allowed to stay in the community?

He also wonders how the school can shape or mold what a good community governed by law is in practice and about the importance of close and confiding cooperation between students, parents and the school’s staff.

In the other book “Guiding children” he is discussing different forms of bringing up of children; the more authoritarian shouting for more rules and order and a more democratic building on mutual respect and where the adult acting as a guide for the child.

My addition: I don’t think the child (any child) is born evil or with destructive or self destructive drives. If it acts in that way it has reasons. The environment ought to be prepared to hear about those things and deal with them. But if there are no or few such people in the child’s environment I hope the net can confirm those kids and tell them that what was done was wrong!!!

And here is Lars H. Gustafsson’s blog! And see this article about the Nanny-pedagogy and poisonous pedagogy (in Swedish).