Less than a decade ago, Sweden changed the educational law and implemented a new national curriculum that made any forms of homeschooling illegal and distance learning virtually impossible. The law regulated all alternative education so severely that families who choose these forms can no longer utilize them the way they were designed. The consequences have been dire for most children, causing stress levels to skyrocket. The phenomenon called school refusal, basically unknown before 2011, has become a reality affecting thousands and thousands of children and their families. Some families leave the country in order to offer their children an education that works better for them than the conventional schooling Sweden is offering. In my opinion, the Swedish state is failing the children by depriving them of the right to alternative routes to learning. Why has this country, known for its child-friendly society, become one of the most controlling in the world when it comes to children’s schooling?

Background

I was born in Sweden in the 1970’s, and grew up in a culture where the wellbeing of children was the focus. I and my peers felt listened to and respected as human beings – smaller, but with roughly the same rights as adults. I remember spending most of my time in the woods, climbing rocks or hiding up in a tree. I was free, and I was allowed to be me.

I was fortunate enough to live in a country where education was free and for everyone. There was even some pedagogical diversity: you could choose to send your child to a Montessori, Steiner or Freinet school – for no extra cost. All was covered by the tax system. 

Starting elementary school at age seven, my parents decided to send me to the first Montessori school in our municipality. I remember loving school. The group of children was very small: twelve kids. My teacher was caring and knowledgeable. I quickly became very self-directed, all within the frame of the Montessori pedagogy. I had no homework. No exams. No marks. All that was normal to me. I felt motivated and trusted, and I was learning every day. 

Starting secondary school at almost thirteen, I now had to move to a conventional school. I didn’t like it. My days were suddenly chopped up in 40 minute long units, different subjects that I hadn’t chosen, teachers telling me what to do and how to do it. I started receiving some homework (but not every day) and had to pass exams – but fortunately, I got no marks until 8th grade. I found secondary school both boring and limiting. No opportunities to explore my own interests or grow at my own pace. 

Looking back at my own experience as both a learner and a teacher in the Swedish school system, I realize those were glorious days. The system was flawed, yes. But there was no authoritarianism. The system was quite flexible, and there was little pressure to pass assessments for everything. And I still had my freedom after school, when I would devour books, spend time in nature, and be with my friends. School, even though it was mandatory, did not dominate my life.

The Uniqueness of Sweden 

Being a social democratic country at its core, Sweden has been working for equality for almost a century. Since the state and the school system are completely interdependent, one feeding the other, it’s only normal that the school system has been used in order to try to guarantee all Swedish citizens the same right to education and thus, the same possibilities to success – regardless of the individual socio-economic background. This becomes even more evident when you take a look at the Swedish national curriculum, in which it’s stated that one of the main goals is to foster democratic citizens. 

The thought of free education for every young citizen resonates profoundly with my conviction that every human being should be born free with the right to develop to her maximum potential. However, things have changed a lot since my childhood, and not for the better. During the last decade or more, Sweden has gone from wanting to ensure every child’s future success through a free and accessible education, to wanting to control it more and more. 

Sweden is a unique country in the sense that we citizens truly believe that the state is benevolent and wants the best for us. We’ve seen our country go from being one of the poorest in Europe to one of the richest. We’ve all benefited from equality between the genders. We’ve enjoyed free health care, free preschools and free education. Actually, it’s been so good no one really wants anything else. Why would we parents even want to stay at home with our children, if we can all have a career and develop a sense of self worth?

Actually, why would we even think we could offer our children something better than what the state is already offering? The state wants our best, and it knows better than we do what we need. I believe this is one of the reasons homeschooling was never a big movement in Sweden. Why homeschool if the system is already providing us with something we believe is superior? Why renounce our freedom to build a thriving career? Today only about 4% of families with preschool aged children choose to stay at home with their little ones. That says a lot about our trust in the system.

This is how we’ve grown up, and makes it very hard to see any of what is happening through another, more critical, lens. Questioning the belief that the state might not always want our best is almost impossible. Also, change has been happening slowly enough for people not to realize how something that was good for the majority is now actually becoming very bad for most people.

A Change for the Worse

When the educational law changed in Sweden in 2011, the freedom and relative flexibility that I had as a child disappeared. The wish to guarantee all children’s’ success has led to a curriculum that allows no flexibility: every child now has to learn the same thing, at the same time, and at school. This makes it basically impossible for other teaching philosophies to function the way they were originally designed. Montessori, Waldorf and Freinet are all suffering the consequences. The controls have become more rigorous. Marking starts already in 6th grade, and some politicians are advocating for it to start in grade 4. National testing has gotten more frequent. In 2018, the age at which a child starts school dropped from seven to six. And now there’s even talk about making preschool mandatory from age three.  And obviously, it made homeschooling illegal. Not that it was ever a big movement, but at least the possibility existed prior to 2011. 

This has led to many families leaving Sweden in order to offer the possibility of a freer education to their children. These families have become known as “school refugees”, and there are now growing communities of Swedish homeschoolers and unschoolers in Åland (Finland), Bornholm (Denmark), Prag (Czechia) and other places in the world. These families are claiming the right to be in charge of their children’s education, basing it upon the children’s needs instead of society’s demands. 

I personally believe that this change of course is nothing but fear-driven. We’ve been watching the world fall apart for some time now. After 9/11, the world appeared an utterly unsafe place. Climate change hasn’t exactly helped. And now, the Corona virus has effectively put the whole world on hold. I think most of us adults are fearful of what the future holds for our children. We want our children to succeed. We want to make sure they’ll be happy, but we’re not even sure they’ll survive. This, in combination with bad PISA results, hasn’t calmed politicians.

Dire Consequences

The Swedish state wanted to provide all citizens with the same possibility of success. It wanted democracy and equality for all. Unfortunately, the change in the educational law is not achieving this. Instead of guaranteeing every child’s individual right to learn, the law is now trying to control every child’s obligation to learn. That entails what has to be learned, when, how and where. All of it is decided by the state. And since most Swedes believe the state is benevolent and wants the best for us, very few are criticizing what is actually going on.

I am certain the consequences have been dire for all children. More homework, more evaluations and at earlier ages, Swedish children are under so much more pressure today than we ever were in the 70’s and 80’s. This leads to stress levels skyrocketing, to many children being prescribed sleeping pills in order to get a good night’s rest, and to anxiety and other symptoms of burnout. 

The situation gets even worse with children for whom school isn’t working. Children with neuropsychiatric diagnoses, and children that are more creative, more initiative-taking, more curious, more willful with a strong integrity, are simply so under-stimulated at school that they tend to develop severe anxiety, which leads to depression, burnout, and sometimes suicidal tendencies. In English, the phenomenon is called “school refusal”. In Swedish we call these children “homesitters”. Both languages fail to use a term that would better describe the phenomenon. This is most likely due to the fact that these children are seen as dysfunctional. They’re failing. They don’t want to go to school. They must be lazy. Any well-functioning child would see that the “best” road to take would obviously be school, right?

This is where I think we’ve got it all wrong. I believe that these children are initially healthy and strong human beings, and that they are having a perfectly healthy reaction to a profoundly unhealthy system. Any mandatory system that forces humans to go against their natural instincts when it comes to learning, developing, growing and thriving, will always be dysfunctional.

In Sweden, mandatory schooling is called “school duty”. However, politicians claim it’s a right. I disagree. Voting is a democratic right. But if I don’t feel like voting, I can actually decline that right. Swedish children can’t decline their “right” to go to school. That’s because it isn’t a right. It’s a duty. And it baffles me how people don’t see this argumentational flaw. It baffles me even more, that the responsibility falls upon the children and not on the state. Children are children. It should be our responsibility as adults to make sure they’re alright, to protect them and to provide for them. Children don’t have the right to vote, but they are to blame if they don’t take their responsibility and go to school – even when school isn’t working for them. There is something very unfair here. And it’s simply wrong.

I believe all children should have the right to learn, but on their own terms and conditions. And for that to happen, Swedish educational law has to change. The easiest way would be to provide alternatives to the very rigid curriculum, and to allow for children to learn wherever they learn best, whatever they feel like focusing on, and whenever they want, because learning is natural and happens all the time. We just need to start trusting children and provide them with the six optimizing conditions defined by child educational development pioneer Peter Gray, so that our children can thrive and learn.

One Size Does Not Fit All

The Swedish state is failing the children by depriving them of the right to alternative routes to learning. One size never fits all. It actually fits very few. The children, for whom the term “school refusal” would be used in English, are a wildly misunderstood group. When they fail to show up at school, they are being labeled as lazy or uncollaborative, and their parents incompetent. Many schools report the families to social authorities, that then start scrutinizing them, but without the knowledge or understanding needed. Some schools don’t report anything, because they don’t want their numbers to look bad. And when families report the schools to the School Inspection for failing to adapt the learning situation to their children’s needs, the schools answer by reporting the families to the social authorities. It’s an unwinnable conflict for families, and schools know this is an effective way to lower the number of reports.

Thus, the official blame falls entirely on families, since schooling is mandatory and their children should be at school. Weirdly enough, no blame is put on the schools for failing the children. And the state takes no responsibility whatsoever for robbing thousands and thousands of children not only of their childhood, but also of their possibilities to learn, thus damaging their future. The consequences for individuals and for Swedish society will be unimaginable.

Because data isn’t being collected, we don’t have any statistics on this situation. The TV program Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) reported in 2019 that around 5,000 children were school refusers. But the School Inspection believes it’s actually around 20,000 children. Others are talking about up to 70,000 Swedish children that aren’t able to attend school full time. 

It shouldn’t have to be this way. There are so many better possibilities for these (and other) children than regular schooling. But it would require the Swedish state to open up, let go of control, and become flexible. Children should not have the DUTY to learn, they should have the RIGHT to learn in ways that work for them. If homeschooling, distance learning, self-directed education, and democratic schools (like Summerhill, Sudbury schools or Agile Learning Centers) were allowed in Sweden, the doors to amazing learning opportunities would open up like flood gates.

It would change the present situation for the thousands of children who are now suffering in the school system. And it would change their future. It would also improve the conventional school system through competition with alternative paths to education. There is something profoundly wrong with a system that is supposed to be designed for the benefit of the children, but that makes children ill. The future of Sweden is at stake.

Rebecka Koritz is an unschooler at heart and family rights activist. She has founded several alternative schools in Mexico where she lives with her teenage son, and is one of the strongest voices for self-directed learning in Latin America. She’s a recognized lecturer and workshop leader, and produces videos and articles – mainly in Spanish and Swedish – in order to raise awareness for children’s learning.

Please show your support by following her Instagram or subscribing to her Patreon for as little as $1/month—it’s an internet hotspot for self-directed learning!

This article was originally published on The Atrium for Euro Home Ed.