Rebecka Koritz was born and raised in Sweden where she trained and worked as a teacher. Since 2003 she has lived in Mexico where she’s been working as a catalyst for change by hacking the conventional school system from the outside. In 2009 she founded her first alternative school, then in 2012 her second, and in 2016 she founded Explora, Mexico’s first Agile Learning Center.

Rebecka is passionate about self-directed education and peaceful parenting. She has an extensive and unique path within alternative education: as an ex-student in the Montessori system, co-founder of two Waldorf initiatives, and the founder of Explora, Mexico´s first Agile Learning Center. Rebecka dedicates her time to giving workshops for parents and teachers, and to creating content through articles and videos in Spanish and Swedish in order to support families in Latin America and Sweden who are embracing self-directed education. She lives together with her teenage son who has been directing his own learning since 2016.

THRIVE Nordics: I learned about you via an article you wrote “How Sweden is Failing Its Children” – provided on your site in longer form at https://enskolafranscratch.com/how-sweden-is-failing-its-children/. I knew immediately I had to contact you as you “got it”. Can you share a bit about your motivation behind writing and sharing this article.

Rebecka: I was invited by the editor of The Atrium, Euro Home Ed’s online magazine, to write an article about Sweden and homeschooling. Since home schooling, like all other alternative forms of learning, is illegal in Sweden, it poses problems for the thousands of children for whom conventional schooling does not work. Too many become “hemmasittare“, and a majority of these have some form of diagnosis. Due to the lack of learning alternatives and a compulsory schooling that places the responsibility on the children to be in school no matter how they feel, instead of the State offering alternatives that work better for them, these children are deprived of the right to a learning situation adapted to their individual needs. As a visionary educator with a solid experience of very alternative school forms, I know that it does not have to look like this at all, and that if Sweden only opened up for an increased opportunity for increased diversity, we could find fantastic learning solutions for all children, instead of, as now, letting so many of them be knocked out already at a young age.

I am certainly not saying that homeschooling would be the solution for everyone. Rather, school forms that are completely adapted to the children’s needs, and which allow pedagogical diversity and free learning under the principle of consent. Then we have to look at LGR-11, as well as the absurd law that forces children to be in a place they do not feel good about being.

THRIVE Nordics: What motivated you to write En Skola från scratch and how has the response been?

Rebecka: I got the idea for the book ten years ago, when I had just started and began running my first alternative school in southern Mexico where I live. It was in many ways, a very transformative experience with bizarre and at the same time exciting development processes. I was constantly confronted with the adults’, in my opinion, narrow attitude towards children, school and learning. This forced me to become even clearer in how I talked about school, learning and children’s development and needs. That combination of my external experiences and internal reasoning, I wanted to put in print and in 2016 the book A school from scratch was published. Without a serious publisher with additional marketing, the book is still quite unknown today, but I am occasionally contacted by people who have read it and come to new insights. I got the best grade from the educator and author John Steinberg, who believes that both the content and the reasoning are highly relevant to school issues in today’s Sweden.

THRIVE Nordics: In one of your articles you write “In my opinion, the Swedish state is failing the children by depriving them of the right to alternative routes to learning.” You mentioned the importance of pedagogical diversity and while our focus is primarily on children with special needs, the issue of access to pedagogical diversity is important society wide. Can you share more observations on the change of pedagogical diversity in Sweden.

Rebecka: After working with and having the opportunity to observe a large number of children from 2 to 18, both with and without diagnosis, I can see that most develop more and learn better when they have access to stimulating environments where their natural curiosity, joy of discovery and the desire to explore gets a natural outlet and can be satisfied. I see that all children are born with that configuration: to explore, experiment and follow your own inner drive to solve the problems and accept the challenges that arise along the way. And that’s where the real learning takes place.

In the kind of environments where children themselves are allowed to control their time and activities, and we adults exist as support and security, children develop in an absolutely incredible way, which I have never been able to observe in a conventional school. Regardless of personality or diagnosis, children have the opportunity to listen to themselves and do what feels good, which means that they learn to respect both themselves and their needs, as well as others. The children who have diagnoses usually work smoothly in these environments. If they need peace and quiet, they can seek it out. If they want to focus intensively on the same thing for three months in a row, they can do so, and develop excellence at a very early age.

I have come to believe that diagnoses do not play such a large role in these permissive environments where children learn to control their lives, and that at school on the other hand they become enormous obstacles that not only require resources that do not exist but that also forces the children into a form that does not suit them at all. And suddenly we are now standing there with thousands of children sitting at home, deprived of all opportunities for a healthy childhood and learning options where they would thrive and develop on their own terms.

THRIVE Nordics: On “skolplikt” (School duty) you write that “Children should not have the DUTY to learn, they should have the RIGHT to learn in ways that work for them.” As you know, many families in Sweden with children with special needs are experiencing a crisis with access to education and a right to learn. This language with “duty” is particularly problematic when we consider how many children are suffering within the current system. Can you share more of your observations on this change of attitude and language to “duty”?

Rebecka: I think a big part of the problem is that our children must not be children in this context. In my opinion, children should only have rights, not responsibilities. And we adults should always stand by their side, and take responsibility for ensuring that their rights are respected. As it is now, the responsibility, in the form of compulsory schooling, falls entirely on the children: small people who do not even have the right to vote and who are most often not listened to. They have to be in school, no matter how they feel and no matter if they learn anything.

I believe that it is the state and the schools that should be responsible for ensuring that learning environments are created where ALL children can thrive, flourish, develop and learn. And it is not done through a school that can not be adapted to the individual. Nor does it succeed through the compulsory schooling that “school duty” entails.

Politicians say that compulsory schooling is a right. But that’s not true at all. It’s an Orwellian way of turning it around and making something awful sound like something good. We can compare with the right to vote: if you are a Swedish citizen and over 18, you have the right to vote. But you can also refrain if you so wish. Rather than compulsory schooling, I would like us in Sweden to introduce the right to education. This would mean that all children have the right to learn and to be educated, and then we adults, as parts of society, together with the state, must develop so many more paths and opportunities to be able to fulfill that right. As it is now, with compulsory schooling, it is “enough” that the children are physically in school. Whether they learn something there or not seems irrelevant. The state, the school system and the schools are free, while the children have to take the consequences.

THRIVE Nordics: If you had the opportunity to help with a nationwide intervention in remodeling the school system, what would you do?

Rebecka: The first thing I would do would be to abolish compulsory schooling and replace it with the right to education. Then I would make sure that we created a completely new teacher education where the focus would be on teaching how to create safe environments for children, where authentic relationships with the child’s needs at the center are the starting point. Low-efficiency treatment and empathic communication (the giraffe language, or non-violent communication as it is called in English). I would make sure that we updated the course literature and introduced Ivan Illich, John Taylor Gatto, John Holt and Peter Gray as compulsory. I would also stop focusing on the studies that studied learning in the classroom environment and instead concentrated on what it looks like when children learn naturally and freely. Otherwise, it’s like studying whales in captivity instead of out in the sea, which gives a completely skewed picture of how it really is.

I would drop the idea of the large-scale and the gigantic “knowledge factories” that we have today, and instead invest in the local environment and the small-scale: small schools with a maximum of one hundred children. In those environments, the adults get to know the children, know how they all feel and can much more easily create security for everyone. A safe child feels good, and a child who feels good learns so much easier and so much more.

I imagine schools that are based on pedagogical diversity and free learning under the principle of consent. Schools that look completely different from today’s colossi. Schools where age mixing is the norm, and where instead of classrooms there are rather different environments to explore, and workshops. Schools where children feel that what they are doing is meaningful in the present, and not just in a distant future. Schools where the children want to go because the environment is exciting and enriching . Schools where it is okay to stay home one day if you are tired. Schools where children are trusted to learn everything they need when they are ready for it.

There are already alternative schools that work this way. They go by the collective name of democratic schools, such as Sudbury schools, Summerhill or Agile Learning Centers.

THRIVE Nordics: There is a real sense of urgency for families in Sweden who are currently in the system and experiencing lack of access to an education that works. Do you have any advice or words of wisdom for navigating the current challenges?

Rebecka: When a school cannot adapt to the child’s needs, it means betrayal. I think the most important thing is to stand up for our children, and not expose them to a second betrayal. Because if we as parents stand on the side of the school instead of on our child’s, and try to talk nicely about school, how important it is for the future, etc., well then we also let the child down. Suddenly the child stands alone, without any form of adult security at all. We just must not underestimate how important we are to the well-being of our children. A child who does not want to be in school, for whatever reason, we must take seriously and support. That’s our job as parents. To listen to the child, try to understand their needs and be able to help meet those needs. It has the exact opposite effect to try to force the child into a template that clearly does not fit, just because we think it must be so and for fear of how it will go in the future. Thus, either the needs of the child are allowed to govern, or the needs of the adults govern. I know exactly how it goes when we put our adult needs first: it is the children whose needs won’t be met and who will suffer.

I understand that many adults have both anxiety and panic. We have all been told how important it is with grades, and that without grades our children will not have a future. I understand that. But I also know that it is not entirely true. Society is changing at a rapid pace, and there are many different paths to take to both educate oneself and create jobs for oneself. (BOLD-)In a progressive country like Sweden, which has a wealth of resources compared to many other countries, the State should take responsibility and offer a number of different learning and education models so that the needs of all children can be met.

I think it is important not to get hung up on the fact that the children have to go to school, if the school does not offer a safe and healthy environment for the children. It is possible to learn so much outside the school walls, and yes, it requires that you as a parent change your life, but so many parents are already forced to do so. Then I think that you can actually do it all the way out, and make sure that in the home and in everyday life there is the opportunity to do things that the child is interested in and finds interesting and stimulating.

For me, this is the best way to help a child who is already a “hemmasittare”. Let your child heal from his school injuries, and come back on his own terms.

THRIVE Nordics:  During the Summer of 2020 you created a very rich series of content, interviews and media. Can you share more about this prolific season of content creation, what your focus was and some of your reflections from the many interview experiences.

Rebecka: I had been creating videos with content in Swedish for over a year, including one directed directly to Sweden’s current Minister of Education Anna Ekström (to which she never responded). “We do not push for compulsory schooling” is always the slogan from politicians, no matter how many children suffer from mental illness and who are robbed both in their childhood and in fact also in their future.

I know that I am not the only one who wants a change, and thought that I wanted to give the grassroots the opportunity to speak and share their views on school. The starting point was, on the one hand, to be able to talk about what we perceive does not work and why, but on the other hand to be solution-oriented so that it does not become a series of conversations on the topic of whining.

I am deeply moved by the commitment, knowledge, insights and visions that these ordinary people possess. We talk about everything from parents, teachers, substitutes, school psychologists and more, who all see the same thing from different perspectives: the school must change and that NOW. The consequences at individual, family and societal level will otherwise be catastrophic.

This interview was originally published on www.thrivenordics.org/a-w-2020/autumn-winter-2020/