Rebecka started out as a teacher in her native Sweden where she felt that there was a lot that didn’t quite add up when it came to mainstream, conventional education.
As she moved to Mexico in 2003, she co-founded two Waldorf initiatives as well as the Cottonwood Explora Agile Learning Community. She also runs workshops for parents and teachers as well as creates articles and videos in Spanish and Swedish in order to support families who are interested in so called “self-directed education.”
I am truly excited to feature Becka here on The Equilibrium Blog as I share her passion for education. I admire how she so accurately points out and highlights how mainstream and conventional educational systems fail so many children. Not only in Sweden but all over the world.
Rebecka was born in Sweden in the 1970’s, and grew up in a culture where the wellbeing of children was at the focus. She and her peers felt listened to and respected as human beings – smaller, but with roughly the same rights as adults. She remember spending most of her time in the woods, climbing rocks or hiding up in a tree. She felt free, and as if she was allowed to be “ me” .
She was also 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, “ she says. “All was covered by the tax system.”
After having enjoyed a lovely start in an elementary Montessori school, Rebecka had to move to a conventional secondary school. “I didn’t like it “ she says. “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 and had to pass exams. I found secondary school both boring and limiting. No opportunities to explore my own interests or grow at my own pace.”
“However, looking back at my own experience as both a learner and a teacher in the Swedish school system, I realize those were still 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.”
In 2011 the educational law changed in Sweden and the freedom and relative flexibility that Rebecka had as a child disappeared. The wish to guarantee all children’s success led to a curriculum that allowed very little flexibility: every child now had to learn the same thing, at the same time, and at school. This made it near to impossible for other teaching philosophies to function the way they were originally designed. Montessori, Waldorf and Freinet were all suffering the consequences. National testing got 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. Homeschooling became impossible which resulted in many families leaving Sweden in order to offer the possibility of a freer education to their children. These families have become known as “educational refugees”, and there are now growing communities of Swedish homeschoolers and un-schoolers in Finland, Denmark, The Czech Republic 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. 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 does not achieve 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,” Rebecka says.
“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 is even worse with children for whom conventional, mainstream school isn’t working. Children with neuropsychiatric diagnoses, and children that are more creative, more initiative-taking, more curious, wilful and 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 we have 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. “
Rebecka explains that in Sweden that mandatory schooling is called “school duty”. However, politicians claim that it is a “right”. “I disagree,” , says Rebecka. “ 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. “
“ 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 un-winnable 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.”
“ It shouldn’t have to be this way,” Rebecka says. “ There are so many better possibilities for children than regular schooling. Children should not have the DUTY to learn, they should have the RIGHT to learn in ways that work for them. 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. “
Rebecka says that after working with and having the opportunity to observe a large number of children from 2 to 18, both with and without diagnosis she could 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 could see that all children are born with that same 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”, she says.
“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.”
What shall a parent do whose child is not thriving in a conventional school ?
“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. In a progressive country 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 refusing to go to school. Let your child heal from his school injuries, and come back on his own terms.”
If Rebecka could re-model the school system what would she do ?
“ 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,” she says.
“I would also 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.”
If you want to find out more about Rebeckas courses please visit the website below:
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