Filippa Mannerheim is a Swedish high school teacher and a critic of Sweden’s experiment in school privatization.
Dear Sweden, let me tell you what a school is.
A school educates and dares and can demand effort. Sweden has forgotten what a school is. High school teacher Filippa Mannerheim gives a lesson to a country that has lost its grip.
Dear Sweden, since you seem to have completely lost your composure, here is a short, educational guide to help you along in your confused state.
Sweden, let me tell you what school is: A school is an academic place for knowledge and learning. A school is the nation’s most important educational institution with the aim of equipping the country’s young citizens with knowledge and abilities, so that they can develop into free and independent individuals, protect the country’s democratic foundations and with knowledge and skills contribute to the country’s continued prosperity – in times of peace as well as in troubled times .
A school is not a joint-stock company with profit as the main incentive. A school is a joint community building. A school has educated, subject-knowledgeable, qualified teachers with high status, good working conditions and great professional freedom. These teachers teach the country’s children in the country’s language.
A school has employed – not hired – resource staff: special teachers, school nurse, study and vocational guidance counselors, IT staff, janitors. A school does not have non-qualified persons behind the chair.
A school gives children who are falling behind extra support from trained special teachers. A school does not hand out digital tools or ineffective adaptations as substandard substitutes for extra support, just because it is cheaper.
A school has appropriate premises: adequately sized classrooms, an auditorium, a sports hall, a music hall, a home economics room with a kitchenette, crafts and lab rooms. A school has adequate equipment for theoretical and practical teaching, such as musical instruments, craft tools, laboratory equipment, teaching aids, working IT equipment and large amounts of fiction in class sets.
A school has a school library with trained librarians who keep an eye on the world, buy books, hold book talks and contribute with unique expertise in fiction and non-fiction, information search and source criticism. A school does not have a repository of some randomly selected books donated by parents and call this a “school library”. A school library is not “access to a public library”.
A school has a large school yard where children can jump rope, jump fence, play football, play marbles, play ghost ball, King and run around. A school yard is not a paved patch outside an apartment building.
A school is an architectural building – a proud landmark – adapted to a unique activity, namely teaching the country’s children. A school is not a bicycle cellar or an industrial premises where students get “theoretical skills” or a gym card at Sats, which is called “sports education” because it is cheaper.
A school is not a private playground for calculating corporate groups and corrupt ex-politicians who want to make a career in business. If you think so, you have seriously misunderstood what school is.
A school sells nothing because knowledge cannot be sold or bought. A school has a canteen that serves a well-planned lunch based on the Swedish Food Agency’s guidelines for a good and nutritious meal. A school does not send teenagers out to buy their daily lunch at a hamburger chain using a food stamp.
A school does not compete with other schools for school fees or easily taught students. A school has no incentive to set satisfaction ratings, as rating is a pressure-free exercise of authority – not a means of competition and a way to fish for new school customers.
A school educates and dares and can demand effort. A school is a community foundation, not a sandwich board for demanding parental customers. A school has an obvious consensus on what knowledge is and how it is taught using methods that rest on a scientific basis.
A school has teachers who conduct well-planned teaching, not teachers who send students home with work that parents are expected to help with in order for the school’s profit to be greater. A school has teachers who see themselves as academics and public servants, not marketers and influencers who hawk vacuum cleaners with the help of their students via Instagram accounts.
A school is an area where politicians strive for cooperation, long-termism, stability and the best interests of the citizens. A school is not allowed to become a bat in national political debates about cap issues or grades from year 4. The word “school” and “lobbyism” are never used in the same sense. A school system without a market is not a “communist government”.
We live in a country that has lost all understanding of what school is. We live in a country where the politicians have let go of the country’s own school system and are selling it off, piece by piece, to international companies.
We live in a country where students and parents get an image that school can be anything, however, anywhere and an image of themselves as school customers instead of parents and students. This is dangerous for the individual but even more dangerous for the nation at large.
Sweden, now you know what school is. What do you do with that knowledge?
By Filippa Mannerheim
Filippa Mannerheim is a high school teacher in Swedish and history, as well as a school debater. She attracted a lot of attention in the winter of 2020 with her open letter to Sweden’s Riksdag politicians on Expressen’s culture page, “Swedish school is a shame – you politicians have failed”.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And schools are also not Penal Colonies. But the Missouri Cassville School District Will Now Begin To Paddle.
District claims that parents requested this. So, This Year Parent can avoid a student suspension by signing an Opt-In Form.
“Striking a student on the head or face is not permitted.
One or two swings for younger students and up to three swings for older students.”
https://www.news-leader.com/videos/news/education/2022/08/25/missouri-school-district-reinstates-corporal-punishment/7892480001/
Disgustingly sad. Very effin disgustingly sad!
What a beautiful, powerful, and professional statement about What a School Is (and isn’t).
As I read this, I couldn’t help but think, “If this were our only big problem.” Up until a few years ago, it was the major one and thank goodness for and thank you Diane for this blog and to Carol and NPE!
However… now we add to the need to explain to people in the U.S. that what is happening in the U.S. is not normal, intellectual, aspirational, or equitable.
Now we need the letter above And more text on school is about free thought, doors open to every child, every child means every child (and not those that fall in the “We DO discriminate against this group” policies).
It is about thinking and figuring things out and curiosity and testing hypotheses and exposure to people and things that are different than yours and science and challenging ideas and critical thinking and learning to play with others.
It is Not about restricted speech, restricted resources, and restricted people and restricted history and curriculum and books and speech.
It is not about limitations on teachers and adults who care and have empathy and listen to children and answer their questions.
Ah for the good old days when privatization was at the top of the biggest issues list.
It’s very important to highlight issues like this in other countries. One of the things (just one!) that bothers me about Americans is that we think we’re the only ones in the world with these problems. All the big issues have a global context; those who focus on their own problems only make a big mistake not to understand they are not “alone.” Today’s NYT has a chilling op-ed on India and Modi today. It ain’t just the Idiot!
Considering that many Americans are actually just now beginning to realize that we are in danger of losing our democracy, I am not at all surprised that people are oblivious to what is going on in many other places around the world. Of course the media and the way we consume it are guilty of limiting access to the wider world in a meaningful way. Then there is the majority of Americans who are just trying to keep their own heads above water. I have heard that we tend to be a generous donor people, but that does not necessarily translate into being a knowledgeable people.
“We live in a country that has lost all understanding of what school is. We live in a country where the politicians have let go of the country’s own school system and are selling it off, piece by piece, to international companies.”
And I live in a city that has lost virtually all understanding of what school is. I live in a city where the politicians are continually letting go of the city’s own school system and are selling it off, piece by piece, to KIPP, TFA, Bill Gates, Eli Broad (though now dead), The Waltons, Purpose Built Schools, The Kindezi Schools, and other destroyers of public education, including the faux Relay Graduate School of Education.
Earlier this month, I went and collected the monthly Atlanta Board of Education-approved personnel action reports back to 2018. Then, in the process of scrapping data from the reports and compiling them into a time series, a strong trend of hiring Relay GSE graduates as teachers showed up, along with an emerging trend of hiring high school graduates as teachers.
https://mailchi.mp/c587ea975b53/aboe-approves-hiring-relay-gse-graduates-and-hs-diploma-holders-as-teachers
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
And yes. Neolibertarian Sweden and neolibertarian U.S. need to get back to basics, a basic understanding of how democratic society works.
Can I have an Amen up in here?
Sweden brought us Volvos and IKEA, but they don’t always know best. In addition to the failed privatization of some schools, their “natural immunity” from Covid was an epic failure. The highest number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the Nordic countries as of August 11, 2022, had occurred in Sweden at 19,433. Denmark followed with 6,774 deaths, Finland with 5,350, and Norway with 3,834. Adjusted for population, the death rate is more that twice that of the other Nordic countries.
Thank you for this well thought out defense of public education. I wonder if politicians can even think about totally public services anymore without inserting some neoliberal sludge in every plan.
good word for describing neoliberal efforts: SLUDGE.
Dear United States,
Immediately read the letter to Sweden. Promptly and carefully reflect and seek enlightenment regarding our educational system. Quickly and thoroughly act to increase and improve the quality and equity in education before our nation loses opportunities and hope for the future.
Sincerely yours,
Victoria Ferris
mother and teacher
What she said
How sad. I had read yrs ago that Sweden was back-pedaling from its mimicry of US charter expansion/ “school choice” because PISA scores did a nosedive in the 1st 10 yrs.
Wrong. I googled “what % of Swedish students attend charter schools” and find that it’s triple ours– 18%. “Charter schools” is not even the right term. In 1992, Sweden adopted what is more appropriately called a “voucher school system” – they call them “free schools” [basically the “backpack” approach]. Results in 20 yrs: “By 2012, Swedish students were below average in math, reading, and science. Sweden had the steepest decline of any participating country [PISA] over that time period. In 2015, the scores rose to meet international averages, but Sweden’s performance remains far below what it once was.”
Here, 10% enrollment in “alternative” pubschs—whether charter or voucher—is a tilt point, as it leaves a too-large proportion of the most expensive-to-teach students in the traditional pubschs [ED, LD, ESL]. Don’t know whether that’s the paradigm for Swedish schools. But obviously it affects PISA scores in a bad way.
That is the paradigm in Sweden as well. All parents (customers) can select any school public or private “friskola” but a higher proportion of parents from better economic / social background will select “friskola” for their children and they are more likely than average Joes kid to be low-requirement / cheaper pupils. Since the “voucher” is a predetermined amount per child that is also the method for the schools to generate profit. More low-requirement-pupils => more profil. Result: More problems in public schools that are left with “expensive-to-teach” pupils. Then their lobby organisations (with tentacles into the government) produce propaganda with the message: Look! The public schools are bad, we should have more private schools!”.
Thanks for that update on the current status in Sweden, Sten. Mirrors the situation here.
Businesses themselves shouldn’t be businesses as the right-wing extremists in Ed Deform conceive of them. Don’t forget that how the likes of Bill Gates and the Waltons and the husband of Ditzy DeVoid did business. Don’t forget, for example, stack ranking, ruthless leveraging of monopoly power, standardization tending to mediocrity, multilevel pyramid scheme marketing scams, the concentration of wealth and privilege for the few to the detriment of the many.
It’s extraordinarily unfortunate that there has been a tendency for policy makers to take some business idea, often an idea that wasn’t that great to begin with, and misapply it to education. One could make a long, long, long list of such misapplications. Standardization, for example, might be a rational idea in the world of auto parts, for example, but it’s a terrible one for students. However, it serves the interests of would-be large-scale monopolists who want to apply the sleazy modus operandi that worked for them in the past to education as yet another market to exploit.
Value-added methods are an example of a bad business practice. Merit pay is another bad business practice. W. Edwards Deming warned against such practices. Read Andrea Gabor’s fine book about him, “The Man Who Invented Quality,” chapter 9.
Demings is one of my heroes, and I am a huge fan of Ms. Gabor, as are Shewart and Juran, two other early proponents of Quality approaches. Thanks for the reminder. I shall order her book.
And Bob, the way standardization is implemented via NCLB & sequels is another obsolete/ inapplicable business concept, MBO (mgt by objectives): payment/ resources tied to progress, via scores on annual standards-aligned assessments, i.e., the “accountability system.” MBO was a new shiny object in the late-‘70s/ early-‘80s in the industry I worked in then [design/ engrg/ contruction], courtesy of the digital revolution. As with teaching, the “standardization” aspect didn’t fit at all. Too many unique variables from one site/ project to another. And the system incentivizes juking the stats.
Yes. This is why all these busy-ness types bought in. That and they saw opportunities further to commercialize education.
Reblogged this on From experience to meaning….