I gather that I am not the only one to find something irresistibly comic about Jonas Himmelstrand describing himself as the ‘President in Exile of the Swedish Association of Home Educators'. President in exile, indeed! It puts one in mind of some old black and white Hollywood film; anybody remember The Prisoner of Zenda with Ronald Coleman? In order to appreciate the full bathos of the situation, it is necessary to know something of the place where this fellow is now living, namely the Aland Islands. Actually, my former wife was Swedish and I lived in that country for some years.
The Aland Islands lie only about thirty miles off the coast of Sweden; roughly the same distance as the Isle of Man is from Liverpool. Technically, they are Finnish territory, but to all intents and purposes they are a Swedish province which by an accident of history is under Finnish jurisdiction. They are self-governing, issue their own stamps and, best of all, Swedish is the official language. I’m not at all sure in what sense Jonas Himmelstrand is exiled there; there are regular ferry services to the Swedish mainland and even an airport. He travels the world on business and is welcome to return to Sweden whenever he wishes. There is in fact quite a community of Swedish home educators there, who also claim to be in ’exile’.
Actually, Mr Himmelstrand is doing fine in Aland. He is able to run his company from there as well as if he had remained in Uppsala. It is as though I moved from Essex to the Isle of Wight and then claimed that I had been driven into exile! When somebody says that he has been exiled, you naturally assume that he has left behind his native country and is perhaps living in reduced circumstances abroad. This is not the case at all and I can only attribute Jonas Himmelstrand’s description of himself in this way to a mixture of pomposity and self-importance. The fact that he runs a setup called 'The Happy Company' and signs off with 'Creative regards' tends only to confirm me in this initial view.
Showing posts with label Jonas Himmelstrand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jonas Himmelstrand. Show all posts
Friday, September 21, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Home education in Sweden
When I criticised the film on Youtube advertising the so-called Walk to Freedom, I was accused of nit-picking for objecting to the use of Hitler’s image to promote this dubious cause. The difficulties with this campaign though run a good deal deeper than just trying to confuse the issue by showing film of a German dictator!
We are told in the film several times that ‘many’ families have fled Sweden because of the new law. Jonas Himmelstrand, President of ROHUS, tells me that the number is actually ‘more than a dozen’. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘many’. There is a question mark over how many of these families have ’fled’ and how many have simply decided to move to the largely Swedish speaking Aland islands in the Gulf of Bothnia. A community of Swedish home educators has grown up there and it is within easy reach by ferry of Stockholm. This is not exactly ’fleeing the country’!
The film also falls into that fatal error of championing the rights of parents, as opposed to those of children. The European Convention of Human Rights is cited in support of this notion. This really is deceitful, suggesting that that the rights of these parents are being trampled over in defiance of the convention. This matter was comprehensively dealt with at the Court of Human Rights in 2006. In September that year, the European Court held that:
Schools represent society, and it is in the children’s interest to become part of that society. The parents’ right to education does not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience.
The court went on to state that schools were part of society and that parents’ rights did not allow them to remove them from society by taking them out of school. I do not wish to debate whether the European Court was right to hold this view, merely that they have done so and that no Swedish home educator has any chance of getting anywhere with this line of argument, based upon the Convention of Human Rights.
I do not wish to say any more about this film, other than that it is a misleading piece of propaganda. The Swedish law is intended to ensure that any child taught at home is educated to at least as high a standard as he would be, were he to be attending school. This is a tricky proposition for many parents and explains why some have been unable to gain the necessary permission. Those who have not been given permission are often the type of parent who does not believe in teaching or formal education and it is these who are likely to fall foul of the new regulations. People like Jenny Lantz, who wants her children to learn by themselves and is opposed to imposing a plan of education on her three children. This clashes with the Swedish law, that requires the education provided to be as adequate as that in schools and also that it be supervised.
In short, Sweden is tightening up on particular types of home education because they feel that some home educators are not properly equipping their children for a place in society. They feel that some of these children are being shortchanged educationally. Some families have been given permission to home educate, but these are ones who are working hard to ensure that their children are learning at least as much as they would do in school.
We are told in the film several times that ‘many’ families have fled Sweden because of the new law. Jonas Himmelstrand, President of ROHUS, tells me that the number is actually ‘more than a dozen’. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘many’. There is a question mark over how many of these families have ’fled’ and how many have simply decided to move to the largely Swedish speaking Aland islands in the Gulf of Bothnia. A community of Swedish home educators has grown up there and it is within easy reach by ferry of Stockholm. This is not exactly ’fleeing the country’!
The film also falls into that fatal error of championing the rights of parents, as opposed to those of children. The European Convention of Human Rights is cited in support of this notion. This really is deceitful, suggesting that that the rights of these parents are being trampled over in defiance of the convention. This matter was comprehensively dealt with at the Court of Human Rights in 2006. In September that year, the European Court held that:
Schools represent society, and it is in the children’s interest to become part of that society. The parents’ right to education does not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience.
The court went on to state that schools were part of society and that parents’ rights did not allow them to remove them from society by taking them out of school. I do not wish to debate whether the European Court was right to hold this view, merely that they have done so and that no Swedish home educator has any chance of getting anywhere with this line of argument, based upon the Convention of Human Rights.
I do not wish to say any more about this film, other than that it is a misleading piece of propaganda. The Swedish law is intended to ensure that any child taught at home is educated to at least as high a standard as he would be, were he to be attending school. This is a tricky proposition for many parents and explains why some have been unable to gain the necessary permission. Those who have not been given permission are often the type of parent who does not believe in teaching or formal education and it is these who are likely to fall foul of the new regulations. People like Jenny Lantz, who wants her children to learn by themselves and is opposed to imposing a plan of education on her three children. This clashes with the Swedish law, that requires the education provided to be as adequate as that in schools and also that it be supervised.
In short, Sweden is tightening up on particular types of home education because they feel that some home educators are not properly equipping their children for a place in society. They feel that some of these children are being shortchanged educationally. Some families have been given permission to home educate, but these are ones who are working hard to ensure that their children are learning at least as much as they would do in school.
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