Popular education in Sweden: much more than you wanted to know (2022)
lesswrong.com
lesswrong.com
My best theory is there wasn't much in the very rural area where I grew up. There wasn't much of anything other than nature to be fair, so that kinda makes sense I guess...
This all needs people who are engaged in the movement and money, not a lot, but you do need a steady supply of money.
Most popular movements had/has their own study orgamisation.
In rural Sweden it's just as likely to be Vuxenskolan, the study branch of the agrarian movement (Centern, 4H, hushållningssällskapet)
ABF would be the workers study org, Medborgarskolan the conservatives.
There are 10 national organsiations in all.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3892172/
The basic premise is this Iraq/Afghan veteran father is raising his daughter homeless in the woods outside Portland, Oregan. He struggles with PTSD but clearly still takes care of his daughter, including teaching her english/math (which the social worker later says is beyond her typical grade level) and of course outdoor survival skills.
They eventually get caught by city workers/police and they end up housed via a sympathetic farmer where he gets a job and his daughters ends up finding a 4H social program for kids. She gets exposed to socialization programs, in particular a local group raising/training rabbits for competitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-H
The biggest issue with the child in the film wasn't her lack of education, but her lack of socialization. And the (brief) 4H scene was a great demonstration of the value of these sorts of programs for kids.
The failures of the US public education system on grades and the (alleged) solutions has been talked to death in the media but these sorts of social boosting programs deserve their own hype.
It's particularly interesting that it spawned out of the agricultural agencies, not your typical urban ones.
There was only one good study group ever in Helsinki, and I was actually a teacher there. I was asked to give some lectures on CNC-machines on "Computers for the elderly"-study group. But it ended, because could not make it comprehensible enough without actual CNC-machine and without legal license of Autocad.
Perhaps maker spaces are born of a similar ethos, though of course very stem driven.
Unfortunately it seems that as formal education has become more institutionalised and more necessary as a marker for employability, doing anything remotely 'bookish' in your free time has become almost definitively 'uncool'. A shame.
This is a very serious problem and I can see this every day with my kids. They have so much peer pressure on them that they find it very hard to do those things that they would like to do because it makes them 'uncool'. The result is that they have a part of their life that they keep away from their school mates. Supporting them in their endeavors helps them but it isn't enough to fully compensate for the desire to belong and have approval from their peers.
Huh? Most makerspaces are not at all STEM driven.
In the US, most makerspaces are driven by woodworking. Metalworking and 3D printing generally take up the next tier in a makerspace of usage. Electronics and STEM stuff is generally the bottom of utilization, sadly.
It's simply really hard to come up with good electronics projects that don't also need a pretty solid software background nowadays. That's just really a step too far for most people.
By contrast, there are lots of projects that a couple of hours in a woodshop makes something interesting and semi-useful.
If that's your definition, you do you.
What? Such an asinine statement.
Clearly anything that involves shaping the physical world will have the hard sciences as its foundation. There is a sort of reverse snobbery going on here - 'too cool for school', it is unfortunate to see.
You can fool yourself and try to appropriate the acronym STEM for whatever definition you please in service of whatever goal you wish; however, the US government is quite clear as to what a STEM job or degree is. I guarantee that welders, woodworkers, etc. will not be granted a STEM visa to the US.
There are strains of ideas and phenomena here that are probably not decipherable to outsiders. Applying for subsidies for "study circles" would be considered as abuse of the system or even fraudulent in some circles. In other circles, receiving any subsidy from the government is considered justified and right by default.
Its effect on economic development is probably negligible (but how would you determine that?). It can rather be viewed as one of many tolerated ways of receiving money in exchange for the effort of doing the paperwork.
It's a phenomenon that looks different to different people.
More broadly speaking, even when I was growing up being a "nerd" (what the kids would say instead of bookish) was always uncool. It's practically a trope in American media since we had media as such. Smart, brainy kids are juxtaposed against the "cool" jocks and popular crowd.
teaching kids work-life balance seems like a great idea
I wonder if this quote is still something we believe is correct. Implied here is that "learning" and "sharing what they know" are unqualified good. But I think there is lots of that on the internet these days... much of it bad. But then who gets to decide what is or isn't the right kind of learning in this model?
There is a vast difference between "On the Internet" and "In person".
"In person" means that your idea has to have enough critical mass in a local area to catch on. If your idea only appeals to 0.01% of people, you're just not going to come in contact with another like-minded individual in your local area. This greatly limits the damage that fringe beliefs can do. On the other hand, if you are the person with the minority belief or interest, you're isolated.
"On the Internet" there is no such geographic limiter. So, if you are the one in the minority, you can find kindred spirits. Unfortunately, very fringe people can find like minded individuals and congregate.
It would be very nice if we could harness the positives of both while minimizing the negatives. I'm not sure that's possible, though.
This is not to say that the material learnt/shared is an unqualified good. The ability of each individual to freely exchange that knowledge and assess it in their context is.
Totally fine to restrict subjects that can be taught in schools though, including religion and the like.
I'm not sure if I agree. I understand the intent is that individuals should in turn be able reject those teachings in their context, but that feels disconnected from the reality of our society. Ultimately I think it comes down to whether you think policies should be made based on intent or outcomes. If, for example, WhatsApp knows that individuals "teaching" about the dangers posed by an ethnic minority, and that those teachings would result in genocide regardless of how much helper text / warning flags you place around the content, I think it would be a moral imperative for them to remove that content.
Of course, who gets to make that decision and how you measure outcomes (what is worse, and for whom?) is a whole can of worms, so I definitely have reservations, but ultimately I believe that a) some limits are necessary, b) there can be genuine disagreement on where that line should be drawn and c) there is no such thing as an unqualified evil or good.
As fas our belief in the quote, it's clear there exists a subset of the population that doesn't believe this quote to be correct. We're seeing a renaissance of anti-intellectualism, where people reject basic science; brag about not reading books; segregate themselves into their own echo chambers; instead of facts informing beliefs, beliefs inform "facts."
A basic example is that diseases we've all but eradicated are seeing a resurgence thanks to trading vaccination for pox/covid/measles/etc parties.
It is possible to get subsidised rooms/studios through "study circles" for music or theatre (for example), under certain conditions for accountability.
"Folk high school" is equivalent to community college.
I thought a community college was just a college/university that aimed to serve the local community and its needs, rather than having terribly high research ambitions?
If so, it's completely different from folk high schools (in Norway, at least). They have no grades and no exams, and they serve 18-19 year olds from elsewhere than their local community. It's very rare to go to your own community's folk high school. Unlike all other education levels in Norway, folk high schools are boarding schools by default.
Also, because they struggle somewhat with popularity, they're quite focused on hobby or "useless" skills, from art to horse sports. There's even some esports offerings in recent years. They need to draw students in, and for most students with a traditional goal in mind such as becoming a nurse or an accountant, they would be a poor investment of a year, so they can't really offer very "practical" courses.
Young people go there to live their dream career for a while, get some more time to figure out what they can actually do as a career, and "make friends for life", a phrase you'll find a lot in folk high school promotional material. It's pretty much code for "find a serious boyfriend/girlfriend". Rare for arenas where that's the goal, they're typically rather gender balanced, or even with women slightly overrepresented.
Yeah, right after reading this I started thinking about how to start such a circle in my area, and realized it's not possible because a key factor is a free space young people can adopt and re-imagine. In a densely populated city this is immensely hard to happen spontaneously, any such space will most likely be quickly occupied by homeless people, which feels more urgent than education and exploration.
You could debate it but I would find it hard to find better uses of that money if it is spent on those would otherwise not be able to afford such things.
I'm speaking as someone who has been enrolled in university for most of his adult life, attending whatever I feel like, while paying for it with my taxes. Public libraries, schools, and universities here have all sorts of clubs and events as part of their program.
Dang, the link is just a ripoff repost; could you fix the URL to be the original above?
I saw the same thing (“this is a link post”) earlier this week and only now realize it wasn’t a one off.
Studieförbund are great, but they have to properly track where the money goes - check receipts, do random inspections to see how many people are truly attending, etc.
There are endless examples of fraud too. You just write down a meeting schedule and put in names of people and get money.
Another problem is the Islamistic "studieförbund" Ibn Rush who is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. They get a lot of tax money to promote their worldview.
Many other things of course. But these are some of the areas where the difference is largest compared to the opposition.
That's such a weird misrepresentation. I would say they are for pausing the increases to already extreme taxes on gasoline, so people outside of cities can afford to drive to work.
(I have never owned a car and still sympathise)
Policies that are extremely popular with the average Swede who has a stable income, mortgage etc. But the left and right have both been shafting low income earners for quite a while now.
The idea of the study groups getting the participants polished on the social aspects of life sounds good.
For STEM, let's see: First, here at Hacker News, what fraction of the readers got good at writing code in C/C++ before they had any formal classroom instruction from an established education system, high school, college, etc.? I anticipate, a big fraction.
Lesson: In learning C/C++, and a lot of closely related topics, say, quick sort, maybe matrix inversion, the beginnings of using relational data base as "the key, the whole key, nothing but the key", some of the details of virtual memory as Zuck spouted out as he walked out of class in the movie The Social Network, commonly that learning has been done by people mostly on their own.
Next, a college prof has to keep up and hopefully push ahead, but there's essentially no formal education classroom instruction for doing that. So, the prof has to do that on his (her, here and below) own.
Lesson: Self teaching is fundamental right to the top of the education system. Soooo, self teaching is not incidental, strange, etc.
For graduate study in the STEM fields, been there, done that. Fact of life: The university, department, profs, etc. can provide a lot of guidance and direction, often crucial since otherwise a student might waste time wandering in poor directions, but, bluntly, the student needs lots of hours of self study outside of class.
Lesson: Soooo, even in a program in formal education, a lot of self teaching is crucial.
Broadly in US society, there is a lot of self learning: E.g., a good chef who has a terrific lasagna, pizza, Italian rum cake, coconut cream pie, ..., likely learned how to do that mostly on their own or, say, from an employer who learned it on their own, likely not from some formal classroom education. Same for lots of jobs -- auto repair, plumbing, roofing, brick laying, many aspects of farming, parenting, ....
Lesson: Self teaching is crucial in our whole society, and a lot of people are good at it.
Here is one starting point: "Small Facts and Large Issues: The Anthropology of Contemporary Scandinavian Society" : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2155886 ... I haven't read it yet. I like the anthropological point of view though.
Or in other words, we have different "taboo areas" our minds won't stray from.
I don't have examples. It's mostly a hunch.
Is this really true? The liked wikipedia page does not seem to support that.
> Der Begriff Bildung wurde von dem mittelalterlichen Theologen und Philosophen Meister Eckhart in die Deutsche Sprache eingeführt. Er bedeutete für ihn das „Erlernen von Gelassenheit“ und wurde als „Gottessache“ angesehen, „damit der Mensch Gott ähnlich werde“
The term Bildung was introduced in the German language by the medieval theologist and philosopher Father Eckhart. To him, it referred to "acquiring through inner peace" and was considered godly: "so that man can become more like God".
(excuse my German reading skill, it's not as godlike as I'd like it to be)
That said, the equivalent Dutch word is "vorming", which translates literally as "shaping", so I don't the concept itself is religious in nature. As alluded (but not explicitly said) on the English page, I think the word lost its religious connotation by Humboldt's inclusion in his education model.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung#Begriffsbildung:~:text...
Today, in the US and much of the western world as a whole, we are missing something I have seen described as "the third place". This is defined as any social setting that isn't the "first place" (home), or the "second place" (work).
Wikipedia introduces the "third place" with examples: "churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries, gyms, bookstores, stoops and parks". I disagree with most, if not all of these as true examples of the third place.
Churches have explicit missions; whether they be charity, evangelism, or even to vaguely unite a community: there is always a goal in mind, and an expectation to work toward that goal. So despite their extracurricular position, these are the second place: work. I would include clubs and gyms for the same reason.
Cafes and bars are businesses. Even if you can casually visit them, you are expected to buy something. The experience of cafes and bars may be very close to a third place, but they are effectively taxed: without buying drinks, the business fails. That introduces a deliberate purpose to the space that, in practice, recreates the same social dynamics present in churches, clubs, and gyms.
Libraries allow you to choose your goals, but you are expected to do so quietly and alone. Engaging those around you in casual conversation is rude, and even against the rules! Libraries also provide space for extracurricular groups, like clubs, but that interaction is explicit: it doesn't start organically. So we end up again with the same "second place" social dynamic!
So what about public parks? Surely a public park can fill the void: after all, that's explicitly what they are there for! And yet, in my experience, this doesn't happen. People use parks for their utility: to exercise, walk their dogs, or play with friends. They are effectively an extension of the "first place": home.
I can't think of a single physical location in the Untied States where the average person can freely visit, and expect to be talked to. Such an interaction is so unfamiliar, it is implicitly discouraged: an unspoken rule. Sure, there are those who are willing to break that rule, but when I see it play out, I see the average person react with discomfort and annoyance. After all, they were just minding their own business: such is the American dream.
The third place is dead, not only in the physical (by not existing as a place), but also in the ethereal (by not existing in our social expectations). Even if we want it, we are missing the narrative: the story: the blueprint: detailing how and where it could exist in our lives. That alone is the very reason we so desperately need it.
You may also be surprised how central of a third place are some cafes in southern Europe: in rural Spanish, Greek, Italian villages they’ll often have a contingent of pensioners regulars chatting throughout the day. Again, this could just as well happen in the US - even if you argue car culture or whatever, it could happen in NYC or SF, but doesn’t really.
I think actually, we are culturally averse to third places now. There used to be more in the US (saloons were huge before prohibition). I question the extent to which we “need” it given that we’ve gradually shifted towards not having them. Maybe it’s because those needs are met elsewhere. You could argue things like the workplace (as reimagined by tech companies and startups) or Internet are a third place for example
Sweden used to have that. Workers movement, free churches and the temperance movement basically built the Swedish democracy. A large percent of the population were contributing members in them. They are almost extinct now.
The welfare state took their place. If something is not commercially viable in Sweden, it has to be funded by tax payers. And then you get all the issues of what should be funded and what shouldn't.
We no longer have strong, self-supporting associations. And we don't have the philanthropic tradition where rich people fund things.
I got my first exposure in computing in part because my dad agreed to teach computers for Folkeuniversitetet/Friundervisningen in the early 80's, but he needed to borrow one to learn to use it first...
In Norway it sprung out of students in the 1860's who wanted to make education more broadly available (Henrik Ibsen was one of the founding students, as was Bjørnstjerne Bjørson, perhaps less known outside Norway but the first Norwegian Nobel laureate in literature)
That particular institute got started in the late 1800s to educate farmers with an ideology similar to the Swedish system of the article, but by the 1990s it had mostly language courses. (Didn't get into university? Come study Spanish for a gap year, we'll make a trip to Spain at the end.) Currently in addition to the math programme they seem to teach several subjects with a kind of unofficial arrangement with universities. (Didn't make it to law school/psychology/teacher school? Come study exactly that for a year to improve your chances in the next admissions round, with some credit probably accepted toward your eventual university degree.)
That's worth thinking about.
This sort of article is just window-dressing for what it’s really like to live in this mostly restricted and limited land, out in the boondocks.
Swedes living abroad probably actually believe this nostalgic fiction of their homeland.
It is still strong, but not as extreme as it used to be.
P.S. A bit of direct but constructive criticism: the problem with saying 99% is that is comes across as overly specific, even simplistic. It begs the question: have you quantified your observations? Most people don't. Unfortunately, this makes it hard to reason statistically about variations in different perspectives.
Data will tell you that alcohol consumption in Europe is down compared to my generation (millennial). They are also more engaged than previous generation, especially compared to the silent generation who basically let their elders kill popular education (I hear a lot of 'OK boomer', but let it be said that boomers fought to conserve our rights in my country, at least in their youth).
Anyway.