Pre-Schools in Sweden
September 25th, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Education, Sweden
Via my pal Critical Contexts (See Free University on the Internet), as much as I dislike kids and mommy blogging, this is interesting. Compare and contrast… we already know that this system works. It is interesting especially with the French preschool system which has many similarities with the Swedish system but also has a greater emphasis on academics.
Posted in Education | 5 Comments »
September 26th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Thank you for posting this! It’s inspiring to see a system that works so well.
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September 26th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Wow. Education untethered by “traditional” assessment methods. Development and intelligence happening and evolving naturally. How . . . experiential!
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September 26th, 2008 at 9:09 am
And having kids climb up trees and sleeping outside (in SWEDEN)… if it were here, parents would be up in arms, suing left and right.
Is it any wonder that Sweden ranks the highest in quality of life indicators? It starts there.
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September 28th, 2008 at 5:27 am
I Remember when I did my graduate work in Sweden and saw the number of Montessori schools in every village.Wow,it was a real interesting observation for me to see the socialization of little swedes and how it does seem to provide a cultivating atmosphere for them. I guess what we are really referring to is a movement towards a more relaxed social environment for children.This is completely different from the Anglo-Saxon (Prussian) model which has dominated schools for centuries.So, what exactly is the Montessori method? Let me give a few answers. First, children are not imprisoned behind tables and chairs.This is NOT part of the general curriculum. Second, as it was mentioned by the Swedish school teacher, the evaluation is done on a number of processes and NOT THE CHILD.Hence, children are free to move around the classroom and chose for themselves (under the observation of teachers) what they want to do. There is also a mixed age group classroom were younger kids can interact with older kids. The primary goal associated with the montessori method is to foster social integration and cognitive development in the direct association and RECOGNITION OF OTHERS.
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September 28th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
FOLLOW UP:
I think that the films also attempts to get across the healthy varieties of food used inside Swedish pre-schools.Because, the state subsidizes and heavily supports much of this there is no real worries about the profit-margins or budget constraints. Its important to recall that the cost is usually free to poor families in Sweden and one usually only pays if you are in the middle class for pre-schools.I think that most American schools have too much overhead worries and broken budgets for them to even consider including a pure organic meal option. I don’t even think that many U.S. school cafeterias have real chefs employed, rather there are usually a few part-time workers reheating and frying those nasty french-frys in the back.This also perhaps may be that there are so many private companies who want to enter the school food markets for reasons other than serving healthy food for students.In Sweden, i know for a fact, that there are a abundance of eco-feminists and vegan people and plenty of organic eaters who often complain about the lack of healthy foods(This might be because all of my roomates in Sweden were vegans…). Hence, some of this also has to do with the food culture and commercial pressure placed on kids to drink sodas and eat pizzas like most Americans like to do.You can see in the film that the kids are a lot more healthier if one were to look at some AMerican kids nowadays. (cough***Cough***
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