Better conditions for safety and study in schools

Joar Forssell (L)

Madam Speaker! Swedish schools often function well. The classrooms are usually not battlefields, but in some cases, the adult world has capitulated and surrendered to rowdiness, brawls, and disruptive behavior that harms the students.

It concerns in particular those students who have the greatest need for the school to function as well as possible, not least those students who have the least study habits at home and not least those students who have the greatest social need for a functioning, calm school environment.

I will be honest, Madam Speaker: I came to the Education Committee from the Foreign Affairs Committee about four months ago, and I did not know that the situation in Swedish schools was quite as bad as I have come to understand it is as I have taken part in the discussions about this report and familiarized myself with the issues. I probably thought that quite a lot of what we are to decide on after the debate on the report was already as it was in the proposals.

I think a good deal of things here are self-evident. Safety and a studious environment, order and tidiness, discipline, peace and quiet – a dear child has many names. It shouldn't be anything strange, for example, that the responsibility of the head of school and the principal is clarified, which is done in the report, and that it should not solely be about preventive work? It should be about ongoing work to maintain safety and a studious environment, order and tidiness, discipline and peace and quiet throughout the entire school and for all students.

Madam Speaker! I am thinking of one thing that I believe many who are listening to the debate are wondering about and asking why we have not done it earlier. It is possibly a criticism that one could direct. I see that someone here in the opposition has requested a reply, and I look forward to perhaps receiving a reply about why we have not done this earlier. I believe, in fact, that we should have done it earlier.

It is about the mobile phones. One of the most common questions I receive from parents, and actually also from people who work in the school, is this: Why do you let the children have these screens with them all the time throughout the school day? It ruins the teaching in the classrooms, and it ruins the social development outside the classrooms.

We are now ensuring that in after-school centers, open leisure activities, and the compulsory school forms, mobile phones must be handed in at the beginning of the school day and be returned at the end. It should be a matter of course.

Fundamentally, it is not about different views on pedagogy and such things. I know there is such criticism from certain opposition parties, but this is about the children's cognitive development! It is nothing that one can change with a new pedagogical idea so many tens of thousands of years into human evolution.

We are not created to have this machine with us all the time, which beeps, seeks attention, and changes our social interaction. We are not created to have with us this machine that overloads working memory, creates distraction, and makes it so that we cannot concentrate. We are not created to have with us a machine that destroys social interaction and makes normal play, friendship-making, and social practice, which children should engage in, impossible.

Man is, Madam Speaker, a very strange animal in God's creation – an animal that cannot manage on its own outside the womb until one is at least in the upper teens. It is very strange, for most animals manage on their own quite quickly.

That is, of course, very costly in evolutionary terms, and one reason for that is that we need a long time to learn all the things we must learn. One of the things we are to learn, Madam Speaker, is social interaction. Therefore, one cannot isolate the issue of mobile phones only to the classroom. We want the children who are in school to interact with each other, bicker a little, wrestle a bit on the breaks, fall off a swing, fall off a climbing frame, and help each other!

It is such things that children should do, and such things that children should do as they grow older and test the social interaction in slightly new ways. There, the mobile phones are in the way, and that is understood by all people listening to this debate. That is how reality looks. It should be a self-evident matter. It should have been done earlier, but I am very happy that it is being done now.

Madam Speaker! Another matter is rules of order. It is clear that there are rules of order, and fundamentally it is clear that it is the teacher who shall decide in the classroom. Now we ensure that there are school-wide rules and that there shall be a plan with consequences for violations. It is very strange that this has not been the case previously.

For me, it is a self-evident matter that there are school rules for order and discipline and that there are consequences linked to violations. What is a rule worth if there are no consequences? What is the teacher's and the school leader's power worth if there are no clear consequences linked to this in the way we are now clarifying? Setting boundaries rather than capitulation from the adult world is actually taking responsibility.

Madam Speaker! Strengthened possibilities for expulsion from the classroom is another thing. One should be able to be relocated for a longer period and, in the worst case, be able to be banned, for example if it concerns threats. One should also be able to be denied entry to the school unit, and we shall have better possibilities for emergency schools throughout the country. What type of education one receives if there is extra need should not depend on where one lives.

This is, of course, about students and teachers who find themselves in a classroom where threats and disruption make a functioning learning environment impossible, but it is also about the students who are sent out. They too must be given the opportunity for the support they need in forms they can manage, because it is obvious that not all students can manage to behave and acquire knowledge in the same way. Therefore, it is important that the possibility for emergency schools is strengthened.

Madam Speaker! Benevolent softness is unfortunately a disservice from an adult world that instead must step forward. Expectations on students and parents shall be strengthened with an expectations document.

Madam Speaker! I want to vote in favor of the proposal in the report. Politicians, school leaders, teachers, other adults in the school, and parents must step forward. We cannot leave generation after generation of youth in the school at the mercy of the waves. We must have peace and quiet, order and regularity, discipline and study so that all students, regardless of background, are given the opportunity to acquire both knowledge in important subjects and social skills that one needs to manage an adult life in Sweden.

(Applause)

(cont. § 15)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)