Swedish family policies are lauded for enabling women to go to work as well
as have children. Sweden has one of the highest
fertility
rates in Europe. What you can do with your children once you have them, however,
is not altogether a matter of choice.
You can put them in a
free kindergarten,
costing $20,000 per child a year, from the time they are one year old, but if
you wanted to look after them yourself at home you would be pretty much on your
own. Homecare allowances are small and few and far between.
And if you want to educate your child at home, you are in real trouble.
Home-schooling is banned in the Scandinavian utopia and families who defy the
ban are feeling the full force of the law. Several families have gone into exile
in neighbouring countries (which allow home-schooling) as a result, and a
handful living on the Finnish Aland Islands were
joined in early February by the most
high-profile home-schooling dissident yet -- President of the Swedish
Association for Home Education (ROHUS), Jonas Himmelstrand, his wife and three
children.
For more than three years Mr Himmelstrand and his wife have had a conflict
with the Uppsala municipality over educating their daughter (now 13) then their
younger son (7) at home. After two years they were able to appeal to a court,
but while the court decision was pending, the civic authorities continued what
Mr Himmelstrand calls a “political persecution” of his family. In November they
were reported to the local “social authorities” and, around Christmas, received
notice of fines -- US$25,000 for their daughter’s non-attendance at school in
the 2010-2011 year, and $15,000 for not enrolling their son for the current
school year.
The recent punitive action occurred after Mr Himmelstrand debated home
education on national radio with the chair of the Education Committee of the
Swedish Parliament. Coincidence? It also came at the end of a year in which he
spoke internationally about Swedish family policies, presenting a critical view
based on his research for the Swedish family association, Haro.
The social authority decided not to investigate the family but told Mr
Himmelstrand that if he wanted to home educate safely he should leave Sweden.
Staring financial ruin in the face and refusal on the part of the authorities to
discuss the issues with them, the family quietly left Sweden in early
February.
”It is an incredible relief, and only now are
we starting to understand the degree of pressure we have lived under for many
years”, says Jonas Himmelstrand. ”At the same time it is an almost surreal
experience to be forced to leave Sweden for an issue which in most of the
democratic world, and by the UN, is regarded as a human right.”
He is vowing to continue the work of ROHUS. ”In fact, we will be more
effective when we do not feel our families are under threat.”
According to the report
here
Home education is regarded by the UN as a
valid form of education under the concept of ”the right of education”. Home
education is permitted in most of the world’s democracies with the exception of
Germany (under their school law of 1938) and now Sweden.
