9 ms·

Popular education in Sweden: much more than you wanted to know (2022)

191 points by cdwhite 4y ago

dragoncrab 4y ago
Is there anything similar in other European countries as well?
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  In Portugal there are Cultural Associations, which have a certain legal standing with associated formalities. Sometimes they even have premises they run for meetings etc. They tend to be formed according to particular interests, if I understand correctly. Hopefully someone from Portugal can elaborate on this.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
  The other Nordic countries have similar movements. I assume there are others too.
- vidarh 4y ago
  Folkeuniversitetet ("people's university"; previously Friundervisningen - free education/free learning) and folkehøyskoler ("folk/people's high schools") in Norway. 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)
- gostsamo 4y ago
  There are the chitalishte institution in Bulgaria which are centers for education, culture and furthering national movement in the very beginning. Couldn't find a good source in english. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitalishte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitalishte
- jks 4y ago
  In Finland there are "kansanopisto" that are a little like the Swedish ones described in the article but with less resources. I spent my final year of upper secondary school at one of them (https://www.paivola.fi https://www.paivola.fi) which hosts a math enrichment programme, but that one is quite unique. 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.)
somewhereoutth 4y ago
Excellent article, and a very interesting look into how a society may accelerate its development. 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.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > doing anything remotely 'bookish' in your free time has become almost definitively 'uncool' 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.
- yobbo 4y ago
  > Perhaps maker spaces are born of a similar ethos 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.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  It sounds like you're comparing the situation outlined in the article to somewhere you're familiar with when you say 'bookish' is 'uncool'. Where is that?
  - somewhereoutth 4y ago
    Gen X Anglosphere
bazoom42 4y ago
> Bildung etymologically refers to shaping yourself in the image (das Bild) of God Is this really true? The liked wikipedia page does not seem to support that.
- leobg 4y ago
  “Bild” is indeed “image”. Though one also says “bilden” to mean “generate”, “create”, or “consist of”. For instance, one might us it to say that two people “bilden” a team (i.e. make up a team).
  - bazoom42 4y ago
    It was the “image of God” part I doubted.
    - leobg 4y ago
      I know. I’m saying it may not have anything to do with an “image” at all. More with “composing oneself”. But I haven’t looked up the etymology.
    - memling 4y ago
      Not conclusive, but Luther uses the word Bild in his translation of Genesis 1. That it may have had or acquired the meaning pretty easily given the Bible's formative currency in those years.
      - zdragnar 4y ago
        It is also remarkably similar in concept to theosis - still present in Orthodox faith, but goes back to at least early Byzantine Christians and is the foundation for the concept of ascetic monks.
- netrus 4y ago
  It's complicated, but it's not wrong. [1] [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung#Begriffsbildung:~:text=Der%20deutsche%20Begriff%20entstand%20im%20Mittelalter%2C%5B13%5D%20wahrscheinlich%20als%20Begriffssch%C3%B6pfung%20Meister%20Eckharts%20(13./14.%C2%A0Jahrhundert)%20im%20Rahmen%20der%20Imago%2DDei%2DLehre.%20Der%20Begriff%20ist%20also%20theologischen%20Ursprungs https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung#Begriffsbildung:~:text...
jacquesm 4y ago
> one can debate the morality of funding book clubs with taxpayers' money 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.
- yobbo 4y ago
  Libraries are already free. The money here is supposedly used for coffee (or whatever) while meeting and discussing books.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Literacy goes a lot further than just access to a mountain of books, having the opportunity to meet with your peers and others to discuss those books makes it a much richer experience than reading alone. It can also serve as a reality check on some of the stuff that you find in books, and can help by pointing to other interesting reading material. Books are great, books plus other people is gold.
    - nothing0001 4y ago
      I find a little sad that many people could change books and sharing experiences with others with using tools such as chatgpt. Those tools could be used to not discuss things like education and guide people to follow the agenda of the fine-tunnings authorities.
  - Maken 4y ago
    Their purpose is different. Libraries are for book storage, book clubs are for dissemination.
  - chmod775 4y ago
    For countries where pre-school to university education is funded with taxpayers money and citizens have a right to education whenever they please, I don't think a book club is going to break the camel's back. 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.
amarant 4y ago
Damn that sounds awesome! As a Swede myself I feel like I missed out, and I wonder why I never saw anything like this in my youth? 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...
- emj 4y ago
  Sure there were, but the organized study circles in Sweden are tightly knit to workers movement, usually there is an house in a village somewhere ment for this purpose. If there are at least 1000 people living there you are guaranteed find one (usually pretty big with that population). The same was (is?) available in the US, I know there where "workers education centers" in NYC where you could learn arts etc before the fifties. This all needs people who are engaged in the movement and money, not a lot, but you do need a steady supply of money.
  - progre 4y ago
    >tightly knit to workers movement 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.
    - dmix 4y ago
      I recently came across 4H in the excellent movie Leave No Trace (2018) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3892172/ 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 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.
gumby 4y ago
> This is a linkpost for https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/popular-education-in-sweden-much?s=w https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/popular-education-in... 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.
- javanissen 4y ago
  Given that the author seems to have reposted it themselves, I’m not sure it’s an issue
- cdwhite 4y ago
  I think that's customary at LessWrong, more or less---if folks write something that's of interest to the community, they'll double-post, blog and forum. Likewise things get cross-posted to the EA forum and maybe other places.
pengstrom 4y ago
Unfortunately, the current conservative/nationalistic government has been trying to get it shut down. They use the guide of "tough on crime" of course, but they have been opposing money for people of lesser means for a long, long time.
- zx8080 4y ago
  What do they spend taxpayers money for instead?
  - geysersam 4y ago
    Defence, police, tax incentives for driving and reduced tax on fossile fuels. Many other things of course. But these are some of the areas where the difference is largest compared to the opposition.
    - tapland 4y ago
      And maintaining 0% property tax, interest deductions and lowered taxes on income from work. 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.
    - mediascreen 4y ago
      > ...tax incentives for driving 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)
- froding 4y ago
  Sure, this is true and I disagree with it. But an observer should note (and which was not mentioned in the article), that there has been scandal upon scandal of the funds being given out for these study circles ending up in Islamist or even foreign hands. 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.
yobbo 4y ago
In regions with depopulation there are disused buildings, unoccupied school rooms, and even churches in some cases. This is not a thing in big cities, and there are no facilities freely available to anyone. 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.
- vintermann 4y ago
  > "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.
- phreack 4y ago
  > This is not a thing in big cities, and there are no facilities freely available to anyone. 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.
null_object 4y ago
This gives a really distorted image of the real Sweden I know. 99% of kids in real Sweden are definitely not hanging out at these educational centers: in this massively conformist society (especially for teenagers), the kids are getting hold of beer as soon as they can, driving cars to the nearest petrol station or out-of-town car parks, and burning tire marks in the asphalt. 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.
- j_crick 4y ago
  As a non-Swede, I didn’t get the bit about “massively conformist society”. Could you please expand on it a little or point to some reading about it?
- emj 4y ago
  99% are a lot; there would be a constant mist of rubber if they all left scorch marks on the asphalt. I grew up in the tail end of what is described, not a part of it but took advantage of it. I believe the author grew up when that movement did have a lot of money and engagement, that then faltered in the economic down turn of the 90ies and with the down fall of the Swedish farmers party. It is still strong, but not as extreme as it used to be.
- xpe 4y ago
  I'm interested in your perspective. What is "real" Sweden to you? Rural? Urban? Something else? Can you share a little about where you live? Your age or life phase at least? 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.
- orwin 4y ago
  I think you have a skewed views of 'kids these days' if you think they're getting beer a soon as they can. 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.
xpe 4y ago
What can we read to get a fair overview of Swedish culture with regards to intellectual curiousity, education, conformism (I've seen this claimed but have no firsthand experience), and so on? Here is one starting point: "Small Facts and Large Issues: The Anthropology of Contemporary Scandinavian Society" : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2155886 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2155886 ... I haven't read it yet. I like the anthropological point of view though.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791704 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791704
  - xpe 4y ago
    How is "Racism and Support of Free-Market Capitalism: A Cross-Cultural Analysis" relevant to my question? I didn't ask about economic systems in particular. Is there something in there about sociological perspectives?
- xpe 4y ago
  One anecdote. One person I trust view most Swedes as much more open minded than most Americans.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    As a Swede who emigrated to the US, my hunch is that we're open minded about different things. 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.
tenker 4y ago
[flagged]
- Timon3 4y ago
  And surely there's no way your impression is biased? Or that you have an agenda? It's easy to say something like this, but without any actual examples, complaints, studies or anything it just detracts from actual conversations.
tqi 4y ago
> A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. 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?
- argiopetech 4y ago
  Those "who want to learn it from them" must make the assessment. Any less is censorship of the teacher, which, in my mind, is an unqualified evil. 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.
  - low_tech_love 4y ago
    But then how would you separate, for example, teaching from preaching?
    - gameman144 4y ago
      I'd argue preaching is (or rather, ought to be) teaching, so no need to separate them. Totally fine to restrict subjects that can be taught in schools though, including religion and the like.
    - timcobb 4y ago
      Isn’t that why we call them professors?
  - tqi 4y ago
    > Any less is censorship of the teacher, which, in my mind, is an unqualified evil. 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.
graycat 4y ago
Education? Been there, done that, a lot of it, a bit too much, really. So, I'll comment: 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.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
I wish we had something like this in the US. We sorely need it. 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.
- opportune 4y ago
Animats 4y ago
"focus on communal self-improvement." That's worth thinking about.
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191 points by cdwhite 4y ago

Is there anything similar in other European countries as well?

somewhereoutth 4y ago
In Portugal there are Cultural Associations, which have a certain legal standing with associated formalities. Sometimes they even have premises they run for meetings etc. They tend to be formed according to particular interests, if I understand correctly. Hopefully someone from Portugal can elaborate on this.
2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
The other Nordic countries have similar movements. I assume there are others too.
vidarh 4y ago
Folkeuniversitetet ("people's university"; previously Friundervisningen - free education/free learning) and folkehøyskoler ("folk/people's high schools") in Norway. 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)
gostsamo 4y ago
There are the chitalishte institution in Bulgaria which are centers for education, culture and furthering national movement in the very beginning. Couldn't find a good source in english. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitalishte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitalishte
jks 4y ago
In Finland there are "kansanopisto" that are a little like the Swedish ones described in the article but with less resources. I spent my final year of upper secondary school at one of them (https://www.paivola.fi https://www.paivola.fi) which hosts a math enrichment programme, but that one is quite unique. 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.)

Excellent article, and a very interesting look into how a society may accelerate its development. 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.

jacquesm 4y ago
> doing anything remotely 'bookish' in your free time has become almost definitively 'uncool' 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.
yobbo 4y ago
> Perhaps maker spaces are born of a similar ethos 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.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
It sounds like you're comparing the situation outlined in the article to somewhere you're familiar with when you say 'bookish' is 'uncool'. Where is that?
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  Gen X Anglosphere

bazoom42 4y ago

> Bildung etymologically refers to shaping yourself in the image (das Bild) of God Is this really true? The liked wikipedia page does not seem to support that.

leobg 4y ago
“Bild” is indeed “image”. Though one also says “bilden” to mean “generate”, “create”, or “consist of”. For instance, one might us it to say that two people “bilden” a team (i.e. make up a team).
- bazoom42 4y ago
  It was the “image of God” part I doubted.
  - leobg 4y ago
    I know. I’m saying it may not have anything to do with an “image” at all. More with “composing oneself”. But I haven’t looked up the etymology.
  - memling 4y ago
    Not conclusive, but Luther uses the word Bild in his translation of Genesis 1. That it may have had or acquired the meaning pretty easily given the Bible's formative currency in those years.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      It is also remarkably similar in concept to theosis - still present in Orthodox faith, but goes back to at least early Byzantine Christians and is the foundation for the concept of ascetic monks.
netrus 4y ago
It's complicated, but it's not wrong. [1] [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung#Begriffsbildung:~:text=Der%20deutsche%20Begriff%20entstand%20im%20Mittelalter%2C%5B13%5D%20wahrscheinlich%20als%20Begriffssch%C3%B6pfung%20Meister%20Eckharts%20(13./14.%C2%A0Jahrhundert)%20im%20Rahmen%20der%20Imago%2DDei%2DLehre.%20Der%20Begriff%20ist%20also%20theologischen%20Ursprungs https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung#Begriffsbildung:~:text...

jacquesm 4y ago

> one can debate the morality of funding book clubs with taxpayers' money 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.

yobbo 4y ago
Libraries are already free. The money here is supposedly used for coffee (or whatever) while meeting and discussing books.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Literacy goes a lot further than just access to a mountain of books, having the opportunity to meet with your peers and others to discuss those books makes it a much richer experience than reading alone. It can also serve as a reality check on some of the stuff that you find in books, and can help by pointing to other interesting reading material. Books are great, books plus other people is gold.
  - nothing0001 4y ago
    I find a little sad that many people could change books and sharing experiences with others with using tools such as chatgpt. Those tools could be used to not discuss things like education and guide people to follow the agenda of the fine-tunnings authorities.
- Maken 4y ago
  Their purpose is different. Libraries are for book storage, book clubs are for dissemination.
- chmod775 4y ago
  For countries where pre-school to university education is funded with taxpayers money and citizens have a right to education whenever they please, I don't think a book club is going to break the camel's back. 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.

amarant 4y ago

Damn that sounds awesome! As a Swede myself I feel like I missed out, and I wonder why I never saw anything like this in my youth? 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...

emj 4y ago
Sure there were, but the organized study circles in Sweden are tightly knit to workers movement, usually there is an house in a village somewhere ment for this purpose. If there are at least 1000 people living there you are guaranteed find one (usually pretty big with that population). The same was (is?) available in the US, I know there where "workers education centers" in NYC where you could learn arts etc before the fifties. This all needs people who are engaged in the movement and money, not a lot, but you do need a steady supply of money.
- progre 4y ago
  >tightly knit to workers movement 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.
  - dmix 4y ago
    I recently came across 4H in the excellent movie Leave No Trace (2018) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3892172/ 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 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.

gumby 4y ago

> This is a linkpost for https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/popular-education-in-sweden-much?s=w https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/popular-education-in... 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.

javanissen 4y ago
Given that the author seems to have reposted it themselves, I’m not sure it’s an issue
cdwhite 4y ago
I think that's customary at LessWrong, more or less---if folks write something that's of interest to the community, they'll double-post, blog and forum. Likewise things get cross-posted to the EA forum and maybe other places.

pengstrom 4y ago

Unfortunately, the current conservative/nationalistic government has been trying to get it shut down. They use the guide of "tough on crime" of course, but they have been opposing money for people of lesser means for a long, long time.

zx8080 4y ago
What do they spend taxpayers money for instead?
- geysersam 4y ago
  Defence, police, tax incentives for driving and reduced tax on fossile fuels. Many other things of course. But these are some of the areas where the difference is largest compared to the opposition.
  - tapland 4y ago
    And maintaining 0% property tax, interest deductions and lowered taxes on income from work. 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.
  - mediascreen 4y ago
    > ...tax incentives for driving 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)
froding 4y ago
Sure, this is true and I disagree with it. But an observer should note (and which was not mentioned in the article), that there has been scandal upon scandal of the funds being given out for these study circles ending up in Islamist or even foreign hands. 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.

yobbo 4y ago

In regions with depopulation there are disused buildings, unoccupied school rooms, and even churches in some cases. This is not a thing in big cities, and there are no facilities freely available to anyone. 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.

vintermann 4y ago
> "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.
phreack 4y ago
> This is not a thing in big cities, and there are no facilities freely available to anyone. 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.

null_object 4y ago

This gives a really distorted image of the real Sweden I know. 99% of kids in real Sweden are definitely not hanging out at these educational centers: in this massively conformist society (especially for teenagers), the kids are getting hold of beer as soon as they can, driving cars to the nearest petrol station or out-of-town car parks, and burning tire marks in the asphalt. 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.

j_crick 4y ago
As a non-Swede, I didn’t get the bit about “massively conformist society”. Could you please expand on it a little or point to some reading about it?
emj 4y ago
99% are a lot; there would be a constant mist of rubber if they all left scorch marks on the asphalt. I grew up in the tail end of what is described, not a part of it but took advantage of it. I believe the author grew up when that movement did have a lot of money and engagement, that then faltered in the economic down turn of the 90ies and with the down fall of the Swedish farmers party. It is still strong, but not as extreme as it used to be.
xpe 4y ago
I'm interested in your perspective. What is "real" Sweden to you? Rural? Urban? Something else? Can you share a little about where you live? Your age or life phase at least? 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.
orwin 4y ago
I think you have a skewed views of 'kids these days' if you think they're getting beer a soon as they can. 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.

xpe 4y ago

What can we read to get a fair overview of Swedish culture with regards to intellectual curiousity, education, conformism (I've seen this claimed but have no firsthand experience), and so on? Here is one starting point: "Small Facts and Large Issues: The Anthropology of Contemporary Scandinavian Society" : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2155886 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2155886 ... I haven't read it yet. I like the anthropological point of view though.

wahnfrieden 4y ago
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791704 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791704
- xpe 4y ago
  How is "Racism and Support of Free-Market Capitalism: A Cross-Cultural Analysis" relevant to my question? I didn't ask about economic systems in particular. Is there something in there about sociological perspectives?
xpe 4y ago
One anecdote. One person I trust view most Swedes as much more open minded than most Americans.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  As a Swede who emigrated to the US, my hunch is that we're open minded about different things. 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.

tenker 4y ago

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Timon3 4y ago
And surely there's no way your impression is biased? Or that you have an agenda? It's easy to say something like this, but without any actual examples, complaints, studies or anything it just detracts from actual conversations.

tqi 4y ago

> A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. 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?

argiopetech 4y ago
Those "who want to learn it from them" must make the assessment. Any less is censorship of the teacher, which, in my mind, is an unqualified evil. 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.
- low_tech_love 4y ago
  But then how would you separate, for example, teaching from preaching?
  - gameman144 4y ago
    I'd argue preaching is (or rather, ought to be) teaching, so no need to separate them. Totally fine to restrict subjects that can be taught in schools though, including religion and the like.
  - timcobb 4y ago
    Isn’t that why we call them professors?
- tqi 4y ago
  > Any less is censorship of the teacher, which, in my mind, is an unqualified evil. 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.

graycat 4y ago

Education? Been there, done that, a lot of it, a bit too much, really. So, I'll comment: 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.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

I wish we had something like this in the US. We sorely need it. 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.

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Animats 4y ago

"focus on communal self-improvement." That's worth thinking about.

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