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

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

#71

Post by BurningFrog »

xpe wrote: post #59
xpe wrote: post #25

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 ... I haven't read it yet. I like the anthropological point of view though.

One anecdote. One person I trust view most Swedes as much more open minded than most Americans.

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.

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

#72

Post by zdragnar »

memling wrote: post #58
bazoom42 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the “image of God ” part I doubted.

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.

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.

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

#73

Post by bsder »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #70
bsder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A carpenter, woodworker, roofer, plumber, welder, etc. would be kind of surprised with your definition of STEM, but, okay. If that's your definition, you do you.

> 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.

STEM means "science, technology, engineering and math". And, in fact, is almost always about a degree in the aforementioned areas as it was coined by the NSF in 2001.

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.

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

#74

Post by timcobb »

low_tech_love wrote: post #47
argiopetech wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But then how would you separate, for example, teaching from preaching?

Isn’t that why we call them professors?

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

#75

Post by dmix »

progre wrote: post #42
emj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

>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.

I recently came across 4H in the excellent movie Leave No Trace (2018)

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.

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

#76

Post by timonoko »

amarant wrote: post #8

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...

They were everywhere, but you just learned to ignore little notes on library noteboard. Unless you wanted to study dialectic marxism or everyday anti-fascism or islamic poetry or history of labour movement.

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.

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

#77

Post by somewhereoutth »

bsder wrote: post #73
somewhereoutth wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

STEM means "science, technology, engineering and math". And, in fact, is almost always about a degree in the aforementioned areas as it was coined by the NSF in 2001. 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, e…

In the context of this discussion I was using STEM in the most general sense, i.e. maker spaces tend to be more STEM or craft and technology orientated, as opposed to e.g. literature, social sciences, etc. That should be clear to most I feel - informal learning environments don't provide degrees (almost by definition), so the rigorous usage of the term does not apply.
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