X-post - Early Years - How Do They Do It In Sweden?

[juuule]

I have posted this in Education but thought it was interesting enough to post here even though it's not home-ed.
Early Years - How Do They Do It In Sweden?
Closer to being home-edish without actually being home-ed?

I saw this last month when it was on teachers tv - was really interesting to see...on reflection I would probably still choose HE over mainstream schooling, but if I had to send my children to school then I would feel a lot happier if they were like those!

OMG a CLIMBING TREE, get the rubber matting out . Another post coming up by me I think.

But YES I agree, that is what pre-school should be like. It comes very close to Autonomous education. Can you imagine what this countries 'yob' problems would be like if the kids were allowed to be kids and were obviously cared for, not pushed to doing something they aren't old enough for. There would also be more adults willing to go to work rather than leave their children to the not so tender mercies of British pre-schools.

I noticed that even 12 year olds were able to speak with confidence in a forign languge about a quite abstract subject with confidence, where the same bunch of 12 year olds in Britian can barely say Good Day in French even though they've been taught it since 5.

I know, a young Swedish lad quite well, he is one of DS2's online friends, and they speak (verbally through an online voice program called Ventrilo) nearly every day. He is 11 years old, and speaks english well enough to hold quite eloquent conversations with adults as well. We have had this converstaion with him, comparing different schooling practices, and I must say I would have loved for my 3 to have had the freedoms he is having.

Oh I feel so depressed having watched this programme. I feel as though my kids have been totally cheated out of their right to be a child when they were smaller.

Why is it that our powers that be keep insisting we bang on with our overly prescriptive, boring and stressful curriculum when it is so glaringly obvious that other countries use a vastly superior system.

Interesting to see the kids climbing trees and being encouraged to take risks. One of my colleages was told off recently for allowing her class of year 6 (age 11) children to stand on the desks to test parachutes for a science experiment!

I was out with my girls yesterday on their bikes (I was walking with the dog) and got quite panicky when they were out of sight. When I arrived home they were not there. They were just riding their bikes around the quiet roads behind our house whilst waiting for me to come back and were perfectly safe (the youngest is 9.5). Watching this programme makes me realise how much I stop them from doing and that it probably hasn't done them any favours.