Report 2015-2016 from the Swedish movement

During the last year Ulf Paulsson och David Almlöf have had many meetings with the administration at Ljungskile Folkhögskola, which is the place where our coming RIDEF 2018 is going to take place. Ljungskile is situated some kilometers outside Gothenburg and is beautifully situated on a hill with a view over the sea. At Ljungskile Folkhögskola there are rooms with different standards for people to choose what suits everyone. There are still som issues to be solved but much has already been taken care of.

For some years the Swedish Freinet movement has participated in a very special arrangement in Visby, a town on the Swedish island Gotland. Every year since our prime minister Olof Palme started to make a speach in a park called Almedalen in Visby, politicians from all political parties in Sweden come to Visby a special week every summer to take the possibilty to talk about their special thoughts of issues on the agenda for the moment. Not only politicians can talk in Almedalen but also anyone who has someting to say. Therefore organisations arrange seminaries during the week and the Freinet movement work together with other alternative pedagogic movements such as the Montessori movement and the Steiner movement to take the opportunity to tell politicians that it is important that many different ways of educating must be accepted.

Every year the Swedish Freinet movement gives a price to a person or an organisation who during the year has worked for more democracy at school or in the society . We call the price Open Minds just to stress the importance that Freinet taught us about being open to the society both inside and outside school. Last year the price was given to Oraib Qamhawi, university lector at Stockholm university, because of her engagement in schools in Palestine where she together with teachers in Palestine and the Swedish churches has started schools for Jewish and Muslim children in the same school. We ment that this engagement has great importance for the understanding of the fact that people can work together in spite of different religious belongings.

The price for 2016 we intend to give to the journalist on the Swedish television Suzanne Forslund who has made a lot of important films about the pedagogic that Freinet stood for. We mean that it is especiallly interesting just this year because of the fact that Freinet was born 120 years ago and that we are going to celebrate this during this coming autumn.

Sweden July 2016
Inger Nordheden
Chairperson in the Swedish Freinet movement

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