Dear Belgian friends!

 

I have been asked to write to you to give mine and the Swedish Freinet movements opinion about how we look upon the possibility that some muslim women who wear a veil or a niqab want to take part in the coming RIDEF i Reggio Emilia in Italy.

 

I work, since many years, as a teacher at the Teachers education at Stockholm University. During the last ten years many muslim women has entered the University and, as I understand, just beacause they wear a veil. That is the sign of their freedom and their only opportunity to take part in education and a social life outside their family.

 

So even if I, as a woman from Sweden and the west , think that wearing a veil is a sign of no freedom and something that shows mens power over women, these women look at it in the opposite way. Without their veil they couldn´t become a teacher, a doctor och a dentist so for them it is freedom.

 

What the sign of a good life for some people is, can be a sign of the opposite for others. The important point is that all people have their own opinion of what a good life is.

 

In Sweden we have been taught not to judge but instead welcome all people in our sociaty with or without special clothes so our opinion in this matter is that we must welcome women from all over the world that want to take part in our struggle to change school into the way we Freinetpedagogs want to do to build a new and democratic school. If they wear a veil or a niqab is therefore not important.

 

Bets wishes from Inger Nordheden, Chairperson in the Swedish Freinet Movement