PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Stefan Holm acted against a school student as a substitute teacher.
Now he has been reported to the police for suspected assault and resigned.
Which has attracted huge criticism around Sweden and the former high jumper has been praised by many.
During the sports career became Stefan Holm a national hero who won an unforgettable Olympic gold and four World Cup golds during his prime. These days, the former high jumper is the father and coach of the new shooting star Melvin Lycke Holm.
Holm’s actions
Last week he took on a brand new challenge as a substitute teacher at the English School and it was a highly dramatic first day at work. Holm was immediately in the limelight after a high-profile situation with a school student and has now been reported to the police for suspected assault.
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Holm is said to have been harsh, grabbed the student’s arms and carried him against his will. After the incident, he has finished the service and the time as substitute teacher was only one day long.
“It just burned. I know that I must not do this and that I have done wrong,” Stefan Holm himself describes the incident.
Clear criticism
In recent days, the athletics legend has been showered with praise from Swedes who think he has done exactly the right thing. Now new criticism is being aired against the whole situation and what teachers can and cannot do to keep a classroom in order.
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The journalist Anela Murguz writes in an editorial in the local newspaper Borås Tidning and airs his honest opinions under the headline: “Stefan Holm and other vulnerable teachers need support – not police reports”.
“But has he really done wrong? It is, for obvious reasons, difficult for outsiders to know what took place in Stefan Holm’s classroom, but the fact is that the regulations, which were changed in 2022, give teachers and other staff the right to intervene physically to prevent violence, violations and other disturbances,” writes she in her opinion text.
“Nevertheless, the local union in Värmland is absolutely certain that it was the right of the school to report Stefan Holm to the police. To P4 Värmland, the chairman of Sweden’s Teachers in Karlstad says that it is not possible to run an ‘authoritarian style’ in today’s school. Here you can give Sweden’s Teachers the right. The fact that it looks like this is due to the fact that for a long time the low-affective treatment has been the norm for how leadership should be exercised in a classroom. The fact that the method is strongly questioned, easy to misinterpret and also counterproductive has not prevented schools around the country from using it”.
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Murguz continues his criticism of how difficult it is for teachers in today’s society and that a celebrated sports hero ends up at the center of a much more difficult situation.
“Stefan Holm – whose actions divide both the public and Skolsverige into two camps – should not get any cream because he happens to be famous. He is far from alone in ending up in this situation,” she writes in the local newspaper BT.
“But it took a former Olympic medalist to highlight how unreasonable the working situation is for both unauthorized and qualified teachers, and how they cannot count on the support of either the employer or the union when the going gets tough. No wonder there is a shortage of teachers”.
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