Integration Minister Johan Pehrson (L) reacts strongly to Kalla fakta’s revelation about how China’s influence operations have found their way into the Swedish primary school.
Now he wants to see more controls.
– It is remarkably naive. Swedish schools should never eat from the Chinese Communist Party’s library, he says.
The revelation of cold facts about how the Communist Party’s books are used in Swedish primary schools has provoked strong reactions.
At the same time, there is criticism from researchers that the mother tongue subject has been prioritized for many years, which has increased the risk that the textbooks have content that violates the Swedish Education Act.
– If municipalities and the state had been more keen to follow up, for example, on results and teaching materials, the risk of these problems would be reduced, says Anne Reath Warren, who today teaches native language teachers as a lecturer at Uppsala University.
“Extremely deficient”
She has both researched the subject of mother tongue and herself worked as a mother tongue teacher in English. When she moved to Sweden in the 90s, she received little support from her employer.
– I did not receive any introduction. It was extremely lacking, so I had to find my own way, says Anne Reath Warren.
Much is different today, but in her research she has continued to experience how the mother tongue subject is given lower priority. The teachers do not need teaching credentials and, like all teachers, native language teachers have great freedom to choose books themselves, even when there is generally a lack of books produced in Sweden for a Swedish context.
– We invest heavily in books in school from the government. The Liberals have not least pushed for that. We are adding resources for the School Inspectorate next year to have more controls, says Integration Minister Johan Pehrson (L).
Precisely the lack of suitable books is something that several municipalities Kalla fakta has spoken to raise as a problem.
One solution has been for teachers to produce their own material, but even then they have used parts from the Communist Party’s books. It remains to be seen where the alternatives will come from.
– I am not of the opinion that the government or the Riksdag are the ones who write textbooks, says Johan Pehrson (L).