Ellen Key's beach
Cato and I are in Sweden. I wanted to go to Stockholm but it's a bit of a long drive so I decided to pinch a spot on the map halfway and looked for an Airbnb near lake Vättern. And it just so happens that this is the exact spot where Ellen Key built a house. She first lived there herself, but after her death, it became a summer residence for craftswomen. Ellen Keys Beach. We understand it completely, Cato and I. We didn't want to leave. So beautiful, so peaceful. Unfortunately, it is now a museum. Nowadays, women who work with their hands arrange their holidays themselves. And that is perhaps also the advantage of the present time. Although I would love to be pampered for a few weeks in Ellen Key's beautiful house. After all, I am also a craftsman, as a sailor.
But our little house near Vadstena in Vallaslätten was also a little paradise. Beautiful, cosy, quiet and the cows visited us every evening.
Cato went exploring on her own as usual. One day I saw her standing in the middle of the meadow about a hundred metres away, facing a couple of deer. She wanted to give them an apple but, to her disappointment, they did not accept it. Freedom...
Cato and I agreed that we would definitely visit this place again.
Ellen Key lived from 1849 to 1926, at a time when women still had to move around buttoned up head to toe, feet to neck, in long, unattractive dresses. It was also a time when people thought that the human race could achieve an exalted status through careful breeding. Sorry for the word. Eugenics. Darwin had only just died. His work caused a whole new view of the world so perhaps the thinking can be explained as time-bound, but it also saddled Europe with crackpot world leaders and a horrible war. The perfect human being. Who is judging? The human being?
Ellen Key did not think eugenics was a bad idea. She is forgiven. She was a woman of her time and, moreover, she devoted herself tirelessly to the child, to education and to raising children. In her most famous book, The Century of the Child, she made mincemeat of the education of her time in no uncertain terms. She was allowed to do that. If I try to explain something to today's policymakers, they don't like me. But then again, I am no Ellen Key. And we are not living in 1900 but in 2000. Everything is fine. You are ungrateful and not nice Mrs Boot.
Parents of excluded children are too tired to move. And the rest of the people is asleep. Because they have a good life.
Key influenced people like Montessori. She was and is known all over the world, but she also visited our own Jan Ligthart in The Hague.
Jan Ligthart in turn visited Sweden. I think I like Jan Ligthart especially for his humorous cynicism and for his description of the sea voyage that he and his wife (in one of those buttoned-up long dresses on a cargo ship!) made to Gothenburg. In his book about this visit, In Zweden, he describes in detail the stormy crossing from Bremen to Sweden via the Skagerrak. It is hilarious, especially if you know the sea and life on board such a ship. The adventure elicited from him the wonderful statement:
‘Sailors are not people but sweet, living parts of a ship'.
I live on a ship with my family and I love nothing more than sailing, so I'm sure you'll forgive me for this unnecessary digression in my story. Ligthart's motto is now, of course, on a shield that hangs on the bridge of our ship.
The perfect person. The approved person. What is that? We are still looking for it. Who decides what is good? Why are some people allowed to think what other people think? What are human rights?
When I told people about my trip to Europe, everyone invariably responded: 'Oh how nice. I am especially curious about Scandinavia. Are you going there too? It seems to be so well organised there.
I now have to disappoint those people a little. In Denmark, 45% of the children with autism do not go to school.
A research report shows that Denmark started enthusiastically with the introduction of inclusive education but that the economic crisis of 2008 tempered this.
A study has shown that 40% of the almost 47,000 unemployed young people aged 15 to 24 have a disability. This group of young people has not received any further education either.
They have all kinds of disabilities: physical of course (3.2%) and in addition ADHD, autism and anxiety, depression, stress and eating disorders. 32% of unemployed young people with a disability have the latter: anxiety, depression, stress and/or an eating disorder. And an equal proportion has autism and ADHD. I wonder: is depression a handicap or something you pick up? Anxiety? Stress? Eating disorder? Are you born with it?
It is no better in Sweden. A survey by the Autism Society shows that there, too, half of all school-age children with autism are confined to their homes. The number of complaints received annually by the Swedish Inspectorate concerning inadequate support at school has quadrupled since 2006. 1100 complaints. And these are only the complaints from parents who dare to complain and know where to do so. According to the report Lost Years, parents in Sweden, just like in the Netherlands, must be able to force the school to provide extra support. Unlike in the Netherlands, the Swedish inspectorate finds this unacceptable.
But what is very recognisable is that, according to a study by the University of Gothenburg, most school directors 'think that the pupils' difficulties have more to do with the characteristics and shortcomings of the pupils themselves than with shortcomings in the school environment and in mainstream education'. (text from report Lost Years)
In the Netherlands, all children must go to school. Children who drop out must be treated so that they can go back to school again. And then those children should be very happy and grateful that they are allowed to belong to the ‘good’ children in a place where they find it horrible and are often also bullied by those 'good' children.
In the Netherlands, children are inspected and tested from the age of four and as soon as a child does not perform like the rest, his fate is sealed. The child of maybe six or seven years old will from then on have to suffer from the fact that he is different and does not belong. With treatment and guidance, and if he does his very best, this little vulnerable creature might be able to join in. Maybe he won't. But that is up to him. Or his parents.
When does a person have a handicap? What is the definition of a handicap? If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree...' said Einstein.
If there is one thing that has convinced me on this journey, it is that I do not understand at all what human rights are. Who decides when a person belongs?
Children have a right to education. What does that mean? Equal education for all. Equal to what? To whom? What is meant by this?
If the person with the disability cannot decide for himself when he is helped, is his right equivalent to the right of people who make the rules?
In other words: If people without disabilities decide when they think human rights are met, do people with disabilities have a chance of equality?
What strikes me is that in all the reports in all the countries, there is mostly talk of the right of every child to equal education. And what does that mean? It means that children with disabilities must try with all their might to perform as well as the 'good' children. If they do not succeed, they are worth less.
If a child with autism succeeds at school, it is good. We think that the school has really done its best. The child has lasted until the final exams, and has really got a piece of paper. So has this child had the same rights as another child? Did he get an equivalent education?
I do not think so. The 'good' child has felt at home at school and went there with pleasure. He has been able to develop into a self-confident young adult.
The child with autism has not felt at home at all. He did not enjoy going to school. He has struggled through trial and error. But he has realised that he must persevere and that only then can he belong. The chances of him starting the rest of his life as a happy adult with self-confidence are zero.
The discussion is not about: what support is a child entitled to once he has been rejected.
It should be about: what is needed to provide education to all children without distinction, without rejection, without comparison. Because comparing people violates human rights. It makes people who make the rules into people who are apparently better than the others. It makes people who succeed the chosen ones. Our children are taught that they are better than the other child, the wretch who had to leave school because he kept throwing the furniture through the window out of frustration. We grow people who belong and people who do not. Perfect people and rejects.
And that is exactly what we did not want to happen. Right?
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