Today I like Maciej Zaremba

A friend of mine tipped me off to the fact that DN is running a new series of articles by Maciej Zaremba entitled "I väntan på Sverige". When I see the name, I have a very distinct tingling the tells me I've read an article by this person before, and had very strong feelings about it, almost assuredly even to the point of trying to write to the author. The thing is, I don't remember if I wrote to the author in order to tell him or her that I thought they were a genius or that I thought they were a drooling idiot. Or wait, now I'm feeling like this article from the past wasn't in DN, but rather, in the newspaper or newsletter for Liberala Studenter? Yes, that's ringing a bell...

Anything is possible, but I can at least say that today's article falls in the genius category. Svensk? Var god dröj! explores the long, unorganized, and pretty hopeless process of integrating a refugee with today's rules and practices. Much of the article condemns SFI, the system of courses in the Swedish language for new immigrants, but the author even discusses a myriad of "fluff" courses that some of the article's subjects have been sent to, where they learn about hygiene and walks in the forest and visits to IKEA. I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was THAT bad.

The problem with these "fluff" measures is not, as some particularly boxed-in thinkers might assume as soon as they see me or someone else complaining about it, is not that it's "a waste of taxpayer's money" and all that happy reactionary jazz. It's that it's a waste of the refugee's time. I know that integrating into Swedish society as far as understanding how people think and work and paying taxes and taking the bus and all those kinds of things are hurdles that have to be hopped over, and it's cool that someone has thought of that at all, but the twin assumptions that a fully educated dentist or doctor from Baghdad both needs to learn how to wash his hands and feels it's a good use of his time doing so before he starts learning the language is so wrong in so many ways.

Translated highlights from the article:

When explaining that there apparently is no authority or bureaucracy in Sweden that keeps any records of what refugees' career and educational backgrounds are, Zaremba reflects on how ironic that is given that "For decades, the State has registered which tiles Svensson has in his summer house as well as when he masturbated for the first time. No aspect of our daily lives has been deemed too trivial to keep track of."

"When we take for granted that a curriculum designed for study-shy teenagers in Täby is also the best for Iraqi corporals and Ethiopian doctors -- does that speak of our passion for equality or just our arrogance?" I don't require a second thought before answering arrogance, hands-down. The best and most ambitious goal of the official Swedish curriculum and documents describing the teaching philosophy of the country's school system is to try to make sure the entire learning experience is adapted toward each individual student's specific needs. But as a teacher, I can promise you that that's a theory; in practice, noone meets more resistance from the Swedish Task Force for Equality, Hypocrisy and Shooting Ourselves in the Feet than a teacher who attempts to claim that two different students might need two different types of pedagogy. T use example from the article, they can't fathom how we could claim that Kurdish illiterates and Iranian academics do not belong in the same classroom, but they see no problem with assuming that both people need to be taught about good hygiene whereas a recent arrival from Poland or Germany does not.

This is why, sadly, the Warsaw school described in the article -- where they intensively train doctors and other healthcare personel in Swedish, English, French, Danish, and you-name-it so that they can hit the ground running when arriving in a new country -- is a concept that is a long way from being copied here in Sweden, despite the fact that it's obviously successful and puts SFI to shame. It's truly sad that a school in Poland is so much better equipped to integrate people into Swedish society than the standard offering IN Sweden, but it's not surprising, either.