Swedish school puts #metoo on the curriculum
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Published: 25 Nov, 2018 CET.
Updated: Sun 25 Nov 2018 14:55 CET
A school in Sweden has put the #metoo movement on the curriculum, with all 15-year-olds given a two-hour lesson on the global campaign against sexual harassment.
Anna-Karin Nilsson and three other teachers at Tullbroskolan in Falkenberg spent about six hours each developing the lesson, with the first Class 9 students in receiving it this week.
“They know quite a bit about the Metoo movement already, but what’s hard for them is to understand is that it applies to them as well,” Nilsson, a civics teacher at the school, told Swedish broadcaster SVT.
She said that boys and girls were split for part of the lesson, with male teachers working with the boys and female teachers with the girls.
“We have male teachers working with those who identify as men so that they don’t feel that they’re just being blamed, and realise that we should instead talk about how to have a more equal society,” she said.
“It can easily happen that the boys feel ‘everyone is blaming us’, when it is in fact more about the structure of society.”
Oscar Ljungström, a pupil at the school, told SVT that the lesson had made him look at the #metoo movement in a different way.
“We hadn't really understood before how big this is, that there were so many people hit by this," he said. "It made you think about how you behave yourself."
Hilma Eriksson, another student, said she through the lesson might help reduce the low level sexual harassment she witnessed at the school.
“There are a lot of jokes, and you hear a lot of ugly words in the corridors, and I think that if everyone has this lesson and everyone takes it on board, it will reduce this.”
In the months after the #metoo movement came to prominence last autumn, the subject was brought up in all the school’s classes.
But earlier this year Nilsson and her colleagues decided that the story of the movement should be made a more permanent part of the curriculum.
“I think we will work on this for many years,” she said. “It might not continue to be called #metoo, but we will have to work on it for a long time, if not forever.”
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Anna-Karin Nilsson and three other teachers at Tullbroskolan in Falkenberg spent about six hours each developing the lesson, with the first Class 9 students in receiving it this week.
“They know quite a bit about the Metoo movement already, but what’s hard for them is to understand is that it applies to them as well,” Nilsson, a civics teacher at the school, told Swedish broadcaster SVT.
She said that boys and girls were split for part of the lesson, with male teachers working with the boys and female teachers with the girls.
“We have male teachers working with those who identify as men so that they don’t feel that they’re just being blamed, and realise that we should instead talk about how to have a more equal society,” she said.
“It can easily happen that the boys feel ‘everyone is blaming us’, when it is in fact more about the structure of society.”
Oscar Ljungström, a pupil at the school, told SVT that the lesson had made him look at the #metoo movement in a different way.
“We hadn't really understood before how big this is, that there were so many people hit by this," he said. "It made you think about how you behave yourself."
Hilma Eriksson, another student, said she through the lesson might help reduce the low level sexual harassment she witnessed at the school.
“There are a lot of jokes, and you hear a lot of ugly words in the corridors, and I think that if everyone has this lesson and everyone takes it on board, it will reduce this.”
In the months after the #metoo movement came to prominence last autumn, the subject was brought up in all the school’s classes.
But earlier this year Nilsson and her colleagues decided that the story of the movement should be made a more permanent part of the curriculum.
“I think we will work on this for many years,” she said. “It might not continue to be called #metoo, but we will have to work on it for a long time, if not forever.”
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