"Hon kallades hemmasittare: Om skolan, tårarna och kampen i hallen" is a Swedish "tell it all" by Nadja Yllner, an award-winning investigative reporter working for the public broadcaster SVT. In this book, Yllner investigates her own family and comes to some startling conclusions. The book tells the story of Yllner´s daughter Lova and her various psychiatric problems. At the age of ten, in fourth grade, Lova became a "homesitter" (hemmasittare), a Swedish euphemism for kids who refuse to go to school due to various psychological issues. She was eventually diagnosed with social phobia. Otherwise, ADHD and high-functioning autism are common diagnoses in this group.
What makes the book truly shocking is the context. It turns out that between 2009 and 2019, the number of Swedish school children with various "homesitting" diagnoses have become three times larger. That´s a 300% increase in just ten years! The international trends are strikingly similar. Also, the large uptick begins in 2011, when Internet access through mobile phones became common. While correlation isn´t causation, it´s difficult not to suspect a connection of some sort. Having around the clock access to the web either turns many kids into neurotic wrecks, or sharply increases pre-existing problems (for instance with ADHD).
At about the same time, Swedish schools decided to abolish special classes for children with various problems, instead trying to integrate them into the regular classes. This was hailed as "inclusion" (of course!), but was in reality a way to slash school funding. The special classes were more expensive, since the schools were supposed to employ teachers qualified to deal with problem children. In the regular classes, the special needs children at best had the help of unqualified "assistants". The end result: more disturbances in the regular classes, and a sharp increase in neurotic and depressive children. Ironically, the total costs for society for taking care of all the "homesitters" may in the end become much higher than money "saved" on the schools, but the politicians don´t seem to give a damn. Yllner also believes that modern education is partially to blame for the crisis: young children are supposed to "plan their own education" and "work independently", which many of them simply can´t, and if this is combined with mental problems, the end result is disaster. (It struck me that this new kind of educational style is really also a way to slash funding - presumably less regular teachers are needed!)
Schools which want to help "homesitters" are caught in a bizarre bureaucratic catch 22. They can´t get extra money from the authorities unless they *already* have a program up and running for students with special needs, but who on earth is going to pay for the program in the meantime? Also, if a school officially decides to help a student, they are bound by law to carry out the decision, even if no funding is forthcoming, making many schools reluctant to make such promises in the first place! These bureaucratic bottlenecks are probably deliberate, in my opinion. It also turns out that until recently, the national school agency didn´t even bother collecting statistics of how many students don´t show up for class for one reason or another. Since everything in Sweden is tightly regulated and supervised, this suggests some kind of ulterior motive, although it remains unclear what it could be.
One aspect of the problem not mentioned in Yllner´s book is that the number of children and teens who claim to be "misgendered" have *also* sharply increased *during the exact same time period*, suggesting a connection. Too politically incorrect for this author? Or doesn´t she know about it?
I was struck by the fact that Yllner and her family are extremely privileged, criss-crossing the world on their holidays (Lova is still a teen but has already visited everything from Rome to Kerala). The feeling the reader gets is: if even an upper middle class family like the Yllners can get in trouble with a increasingly dysfunctional Swedish school system, how on earth does reality look like for everyone else?
Another crack in the Image of Sweden...
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