The origin of my writing the book A thousand times stronger was a development conversation I had when my daughter had just started the sixth grade. We had moved from a few years in Gothenburg, back to Stockholm and we had chosen housing based on the schools – that is, based on what the schools claimed to be.
Our daughter had attended Gothenburg's Samskola, a school with the Montessori pedagogy ( a fantastic pedagogy with great respect for the children's inherent will and power to conquer knowledge, a pedagogy that has completely fallen into obscurity in recent decades, perhaps because it creates strong, independent adults?) as a basis and where every morning the principal took every single student by the hand and met his/her gaze. Good morning Sebastian, good morning Emelie. He knew all the students' names, and he figured he'd be there to welcome them to school just about every day, something we all deeply appreciated. Do you think that this affects the atmosphere at school? I think so.
She was eleven years old, when we moved up to Stockholm, a couple of weeks before the summer holidays after five. Before the moving party left, she had visited the school and introduced herself to the two classes that were about to be placed in. We expected the new school, Katarina north, or Knorra called, would live up to what they professed to cherish strongly. As obvious as everyone must show each other respect. And that work peace and everyone's opportunity to grow through and at school were protected. That every student had an equal right to be there, that is, no one had the right to sit on anyone else. The school beat its chest. There were banners in the corridors with the beautiful words. I spoke several times with the principal before we moved there. We thought it would be a good continuation of the fine schooling she had experienced up to that point.
The kind that was so beautifully displayed on Knorra's banners and website and which surely a large part of the staff thought they were executing kan de facto fungera. If you are not satisfied with being blinded by nice words you proudly repeat like a mantra. If you are willing to examine your own behavior. If you have a well-thought-out attitude and a constructive pedagogy that is based on and respects the children. It can work if all the adults in the context are aware of power structures and gender-related behavior patterns both among the students and which are passed on by oneself, which inhibit and limit the children's freedom to develop. It can work very well if adults set limits, offers interesting alternatives, has the knowledge to arouse and preserve students' motivation and interest in being at school. The children's kicks at school should not consist of challenging others' integrity and ruining others' schooling. If you refuse to see the imbalance between the children in terms of space and privacy, you cannot claim to protect everyone's rights. This kind of laissez – faire rhymes screamingly badly with the statement ” we protect gender equality”.
Unfortunately, it was this gap that was revealed during the developmental interview with the mentor/teacher and the eleven-year-old girl and her mother.
The mentor had a message to deliver. A very positive one. My daughter was an example. No one gave in to her. Because she marked, clear and definite. She had high integrity. The mentor cheered. The adults associated with the class were impressed by the girl. Besides having high integrity and not being afraid to speak up and make a mark, she was a very nice little person, who spread joy around him, moreover, both talented and ambitious. But the very best, from the adults' point of view, was that she was, what they called ” a strong girl ”. And think, it was exactly what they had wished for. Now she was finally here!
I listened and of course felt proud of my daughter. Of course, I thought I might have succeeded in helping her maintain her integrity and strength, in the way I had hoped. Självklart, considering what I have previously written, I have always thought a lot about gender roles and how girls are raised away from their inner being, natural innate strength.
But at the same time, a quiet alarm rang in the back of his head. And I thought too, that none of what the mentor spoke about, was something my girl was aware of, nothing that she herself considered special or remarkable. Tvärtom, it was obvious that you marked. It was obvious that you spoke up if someone tried to provoke you, or was nasty to a friend or disrupted the lesson. So was it something unique? Did that make her something extra over the others, to one ” stark” girl? If instead you let others ignore you, destroy one's work peace, be nasty, then you are ”normal”? Strong should be something beyond the obvious, to be considered as ”strong”.
The mentor told my daughter that all the teachers wanted her to, as the good example she was, think about empowering the other girls in the class to dare to speak up and highlight, as she herself so undoubtedly did. So dare to speak up against the guys.
I saw that my daughter's small shoulders slumped and that a certain confusion could be seen in her eyes.
The mentor also told me that the staff at the school had been so impressed by her clarity, calm and completely fearless ways of introducing herself to wildly strange kids in the two classes she had visited in the spring before the move. They had expected her to shyly sit where she did and mumble something about her name and where she moved from and when she would be arriving, but instead she got up and of course walked over to the painting, took everyone into the classroom and told the story boldly and without awkwardness, because she was well grounded in herself and used to being respected. The staff had become so happy, for here was their savior. They decided to put her in the very rowdy class instead of the kind and nice class that would have been better for her. For the staff, it was much better to have her in the unbalanced class where over the years it became an increasing problem with the boys, who behaved badly and without limits both towards staff and the girls. There, with her high integrity, she would be able to act as a powerhouse for the girls who had become accustomed to enduring privacy-violating behavior during the six – seven years that the adult staff had had to do with the class, from when they were six-year-old little people.
We left there, hand in hand my daughter and I, in the autumn darkness and I remember being filled with mixed emotions, I still hadn't really grasped what was said and what it meant. We were quiet, which was not natural to any of us, we were thoughtful. I remember saying after a while, as encouraging and kind as mothers do, that how nice it was that you received such praise. But then it was difficult to continue. What would I say? How nice it was that you got such praise for being just the way you are and that the others have been bullied for their six years at school and scared of the boys and apparently the adults were scared of the boys too, and no one says anything and no adult has taken their responsibility even though they are a whole team working together and it is now expected that you , little girl almost twelve years old, should correct everything by what you do completely naturally which is apparently exceptional, unique and colossally different. How nice that you are appointed to take responsibility for such an incomprehensible and widespread situation and how nice that they tell you to be proud that you are a ” strong girl ” which should now spread your strength to your fellow little sisters while the adult team silently applauds in the background – silent, because they don't want to clash with anyone.
The book grew out of my evening walks with our dog, the story came to be every time I passed the wall where my daughter and I had walked after the development talk, with her little hand in mine. My girl walked silently by my side, the fair hair bobbed under the cap, the smala legs, the tender hand, the rosy cheek, the downcast thoughtful look, on the way home from the development interview which was meant as one big super compliment. Every time I passed the same wall as when I had said those slightly lost words of encouragement without either of us having been able to continue the thought, now instead clarified the sorrow into a neat soup.
Idag, when A Thousand Times Stronger has existed as a book for eighteen years and as a film for fourteen years, and I know that there are a huge number of young people who have read/seen the story of Signe and Saga, it's a little dizzying to remember where the fire started. The story has done a lot of good and, like most things in life, it is a series of coincidences that converged and became the catalyst for its creation. But in the book and the movie, the girl is 16 year instead of just under 12.
And I never weighed in on what she was meant to be and do. We talked about it a little. How crazy it was. And that it wasn't her responsibility at all. It was the adults'. Glöm det! Ja, she was definitely going to do that. Because she was a strong girl, and therefore founded in herself she did not depend on praise, but she could be unconcerned and let it flow. If she had cared too much about being loved and appreciated by authority, she might have done what she could to balance her twenty-eight other classmates, which had definitely not benefited her. Tvärtom, it had taught her a pattern that would be very destructive to herself in the long run. A very feminine pattern by the way. The idea that you have responsibility for everyone. To sacrifice oneself for the sake of others. For the sake of the whole and the future. This is usually the very thing that mature women realize they have done far too much when they look exhausted at the shortest straw in their hand.
She didn't. And the other girls also got pretty tough, för den delen.
But Knorra, according to what I've been told, was put on me and didn't buy, like many other schools, into the book A thousand times stronger.
