God morning, I would like some protection against myself please...

My mother said this thing every time we left the house. She locked the door and said: I lock the door to keep my friends out because the enemy’s will get inside anyway. It took a while before I realized the meaning and the truth in that sentence. The funny thing with living on the countryside is that all your friends and close neighbours know where that extra key is hanging in the garage. So why did we even lock the door in the first place? Who and what are we protecting our self against every time we lock the car or house, hide our code to the bank account and erase the secret e-mails? I am fairly sure that the terrorist don’t want my car or poor bank account. So who or what are we so afraid of that we don’t trust the police anymore?

In a democratic country every person has a legal right to have a lawyer even though that person robbed, stole something from, raped or murdered an other human being. Democracy is also about feeling protected against those kinds of crimes. This is a matter where I can see a use in having cameras on a street corner, in a park or next to the ATM. The cameras can be a help for the police to investigate a crime. The problem with having cameras is that we sooner or later will have them all over to keep everyone safe, all the time, everywhere. So let’s just put them in the most crucial places, but where is that? If they should be there to keep people safe I guess we should make them as robots so they really could protect us in a more physical way. Because I’m afraid that the cameras want stop the person committing the crime from doing it. A camera ain’t that scary.

Someone, a lot of people or maybe everyone knowing what I have done, what I am doing and what I plan to do is for me a very scary thought and not even close to democracy. It is more like taking away everyone’s integrity. If there is a reason to investigate someone’s life I think that it is awesome to be able to see who he or she called, what time the person came to and left work and even test the persons DNA. Having a DNA base is something I believe in, because if I know I am innocent what do I have to be afraid of. But I don’t like the idea of being registered when I leave my bed, make a new friend or go to a party. I am ok with being registered doing official things like leaving the country, having a baby, making a phone call(as long as no one is recording it) or getting cash from a ATM.

If we are so eager to protect ourselves from everything that we fear we will end up protecting yourself against ourselves. It will be like an evil circle without any end. We will end up punishing ourselves and not the terrorist or however we are after. Democracy is not about knowing what everyone is doing all the time. Democracy is about understanding the background to people’s actions and for that we need to talk to each other.

Grades in primary school....not for the child’s development

It is interesting how some numbers or letters on a paper can mean so much just because they are written by a person’s teacher. I see why they are important when you are old enough to apply for schools and special programs because there want be room for everyone. They will tell the person judging you what you are good at and what you are not good at, written in single letters or numbers. But do they really tell anything about why the grades are the way they are, how you are as a person, how you have been developing or how you can grow and learn in the future. Grades are for some reason linked to a safe and secure future and your own development, my opinion is different: Grades want help the young learners development.

I say that young learners will be inhibited in their development because of the pressure that will come along with getting grades in primary school. Knowing that you will be judge, compared to what is “normal” for your age will put the learner under a pressure not healthy for a child. The grades in it self, being a B or a 3 want tell anything about what the child needs to work with to develop on neither a social, emotional, physical and psychological level. It will just put a pressure on what they need to accomplish.

Grades in primary school will lower the children’s self-confident. They will put the focus on what I believe is the wrong thing; on the result and not on the important achievement and the fact that you have learned something. Not being able to reach what is meant for a child in that age will give the child a low self-confident, and in the long run inhibited the development. The grades will if it is possible make the children compare them self to each other even more and only the highest grade will be something to feel proud about. Only that will make you feel more self-confident. Young learners need to here what they are good at, when their achievement is brilliant and when they have developed. That is what will help them develop their self-confident and that want be written on a grades paper if they still haven’t reached the grade limit.

On the other hand the centre-right alliance and Jan Björklund, the minister of education, say that grades will be a good way to give the teacher and the parent’s better control over the child’s school situation. They will be able to know more about how the child is doing because the grade system will be an accurate documentation. This is a good argument, because the documentation of today is inadequate on some levels and at some schools. So yes grades could be a better help for teachers and parents, which in the end could help the child’s development.

If we want to insure the young learner’s development I think there are better ways to keep everyone updated than giving grades in primary school. If the government instead of just deciding that grades is the best solution to what they think is a problem developed a national way of documentation. A documentation that would give the whole picture of the child and it’s learning situation, that is what I believe would benefit the child. Benefit and favour the child so it can continue developing.