After widespread and ferocious critique, the Swedish National Agency for Education backed off on its proposal to scrap teaching ancient history. They’re not saying “sorry, our mistake, we take it back” though. They’re saying, instead, that “the support for the proposal wasn’t there” and that “the time problem remains.”
Although the debate was officially welcomed, Anna Westerholm from the National Agency thought it was a bit blown out of proportion. Some of the critics, she said, had an unrealistic picture of what students learn during the 11 or so hours in 7th grade when history is discussed. “It’s been like, this is how students learn about ancient history’s contribution to justice, drama, civilization and architecture – Which is quite an unrealistic expectation” Furthermore, she said, “elementary school is not the only time students study ancient history – it comes back in high school” (Svd.se).
As Maria Schottenius at DN points out, both shop (craft and woodwork), and art, get each 180 and 80 hours of instruction while history gets 70 hours. Perhaps there is something there we can have a debate about.
Since both math and physical education were given more hours of instruction fairly recently, the idea is now to increase the hours of history instruction. “History is a subject that only gets bigger with time” said Westerholm. ”More history means more hours, but that’s up to the government.”
The minister for Education is Anna Ekström, if you want to get in touch.