Christian Lundahl och Margareta Serder i S.O.S-podden: Utvalda sanningar i skoldebatten

Excellent pod cast. It is my working hypothesis that the reason why brain researchers and economists are more influential in the Swedish debate is that the Swedish Humanities subjects at University are philosophically weak. Philosophy in itself has never been as influential in the Swedish Academic world as it has been in other European countries. When I was studying to be a teacher in England in the 1970’s our pedagogical debate was dominated by Wittgenstein and his followers and subject knowledge and philosophy of education were very large components of our courses. In Finland a student and colleague of Wittgensteins, Von Wright, was very influential in the Finnish academic world and we all now admire the Finnish school system. Recently von Wrights influence has waned and Siv Saaruka recently informed the pedagogical council at our school that the Finnish school politicians are looking toward the business world, the home of relativism and selective truth, for inspiration. My son not too long ago at Uppsala University took courses in Political Science and there was no reading from or concentration on the works of Aristotle, Kant or the followers of Wittgenstein. This leads me to believe that the kind of truth selection that is operating is much broader than is suggested by this pod.