Smaller classes in shools a popular mistake
by C G Holm

The Swedish school produces lousy results. And the results turn worse (according to the international PISA studies). Many Swedes have homemade ideas how to achieve a change. And the most popular solution is smaller classes in the schools. The leader of the opposition, the Social Democrat Stefan Löfven follows suit. But research shows that small classes are not making results better. The top performer within the OECD, South Korea, has larger classes than most other countries. But the Koreans have more hours of education and teachers that are recruited among the elite and paid consequently. In Sweden teacher trade unions fight for the right to continue with the lousy performance and still be paid more teaching fewer hours.

Which opinion research institutes should we believe? by C G Holm

Soon there are elections. Four of them, the European election May 25 and the election for local governments, counties and parliament September 14. Closer to the elections we will see more and more opinion pollls. During the past decade the differences between polls have increased. The research institutes use different methods and the use different methods for adjussting sample and polling errors. Contra analyzes which institutes to believe and which not to believe.

The personal option a safety vault against concentration of power
by Géza Molnár

The voters have become more and more distant from those elected. But the personal option in the elections have turned into a security vault. The personal option (the right to chose one person out of many on a party list) has created one leader of a party (the Centre Party) and Minister of Enterprise (Annie Lööf). And the personal option rocketed Christian Democrat Alf Svensson into the European Parliament. But the party organizations try to fight back. As only listed people are legal options, the Christian Democrats chose not to include Lennart Sacredéus among the 55 listed, in spite of the fact that he has former experience as a European Parlamentarian and that he was number four in the internal Christian Democratic primary.

Sweden – an islamist state in the future?
by David Stavenheim

The headline might sound exceedingly alarming. But the fact is that it has been thought out and formulated by leading Christians as well as Moslems in connection with changes in the Swedish culture during the past decade. Sweden was a Christian society for a thousand years, will it be in the future?

The government is creating the individual
by Fredrik Runebert

Individuals joined to create a common government as a guarantee for the rights of the individual. That’s the credo of the liberal story on the creation of the state. Social scientist Peter Santesson question this. According to him the cause of events are the other way around. The government created the individual to control the old clan society. But what freedom has been delivered by the state? And how was life before the government, started to control the world scene?

Psychoanalysis and the fake of repressed memories by Patrik Nyberg

During the past year the journalist Dan Josefsson’s book and film on the theories of psychoanalyst Margit Norell have been much discussed in Sweden. Josefsson revealed how the theory of repressed memories has been used in court cases and after the publication Josefsson’s book everyone condemned the use of unscientific tehories in court. But still, since the 1980s and 1990s these theories have been used to convict innocent people in a number of high profile murders and sex crimes. The critics of the theories in those days were harassed, but now they are proven to have been right.

Stepan Bandera – The Hero of Ukraine
by Géza Molnár

Ukraine – the granary of Europe – lies open to aggressors from most directions. During the centuries Ukraine has been controlled by Poland. Lithuania and Russia. And during some times it has been independent. During the reign of Swedish King Charles XII (1697–1718) Ukrainian liberators were cooperating with Sweden and Turkey to fight the Russians. But at the end of the 18th century, the Russians had consolidated their control of Ukraine. The Ukrainians didn’t regain independence until under the Russian revolution and during the period 1918–1921. Later Ukraine was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union. Also during the Second World War there was a short-lived indpendent Ukraine. Russians and Germans jointly crushed Ukrainian independence. The foremost of the freedom figheters during World War II Stepan Bandera is now blamed to have been a fascist in Russian propaganda. In fact Bandera spent the major part of World War II in the German Sachsenhausen concentration camp. That was because he fought against German national socialists and Soviet communists with equal fervour. He was posthumously awarded the title ”Hero of Ukraine” by President Victor Yushchenko. The title was withdrawn by a court decision during Victor Yanukovych’s time as president, formally deciding that Bandera was not a Ukrainian (he was born in the Lviv area, which was Polish-controlled between the World Wars, although it belonged to Imperial Russia at the time of Bandera’s birth. Bandera was murdered in Munich by the KGB in 1959.