Answer to submitter. Does not make the free school choice to sole scapegoat

Rickard Nordström Want to abolish the free school choice to counteract segregation and increase children’s opportunities to develop empathy and democratic understanding. I share his goals – but not his solution.

That children learn by meeting differences, variety and comparisons is true. The school should be a place where prejudice is challenged, not reinforced.

Building bridges reduces fears, increases curiosity and benefits depth and nuanced understanding and knowledge. But segregation in today’s Sweden is already a reality since far back in time – not caused solely by the school choice, but by factors such as housing segregation, growing economic gaps and digital algorithms that reinforce our echo chambers.

To ban the school choice Without changing these structural causes at the same time is to attack the symptoms – not the disease. The free school choice can certainly strengthen existing patterns, but that is not the root of the problem. In the worst case, a ban risks creating increased frustration and cementing contradictions between different social groups.

Instead, we need a broader social reform: a new integration policy, a new urban planning that mixes residential areas and schools and a technology world that promotes meetings rather than walls. Understanding requires contact – but contact must be made on equal terms.

The school cannot alone bear the responsibility of society for integration. Let’s not make the free school choice for scapegoat when the problems sit deeper than that.

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