Word: ekenberg
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...friends. Not best friends, the 14-year-old girls are quick to clarify, but good friends nonetheless. They attend Hjällboskolan, a school on the outskirts of Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city, where the student body covers such a spectrum of backgrounds that headmaster Lars-Peter Ekenberg estimates more than 100 nationalities are represented. Suman, whose parents are from India, was born in Sweden. Katarina's family has been in Sweden for generations, but the same is not true of most of her classmates and friends. "I hang out mostly with them," she says. "The Swedish girls...
...first glance, the semi-isolation of the Olofstorp contingent seems an indefensibly cynical attempt to insulate them from the ethnic and racial diversity that is increasingly the norm in Sweden. Ekenberg sees it differently. "We don't segregate. We have classes that are 50% immigrant and 50% Swedish," he insists. "We try to put them together as much as we can." He says the main reason the children from Olofstorp pursue most of their studies together is the school's policy of keeping incoming classes as intact as possible, regardless of where the students hail from. That is why Katarina...
...their parents, who could opt to send them elsewhere. Although Hjällboskolan and the public school system to which it belongs were once the only real possibility for Olofstorp parents, a growing network of private schools-heavily subsidized by the government-now gives them a range of choices. Ekenberg estimates that a fifth of the children from Olofstorp attend private schools. "A surprisingly high percentage of immigrant parents also choose private schools," notes Lärjedalen official ?sten Carlson. "If you thought they are forced to choose [public school] because they don't know any better, it is simply...
...school in Lärjedalen with no immigrants? Plans are under way for a new middle school in Olofstorp that would eliminate the need for the village children's daily journey to Hjällbo. If it is built, Hjällboskolan may become the exclusively immigrant domain Ekenberg and others have tried to avoid. Of course, if it is built, Hjällbo's immigrant parents can also decide that it offers the best option for their children. The day may come when the bus commute is reversed, and Hjällbo's immigrant children make a daily trek...
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