As the founder of Mufti Education I have to write a few words about myself. Although I have been a High School professor in the Swedish language for about fifteen years, I began my career as a factory worker. An envelope factory, Saab Scania, and Volvo Cars were my first employers. I can’t say that I was that fond over manual labour, but I met quite a lot of interesting characters among the factory workers. I also got a great respect and even admiration for “simple people”. They took the day as it came and didn’t think things were so complicated.
But the world of manual labour wasn’t a place for me. Via the excellent adult education that we have In Sweden, I managed to be ready for the university. As a personal preparation, I read all the parts of C S Lewis’s “The Complete Chronicles of Narnia”. It was the first novel in the English language I had ever read. Sometimes I wonder if I had succeeded at the university if I hadn’t read those children’s books. Of course, I had studied English in adult education, but the quality of that course wasn’t especially good. I got the grade “passed” although I just had listened to a vinyl record of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The reading of C S Lewis was a more intense way of learning English. I still remember a lot of glossaries of words that I have had to look up in my dictionary. I learned quite a lot about learning. When I was active. I learned, when I was just having fun, I didn’t learn that much. Of course, it is not wrong if the students have fun, but the overarching goal shouldn’t be just enjoyment, it should be knowledge and ability. A good teacher sometimes makes the pupils have fun, but the purpose is to really learn something of importance.
I followed courses in a lot of university subjects. Some of them were good and some of them were not so good. But the strangest thing was that the teacher’s education was the worst. The subjects (Swedish and History) were interesting, and I developed a lot. But the teacher’s education was mostly a lot of high brow theories, which not few of today is considered quasi-science. My master’s thesis was about the implementation of Gardner’s Multiples Intelligences in the Swedish school system. It was at the beginning of the third millennium and I got vaccinated against his thinking already then. Today everybody agrees that it is quasi-science.
When I began as a high school professor, I wasn’t armed with better pedagogic methods than a man on the street. I knew my subjects, but how to get the knowledge into youngster’s minds, I knew nothing about. A couples of years experimentation begun. I remember clearly that I had developed a system that I thought was cutting edge. History lessons with PowerPoints and self-correcting questionnaire. I was quite proud of my system, and I was made a senior teacher based on it. I gave the pupils an ordinary test. And what a chock. They didn’t remember anything. This pedagogic system that colleagues had done study visits in my classroom to see was … rubbish. I had made the pupils fun lesson, but they didn’t know more after than before class.
I couldn’t stay as a senior teacher. I didn’t know more than anybody else about teaching and learning. I started to think about what efficient teaching strategies are. I found out that it isn´t that complicated. I mean, the Swedish educational system isn’t bad for everyone. The poor students are getting quite a good education. At least compared to their counterparts in other countries. But the ones that really could have learned something and when adults contributed to society are not given the challenges they need. Not that they don’t learn anything, they do, but they aren’t developed to their full potential.
Therefore, I started Mufti Education. A place where the interested can work hard to, as Aristotle put it, realise their potential. We are not against to have fun, bot our purpose is not to give an enjoying experience. It is that our pupils shall learn and become their true self. And if you want to learn something there are fun stuff and there are quite dull things that you must learn anyway. The purpose, the goal, to master a new language, makes all the struggle worthwhile.
Måns Axkull, founder of Mufti Education
