Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.09.2006, Qupperneq 12

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Hulda Hauksdóttir
with Lilja S. Sigurðardóttir
On Iceland’s national holiday this past June 17, Margrét Pála Ólaf-
sdóttir received The Knight’s
Cross of the Icelandic Order of
the Falcon from the President of
Iceland for innovation in educa-
tion. This has meant a great deal
to all those working within the
Hjallastefnan organization, as
this kind of recognition is un-
common when it comes to the
education of younger children.
Born in 1957 in northern
Iceland, Margrét Pála Ólafs-
dóttir graduated as a preschool
teacher from the Icelandic Col-
lege of Education in 1981. In
1989 she became the director at
a new preschool called Hjalli,
located in the Hafnarfjörður
community.
There she developed rather
unusual pedagogical methods
such as single-sex classes, natu-
ral play material instead of con-
ventional toys and a long-forgot-
ten belief in positive dicipline as
a way of training social skills.
These methods were considered
provocative and the school was
a matter of much dispute in the
beginning, but in later years the
Hjalli pedagogy has been gain-
ing ground.
Today about 17 preschools
in Iceland use the Hjalli Method
partly or in whole along with a
few preschools in Sweden and
Norway. The Hjalli method is
becoming more and more popu-
lar and even Hilary Clinton has
heard of it, as she has visited
Hjalli-model schools in Swe-
den.
Margrét Pála is now direct-
ing her own company, Hjal-
lastefnan ehf., which special-
izes in pre- and primary school
management and runs three pre-
schools and one primary school
on a semi-private basis. In 1997
Margrét received the award of
the Minister of Equal Rights for
her work on the Hjalli Pedagogy
and since then the issue of sin-
gle-sex classes as a way towards
equal rights has inspired a lot of
discussion within the Icelandic
school system.
The name Hjalli
In Icelandic, hjalli means
“rock” and is the name of the
school. Hjalli has also come
to symbolize the ideology on
which the Hjalli model is built.
All the hindrances in a person’s
daily way towards achieving a
life of peace, joy, and respect
are the rocks one must overstep
to continue the trip.
Analyzing the nature of the
rocks and the process of climb-
ing them will lead to solutions
because finding the answers is
never hard when one has the
right questions. Therefore, the
new model got the name “Hjal-
li” as a symbol of overcoming
difficulties in life.
Some basic elements of
the Hjalli model
But what makes the Hjalli
model different from traditional
Icelandic preschools? Margrét
Pála Ólafsdóttir explains: “For
some years it has been a fashion-
able belief in Iceland that every-
body should get the same type
of work and that same demands
should be made on everybody.
The goal was to bring everybody
as close as possible to the ‘av-
erage’ and too little regard was
paid to children on both sides of
the norm.
“Often the pedagogical
frame of the school is so narrow
that a lot of children do not gain
any benefit from what it has to
offer. Hjalli’s solution to this
is recognition of diversity. The
Hjalli model is designed for all
children and, therefore, we wel-
come variations and different
needs.
“Each child is unique and
different from all the others with
his or her special qualities and
special needs. It is the school’s
duty to give children a good ex-
perience. ‘Problem children’ do
not exist; it is just a phrase that
schools often use to put the re-
sponsibility for failure onto the
children. We demand a result,
not one that presses children
into the mould of the average
but to see them happy, proud,
and practicing positive thinking
every day.”
The majority of the day, all
the children in the preschools
work in single-sex departments
and smaller groups to support
both girls and boys on their own
terms. Once a day the groups
mix, in order to teach coop-
eration beetween girls and boys
based on respect.
“Gender segregation is a
simple and effective way of giv-
ing both genders their rightful
share of attention, teaching, en-
couragement, and space. Single-
sex classes that involve the same
tasks and the same surroundings
for the girls’ department and the
boys’ department prevent mo-
nopolization so that both girls
and boys get opportunities to
practice the full range of human
qualities, and therefore single-
sex classes make it easy to give
both girls and boys a heavy dose
of experience they have been de-
nied by virtue of their biological
sex.
“Lastly, segregation gives
the teachers the possibility to
use the ‘right method for the
right gender’ and in this way to
give both genders the methods
and reactions they need and de-
serve. In this way we can give
our full energy and attention to
encouraging the girls to become
more active and assertive and
to teaching the boys to become
more sensitive and non-aggres-
sive.”
This charismatic spokes-
person for gender equality in
schools also has other worries
for the well-being of young chil-
dren. “Children’s surroundings
today are steeped in consumer-
ism. Instead of communication
and creation, the children get
huge stacks of mass-produced
toys — small copies of the
adults’ world that the specialists
of the markets consider desir-
able. These toys are very limited
because there is nothing left for
the imagination. Children learn
to consume through television
and video and, in doing so, learn
to perpetuate the traditional gen-
der roles showed to them and
about their own inabilities to
create.
“One of Hjalli’s goals is to
train children in initiative and in-
dependence, including freedom
from the chains of consumerism.
Every day at the Hjalli schools,
we make a point of being able to
take care of our own things; the
teachers and the children make
the clay and chalk we need, we
write and draw our own books
and write our own plays to show
to the other children. We take
care of the garden and repair
broken things. We are self-sup-
porting people!”
No normal toys are used in
the Hjalli schools. Instead, the
children use unstructured, open-
ended material, such as wooden
blocks, sand and water and the
are even allowed to use the ta-
bles and chairs to play with.
Even though the Hjalli mod-
el itself has stayed basically the
same since its beginning, the
schools are always trying out new
approaches and new solutions in
order to attain good education
for young children. This has led
the way to many innovations in
the Icelandic schools system.
One of these is English teaching
for preschool children, which
has gained immense popularity.
“We have been lucky enough to
have wonderful English teachers
from the U.S. that have come in
with the English lessons once a
week for each group.”
Hulda Hauksdóttir works
at Hjallastefnan, and Lilja S.
Sigurðardóttir is Instructions
Representative with the school.
For more information on Hjalli
schools and Hjallastefnan ehf.,
visit www.hjalli.is.
12 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 15 September 2006
A rather unusual
preschool
The Hjalli method gains recognition in Iceland
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PHOTO COURTESY OF HULDA HAUKSDÓTTIR
in the Hjalli method, children use unstructured, open-ended material, such as wooden blocks,
sand and water and the are even allowed to use the tables and chairs to play with.