4) Is the Swedish corona strategy an activity trap? (for a Swedish version of this article check this link: https://www.dalademokraten.se/artikel/debatt-den-svenska-coronastrategin-saknar-helt-mal?fbclid=IwAR23wqueW8FtwMUyUBEJtCZ7Y1luTlW-FjpSJJjz6jacOyXuslVr_KPok7c
One of the most common mistakes that teachers commit every day is to tell their students what they are going to talk about or what to do, but not what the goal is — hence what skills/knowledge they are expected to achieve. These teachers have fallen in the so called Activity Trap. They assume — often wrongly — that if the students just carry out X and/or Y activities they will automatically achieve the goals.
There are several investigations that show that primary school pupils spend half of their school time trying to guess what the teachers want them to learn.
An easy way to differentiate between these two kinds of things, is to consider that an activity normally describes an expression in motion e.g. washing clothes, laying a table, repairing a bike, etc. whereas a goal always describes — or should describe — an expression that “does not move”, e.g. cleaned clothes, laid table, repaired bike etc., in other words something that is ”ready” or has already been “done”, the end result.
Look at this “goal”: — Not later that 1/5 2022 all school parents have been informed about the new rules.
This statement might look like a goal but is nothing more than an activity (to inform the parents) or a task, but not a goal. A correct goal statement should have looked like this:
- Not later than 1/5 2022 all school parents know about the new rules.
Of course, such a goal statement should also be specified with goal criteria and/or word explanations so that it is perfectly clear what the words in the statement really mean. E.g:
The goal is achieved when all school parents….
- ….on request can explain what the new rules are all about.
- … have made comments on the new rules.
- ….have asked questions about the new rules.
Word explanation: with “all” are here meant “those parents who were reachable”.
Now let us apply these concepts on the Swedish corona strategy. The first thing you notice is that the Swedish corona strategy is completely lacking any goals.
On the home page of the government there is a hint that with a bit of good-will could maybe be considered to look a bit like a goal. It reads:
- The overall goal of the government work is to slow down the pace of the infections, i.e. to flatten the curve in such a way that not so many get sick at the same time.
First of all, this is NOT a goal! Only an ambition, a task, a duty, a direction etc. but not a goal. Secondly, is sounds like a surrender…”…to slow down the pace…”. Far to modest!
So what is then a goal? And why is it so important to have goals for this and other state activities?
The Swedish National Financial Management Authority, ESV, is tasked with developing, administering and evaluating the financial management of central government operations. In “Goal Achievement” pages 11–12 under the headline What is a goal? You can read (my translation into English/author):
- According to ESV…. a goal is something that “describes a desired result or state of affairs at a certain future point in time (ESV 2004:4). Goals in this sense can not be the activities of an authority. Nor plans, rules or directives for what the authority must do can be goals (…). The basic principle is that the goal is separated from what the authority plans to do. What the authority plans to do, is done to achieve the goal.
In a more recent document (ESV 2011:9, Wordbook, p.22) this same definition is repeated — goal is again defined as “a desired future state of affairs” to which this note is added: “The formulation of a goal is an essentials part of the result management of the state administration”.
Hence, following these principles and definitions the overall goal for the Swedish corona strategi should have been formulated like this:
- At latest X date, the corona pandemic is under total control.
Then, of course, one would have needed to specify what is meant by “under total control” and added targets and goal criteria (or indicators as ESV prefers to call them). For those of you who are not familiar with these concepts, get my free manual by clicking on:
https://76fcb1cb-a709-4ab8-8824-ab8b9f43f05f.filesusr.com.
The big problem with the Swedish corona strategy is not that the goals are unclear but that there are no goals at all — only tasks, actions, rules, directives, recommendations, wishful thinking and recently even a temporary law (January to September 2021).… but still no goals.
Which makes it impossible to tell whether the governmental actions were ever correct with regard to …to what? Hence impossible to evaluate! (if there ever were one comprehensive strategy, which I doubt! The actions seem rather to have been introduced step by step according to an add-hoc mentality!).
Two months ago I published an article in a Swedish newspaper in which I argued that “Fake goals are costing billions of tax money”
https://www.dalademokraten.se/.../debatt-otydliga-mal.
To this I could now add that the complete lack of goals for the Swedish corona strategy are also costing thousands of lives.
IF there had been any goals or subgoals (targets) these could have been evaluated at an early stage and, if that hade been done, I am convinced that thousands of person in Sweden would still have been alive.
In my opinion there can only be two possible explanations for this sad state of affairs: either the government does nto know what a goal is…or how to formulate them (have they not read what ESV writes about goals?)… OR they have more or less intentionally avoided formulating them, because, if they had done so, it would have been clear to all of us to what extend such goals or subgoals had been achieved with the selected strategy and what maybe would have needed to be corrected — the goals or the strategy.
