About Kari Killén: Summer theme part 5

Thursday letter 08/06/19

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Kari Killén summer theme part 4

Summing-up the summer theme

This is the last Thursday letter for my summer theme about Kari Killén that is in English. The end of the summer theme will be followed by a small appendix of the summer theme in Danish. These appendices will be published the next two Thursdays and will contain two interviews. I want to use the current Thursday letter to follow up on some things that I have discovered and considered during this summer. Mainly things related to a search on the social network Instagram via the hashtag #KariKillén. It turned out that there were things to be found about Kari Killén on Instagram. Here it was mostly students who mentioned Kari Killén. Some were talking about study books and some had been photographed with her in connection with a course or a seminar. There were several pictures of Kari Killén in Greenland in connection with course activities so Killén's methods are obviously widespread in Greenland as well. I have chosen a small text that a student posted on Instagram together with a picture. The image and text has been uploaded to the profile "uc_syd". "uc_syd" is the instagram profile of an education centre in the Danish town of Esbjerg. Students can put up posts on the centre's profile and a young female student did exactly that on 20/10/2016. Here is what she wrote: (The text is translated from Danish the original Instagram post is her )

"I can come in late today, as we have joint dinner in the Family House on Thursdays. My morning will be about writing up my internship assignment, Kari Killén is a big part of the Family House, so much of the theory in my assignment comes from her. Our work is based on her theories, in addition, she is my manager's sparring partner, so if there is a family that we are very concerned about, Kari will gladly receive a video clip we recorded of the parents (they sign when they arrive at the house if they agree to be videoed or not. They can then tick whether the clip should be deleted as soon as we have seen it with the family, whether it can be saved up to 6 months, so we can show it to the family again before departure so they can see their and the child's development, and the last box says it can be used for the education of professionals, but not people who know the family) and then Kari reports back to my manager whether we were right in our concern or not. I was so lucky that I was on a course with her a few months ago concerning exactly what we are working with in the Family House.
#ucsyd #ucssydkolding #praktikiudlandet # KariKillén" 

There are several interesting things in this text. You can see in this text that Killén's theories are being lived out in the Family Houses (Danish official family institutions). It is also clear that the head of the department in this specific Family House in Denmark has direct communication with Killén regarding specific cases and that sometimes video recordings of parents and children were sent to Kari Killén in order to have her evaluate whether the assumption about the family was right or wrong. This is all contributing to the picture of a highly theoretical way of evaluating the child's needs. Killén and her disciples are not concerned with matters that can be measured, weighed or otherwise proven. They work on behalf of a highly abstract concept of what parenting and child welfare is and they promote the idea that Killén and the people that have studied her theories are able to discover parental problems that other people cannot see. The #karikillén hashtag on Instagram led me to very clear proof of this. A picture of this book.

You don't see it until you believe it
- A writing for children's rights
by
Inga Marte Thorkildsen

This title that I believe was made by one of Killéns disciples so clearly states that we are dealing with a concept of child neglect that cannot be seen unless you have the special skills to see it. The problem with such a concept is that it implies divine insight by the professionals who know the theory. Decisions made by such professionals cannot be discussed or doubted because they are brought foreword by a person with the ability to see what uninitiated people cannot see. That might be alright in the case that the professional was actually a person with divine insight. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case. Killéns theories do not seem to be the direct path to the truth. Rather it seems to be pretty unprecise and unscientific pseudoscience that lends itself to various kinds of manipulation, giving justification to forcefully split up a family without having any literal prove of abuse or neglect. I would have loved to end this Thursday letter with a short CV about Kari Killén - a short reference of her life since I was not able to find such a reference when I started my research. Since I now have met her daughter, I am in the position to get the information it needs to make one. Unfortunately I don't have the time to do it right now. I will leave this very interesting summer theme for now, at least the English version of it. From next week however, I will continue the Kari Killén theme in Danish for a little while.