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The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

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Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#71

Post by bjeds »

FabHK wrote: post #68
bjornsing wrote: post #29

> While schools and colleges are sounding the alarm about declining knowledge results, joy grades are rising, as grades have become a competitive tool on the market. This in my opinion is the main problem. Take this "marketing tool" away from the private schools, and the rest of the problems are fixable (e.g. with diversified pupil compensation). But when you let a private business both grade themselves and sell entr…

Do you know what is meant by "joy grades"? Does it refer to grade inflation (ie nearly everyone getting very good grades)?

If you are a glass-half-full person (I am), it's fair to call it grade inflation. In the sense of an unfortunate (or natural) the-standards-keep-chaning-over-time and suddenly people have better grades than 10 years ago, but the same knowledge.

If you are glass-half-empty person, you can interpret is as a sort of implied "if you pick my school (which means I get money) I will make sure your kid get good grades".

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#72

Post by username90 »

captain_price7 wrote: post #44
corty wrote: post #7

While I agree with the article about the problems of profit-driven schools, the whole situation (and the article in parts) points to a imho bigger problem in most education systems: Profit-driven schools cater to the more able, easier to educate and more intelligent pupils. Why can they do that? Because public schools almost everywhere insist on coeducation of the most and least gifted. This is severely holding back…

Assuming it's possible to find out "intelligent" vs not primary/middle schools kids. We all here agree that finding talented developers is hard- meaning 22+ yr old adults. Isn't the job like 10 times harder for say 8 yr old kids?

> We all here agree that finding talented developers is hard

When people say that they mean it is hard to find a talented developer who is looking for a job paying significantly below what he is worth.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#73

Post by vagrantJin »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #62
alvarlagerlof wrote: post #55

I'm a student in one of the AcadeMedia for-profit schools. They have around 30 schools with the same brand name as mine and they keep on buying others. There's over 600 of them. There are of course other brands that they own but this one is focused on technology. Now let me tell you about my experience. First, this school is very focused on marketing. They keep on doing things that are only for seemingly attracting s…

Wow, do you at least have as mc donalds nearby so you can get a few of their cheap "child sized" burgers? Hope you can find a better school!

This is amazing. You recommend eating burgers from McD for lunch every day? Not fruits, not home cooked food, not simple sandwiches, not street food --- but MacDonalds burgers in Sweden

Holy shit.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#74

Post by mongol »

boxed wrote: post #6
techpression wrote: post #2

Most people with a non-political agenda would agree that the problems with the Swedish school system began when it was handed over to the municipalities from the state, I don’t think there has been a successful migration of responsibilities like this ever in the history of the country. We then had to suffer years of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and choice superseded traditional curriculum…

This is the common wisdom in Sweden. It's also trivially false. Sweden made a bunch of changes at the same time. Why would this one thing be the only thing? And why is our neighbor Finland able to have the best school in Europe and they did the exact same thing? Logic seems to have little place in this discussion. The problem with the Swedish privatization in my opinion is that it managed to enable scientologists and…

It wasn't at the same time. It was approximately at the same time, but parent is right: it _started_ with the handover to municipalities, the privatisation was a few years later

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#75

Post by FabHK »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #58

Incredibly melodramatic. Comparing yourself to someone denouncing an anti-semitic persecution (and by implication your opponents to anti-semetic persecutors) is not really a good basis for discussion. I cannot find anything resembling an argument in this entire article. If the swedish education system is so uniquely, shamefully terrible, wouldn't we expect it to actually lead to worse results then that of other count…

Agreed, arrogating Émile Zola's battle cry for yourself is in my view overreaching. On the other hand, as Wikipedia notes, "J'accuse! has become a common expression of outrage and accusation against someone powerful", so I think it has become more generic, and doesn't contain the implicit accusation of anti-semitism anymore.

> wouldn't we expect it to actually lead to worse results then that of other countries?

It might take many years to manifest itself (at university, PISA study, etc.), though. As such, an early warning by a practitioner that has first hand experience with what's happening in schools right now strikes me as valuable.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#76

Post by fennecfoxen »

brtkdotse wrote: post #5
techpression wrote: post #2

Most people with a non-political agenda would agree that the problems with the Swedish school system began when it was handed over to the municipalities from the state, I don’t think there has been a successful migration of responsibilities like this ever in the history of the country. We then had to suffer years of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and choice superseded traditional curriculum…

I have a mathematical agenda, I can’t get the following to balance: Municipal: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs = 0 Private: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs - cost_of_marketing = profit

Well, the question is really how bad the government run agency is at cost control. Some of them are dangerously bad. Many education administrations waste lots of money on administration, to the detriment of actual education. Many education administrations are run by someone doing a resume-padding exercise. Just because the short-term profit isn't in the company's results doesn't mean no one is taking advantage.

It's usually easy to bring in someone profit-oriented and cut those costs. The bad news is that this doesn't magically make the education provided any better.

The principal-agent problem goes deep.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#77

Post by corty »

fabbari wrote: post #57
corty wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course higher intelligence is a privilege, as is higher sportive ability and other attributes given to you from birth. This includes your own personal attributes as well as the privilege that comes from your family's wealth and status. But actually, the word "privilege" muddles the waters, because those are two very different things. I agree that schools should not differentiate based on families' status and wealt…

Schools do not treat stupid and intelligent children the same, teachers - with few exceptions - do. Not because they are evil, but because to be able to cater to the different levels of intelligence and the variation in interests that you will naturally find in a random sample of children they require the time and opportunities to do so. As long as we treat teachers as the least important workers, without acknowledgi…

Paying teachers more is beside the point. A well-paid teacher isn't suddenly a better teacher just because it earns more money.

The things we should invest in are more teachers, smaller and more separated classes and better teachers' education. Only the last one correlates (somewhat) with teachers' salaries.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#78

Post by distances »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #63
distances wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty sure they have private venture backed school system in mind. Would you have something to back this assumption up?

There is their general intention to privatize everything possible because they oppose "big state"?

Who is against "big state" in Finland, are you referring to the National Coalition Party?

Specifically, I've never heard of anyone wanting to privatise the school system so I'd like to get something that substantiates these claims. Otherwise it's just a textbook example of FUD.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#80

Post by username90 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #65
bjeds wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of agree with what you are saying (I'm also Swedish) but I think the incentives are different, and due to the American dominance of Hacker News readers it's worth to clear up: Swedish middle class parents do not choose "good schools" because they want a "great education" for their kids as a competitive advantage... in the sense of a well-off American parent want their kids to go to Harvard or MIT or similar. S…

Would that explain why my bachelor students were so unbelievable inept at emotionally dealing with and resolving conflicts when I taught at university there?

How could you learn that from teaching a course? Did you create conflict among student and note how everything became chaos? Or do you just mean that a few complained about grades?
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