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The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

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Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#81

Post by barry-cotter »

logicchains wrote: post #40
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…

The same is true in Australia: parents choose "not-bad" schools to minimize the chance of their kids being knifed or beaten up by other kids. But it's not due to immigration, instead just to "white trash" for lack of a better word raising violent, substance-abusing children.

As an Australian you must know that when the middle class are sneering at the working or non-working class the term is bogan.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bogan

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#82

Post by yawaworht1978 »

Holy crap, the homophobic comments about shielding their children from immigrants children/issues. How dare you speak in the name of other people and get a grip and grow a pair. Jesus this is Sweden and Australia we are talking about, not a war zone. You do not know the really bad places on this planet. Let your children learn conflict resolution, they are not gonna be assassinated in school. Or well, pay for these useless schools ripping you off if you think the kids there are all saints and angels.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#83

Post by bjeds »

Ottolay wrote: post #79

As someone who is not all that familiar with education policy, is this basically analogous to for profit charter schools in the US?

Roughly: Education is tax funded so each kid has a pile of money in the local government budget. The school where the kid ends up, gets this pile of money. The kids (or rather the parents) can pick and choose between schools.

This naturally leads to a bunch of complexities, for example marketing catering to what the kids think they want (iPads, 3d printers, whatever) instead of what they need. Also, there's an incentive from privately owned schools to use this money as efficiently as possible.

(Note: when I say "as efficiently as possible" I try to mean that in a neutral way: if you are reading this and are left-leaning, feel free to interpret that as "the school will cut costs to make a profit" whereas if you are reading this and right-leaning feel free to interpret that as using the budget more efficiently than the government could).

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#84

Post by UrsaMedius »

gedy wrote: post #22
UrsaMedius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call "most and least gifted" is in my opinion better described as "most and least privileged". And coeducation of students of different levels of privilege just seems like a good thing, nothing that needs to be dealt with.

No, you can also be underprivileged and gifted/talented (assuming you mean economic or racial privilege).

This was basically the exact point I was trying to make.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#85

Post by username90 »

KTH tests engineering students math abilities by giving new students the same test every year. There is nothing gained or lost from this test so nobody studied for it. Anyway, this gives us a reasonable trend in how well students know the basics, and it shows that students are getting better and not worse right now. The worst class was the one starting 2007.

https://www.kth.se/aktuellt/nyheter/trenden-har-vant-matteku...

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#86

Post by mongol »

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…

Swedish PISA results have fallen continuously in the past years. Last result showed a break from that but later it turned out that many students which could have been expected to test poorly were dissuaded from participating. So the result from that year is in question. There is huge concern in Sweden over the state of the schooling system. It is complex because so much have changed over the past 30 years. It is usually not to recommend when trying trying improve something to throw it all up in the air at once, but that is more or less what has been done.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#87

Post by UrsaMedius »

corty wrote: post #21
UrsaMedius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call "most and least gifted" is in my opinion better described as "most and least privileged". And coeducation of students of different levels of privilege just seems like a good thing, nothing that needs to be dealt with.

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…

However, schools should never treat stupid and intelligent children the same. Not everyone is cut out to be a rocket surgeon. But your argument means that we should hold back all future rocket surgeons and bring them to a lower level of privilege, i.e. dumb them down. This is neither in the interest of the children (stupid as well as intelligent ones) nor is it in the interest of society. We do need rocket surgeons...

I agree that this can be a difficult balance to strike. But I think it's also important to keep the door open for children who mature a bit later. Stamping someone as "not gifted" by excluding them from a "gifted" group sure seems like it would cause problems, especially for younger children. Of course it's a difficult practical problem to solve; to give every child challenges on their current level.

Also, while there are surely variations in intelligence that are "from birth", I do not know how that compares to all the variations caused by different educational privileges; having parents that have a lot of time to read for/with the child etc. It sort of comes down to "equality vs. equity" I suppose - and that is not a simple question.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#88

Post by JorgeGT »

username90 wrote: post #85

KTH tests engineering students math abilities by giving new students the same test every year. There is nothing gained or lost from this test so nobody studied for it. Anyway, this gives us a reasonable trend in how well students know the basics, and it shows that students are getting better and not worse right now. The worst class was the one starting 2007. https://www.kth.se/aktuellt/nyheter/trenden-har-vant-mattek…

Note that KTH is an elite institution so there is a selection bias. It's like saying education in America must be going well because new MIT students are getting better.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#90

Post by mongol »

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

This assumes all the variables are the same between the same examples. Which they would not be.
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