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The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

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Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#131

Post by Grustaf »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #128
alvarlagerlof wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to have the option of regular supermarkets, but they later banned it because they didn't want students eating inside the school at winter.

Do they have food trucks in Sweden? Maybe students can pool in money and hire a cook or contract with a food truck to provide meals on time. When I was in school back in India..and this was many decades ago...me and my cousins would get hot lunch delivered by my grandparents. But there was this group of kids who had working parents and from nuclear families...and a bunch of them hired a lady to cook meals for 10-12 o…

Swedish schools always have school cafeterias, free of charge, it's only in very rare situations like here that this is not the case.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#132

Post by jelliclesfarm »

Grustaf wrote: post #131
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have food trucks in Sweden? Maybe students can pool in money and hire a cook or contract with a food truck to provide meals on time. When I was in school back in India..and this was many decades ago...me and my cousins would get hot lunch delivered by my grandparents. But there was this group of kids who had working parents and from nuclear families...and a bunch of them hired a lady to cook meals for 10-12 o…

Swedish schools always have school cafeterias, free of charge, it's only in very rare situations like here that this is not the case.

I was specifically suggesting for the non cafeteria ones that the the parent comment from a current student. Not to replace existing programs. I went to a private school. Public schools had free schools lunches in India too. But even then if parents could afford it, they always sent home cooked packed lunches.

Because the population is so culturally and linguistically diverse, there were as many types of regional cuisines too. Especially in urban areas where people migrate for jobs.

Indians can be fiercely protective about their language and cuisine because as cultural markers that are constantly under threat to be homogenized as a ‘single Indian culture’, parents liked to start early with food and language spoken at home. This was my observation from living in India many years ago. Perhaps this has changed now.

Also making the weekly menu for the upcoming school lunches was the fun part of bonding with my grandmother. That was also how I learnt to love food and cooking. I don’t think I would have first gravitated towards food and then later into farming if it hadn’t been for the hours I spent with my grandmother planning those lunches.

I realize that there is a little bit of nostalgia in my reply but it is also a good business opportunity with healthy side effect for hungry kids who must have access to nutritious and healthy meals. I am sure that opinion is global and won’t change with time.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#133

Post by Grustaf »

yoelo wrote: post #17
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…

Profit-driven schools don't cater to gifted kids. They cater to kids with rich and highly educated parents. The goal is to do less, to extract more profit.

Neither. Parents don't pay for schools in Sweden, so profit driven schools are just as free as other schools. Also, they are not elite schools in any sense, they are just slightly better organised and attract students that care enough about their education to select a different school than the default.

Sweden is not the US, it's quite different.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#134

Post by vagrantJin »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #128
alvarlagerlof wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to have the option of regular supermarkets, but they later banned it because they didn't want students eating inside the school at winter.

Do they have food trucks in Sweden? Maybe students can pool in money and hire a cook or contract with a food truck to provide meals on time. When I was in school back in India..and this was many decades ago...me and my cousins would get hot lunch delivered by my grandparents. But there was this group of kids who had working parents and from nuclear families...and a bunch of them hired a lady to cook meals for 10-12 o…

> Maybe someone from Sweden in HN can run with this as a startup? I like the way you think.

In my country the community would open tons of cheap food stalls that could get students decent food. It also happens that simple bean or chicken briyanis were a hit.

I guess Im finding it difficult to digest the suggestion of burgers as a lunch meal when food really shouldn't be an issue in SWE. Maybe its embarrasing to not eat out?

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#135

Post by vanderZwan »

bjeds wrote: post #69
vanderZwan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Haha I don't know where you're from but Swedish people are often stereotypically bad at both dealing with emotions and resolving conflicts. "Van der" = Gonna guess you are Dutch? Well Swedish people are, as you know well yourself, the opposite of the Dutch in how to handle things. Source: My partner is Dutch.

You guessed right! Yeah, I know the stereotypes but the thing is that I already had studied a master in Sweden for two years myself, and thought I had gotten used to communicate "like a Swede", but I still was surprised how much more fragile the bachelor students were than anticipated

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#136

Post by Grustaf »

lordnacho wrote: post #33

I've always been suspicious of for-profit schools. I put my own kids in "traditional" independent schools that you have to pay for, but they're run like charities where there's basically no money for someone to pull out. With for-profit, you have the problems alluded to in the article. If something is up with your kid, eg they need more attention, it's in the school's interest to puff you out so they don't have to ar…

The best thing about the Swedish system is that it also ruins the public schools. All schools get paid per student, so public schools have also taken to using marketing and non-education related ways to attract students, such as "cool" designs, free ipads etc.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#137

Post by Grustaf »

JorgeGT wrote: post #100
bjeds wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you are exaggerating. KTH is of course a good school for Swedish standards but calling it elite is weird. In what way would you say that KTH is elite, because I genuinely do not understand how the word "elite" applies to this school? I'm a bit out of touch, but of all schools in Sweden, the only I'd call elite - by the common meaning of the word - is Operahögskolan (I think it's called, the Opera school) and poss…

Maybe elite is the wrong term, I'm not a native speaker... what I meant is that KTH is probably the best technological university in Sweden and one of the best tech unis in Europe overall, so the math level of its admitted students is not necessarily representative of the general level.

It is the best technological university in Sweden, but it's also one of the biggest universities, if not the biggest. It accepts a lot more than the elite, in any sense of that word.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#138

Post by Grustaf »

bjeds wrote: post #105
sobriquet9 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who wanted to go to KTH Here's your selection bias. Self-selection is also selection.

I'm not sure what you are claiming here. Are you saying that I'm wrong in questioning calling KTH "elite" because I used one anecdote in a larger argument? You can look up the admission statistics yourself: it's very easy to get in to KTH. Maybe there are some programs that are more competitive than others. When I finished high school, the admission criteria for example Electrical Engineering was roughly "you need a…

When I entered KTH you needed top grades in all subjects to be admitted to engineering physics. Electrical engineering was probably not even the third hardest to enter.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#139

Post by nearbuy »

What's confusing to me is it says the private schools are attracting more driven, independent and smarter students while increasing class sizes, reducing teacher salaries and reducing resource staff.

So how are they attracting these students and why can't the public schools attract these students? Where I'm from, small class sizes is one of the first things parents want.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#140

Post by jelliclesfarm »

vagrantJin wrote: post #134
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have food trucks in Sweden? Maybe students can pool in money and hire a cook or contract with a food truck to provide meals on time. When I was in school back in India..and this was many decades ago...me and my cousins would get hot lunch delivered by my grandparents. But there was this group of kids who had working parents and from nuclear families...and a bunch of them hired a lady to cook meals for 10-12 o…

> Maybe someone from Sweden in HN can run with this as a startup? I like the way you think. In my country the community would open tons of cheap food stalls that could get students decent food. It also happens that simple bean or chicken briyanis were a hit. I guess Im finding it difficult to digest the suggestion of burgers as a lunch meal when food really shouldn't be an issue in SWE. Maybe its embarrasing to not e…

I can relate to this. We also had trucks and push carts that served quick take out meals near schools but because that was always discouraged by my grandparents. If food wasn’t pre packed or made fresh right in front of our eyes(like dosa and idly in south of India), the general rule is to not to buy anything from food carts.
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