The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
dianeravitch.net
The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
1–10 of 215 posts
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#2Most 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 We then had to suffer years of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and choice superseded traditional curriculum.
Invalid causality between free markets and segregation, it’s dishonest at its best given all the other variables in society happening at the same time. Not that privatization was successful, with a lax hands off approach, but the agenda of the author is clearly shining through here.
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#3Most 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 We then had to suffer years of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and choice superseded traditional curriculum…
As is yours here.
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#4The us has a similar profit driven model parallel to state funded schools. While private schools have always been available, only in the last few decades did they move from large monolithic institutions to national corporations. What we tend to call charter schools, profit off of government funding while sometimes putting corporate incentives over student well being. As with public schools, there is a spectrum of excellent to failing schools. But instead of the students success determining profit, the school is often faced with the decision: chase test scores to get more government funding, or file countless, often borderline false IEPs for difficult students and profit off the extra "need based" government funding. This had the effect of replacing the natural spectrum of education with a pigeon hole, excellent high stress test driven school. Or failing, school whose goal is more that of a prison than educational institution.
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#5Most 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
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#6Most 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 real actual islamists (vetenskapsskolan) to open schools.
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#7While 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 and limiting the development of gifted children and imho needs to be dealt with.
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#8Most 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…
As is yours here.
Proving logical fallacy in the article?
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#9Most 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
The author claims that "the corporation schools can reduce salaries, teacher density, resource staff."
Though that claim makes me wonder how these schools attract students. The "independent students" and their parents must not be too happy with the municipal schools if understaffed private schools are an appealing alternative.
Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse
#10Most 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
The municipality can set the rent. I know of cases where:
- it's high to have lower taxes for the rich for no reason, making private schools very competitive because they can just change building.
- it's zero, making it very hard for a good private school to compete because they can't never get the rent to zero on the open market.
Both these are bad in different ways.