
Where did Swedish schooling go wrong? - wslh
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/09/swedish-schooling-go-wrong.html
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vanderZwan
Johan Wennström, one of the authors, has at least two more papers on the
subject:

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3241983](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3241983)

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3047110](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3047110)

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3061765](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3061765)

One might get the impression he has a bit of an axe to grind. Then again, I
was a teacher at a Swedish university for one year (and loved doing it in
general), and I might actually be biased to think he has, because I have to
admit that the abstracts did have me nodding in agreement.

(Apologies for the low-effort comment - I'll try reading them in detail after
some coffee, but this is a bit too heavy before breakfast)

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richliss
This isn't new or the fault of immigrants - I went to Sweden almost 20 years
ago and almost every young person I came into contact with was an introvert
average-to-pretty looking Smiths fan who was depressed or extrovert very
attractive dance/pop fan who was depreseed/worried about not being taken
seriously whilst taking their art shots on their retro camera.

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erpaa
Pisa winners in science: Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taiwan, Finland.

Sweden is somewhere around 30, bravely competing with countries like USA,
France, Russia and Spain.

Brief visit to Tallinn might solve this mystery, instead finding some minute
errors in schooling system design. :-)

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Discombulator
I have read only about half of the paper. It is written in a very compelling
style, though I get the impression that the authors have an axe to grind.

However, to play the devil's advocate for a bit, standardized tests such as
PISA and TIMSS are taken as uncontested measure for the quality of an
education system. If you believe in the _social constructionist_ view (as
presented in the paper), then obviously you would reject such tests as a valid
measure just as you reject them when used in education. Clearly, an education
system that is _not_ focused - and excuse the simplification - on making
students learn a defined, common set of facts, is never going to do well on
tests. You could argue that this is by design, because the real goal of
education is to (?) make students question the "social construct"(?)[0]

The question at this point would then be whether Swedish students are doing
well on other dimensions - are they competitive on the labor market, do they
live happy lives?

To make it clear where I am standing: I believe that in order to question
anything intelligently, you need a strong and broad base of facts to base your
criticism on. I do not think there is a way around memorizing at least for
part of the subjects. I benefit at this point of my life of basic knowledge in
many areas that I _had_ to study during my education and had no interest or
inclination for - I would never have chosen for example to study the basics of
civil or contract law, which was a mandatory part of my somewhat quantitative
BSc course, but the concepts I learned were very helpful in practice when
dealing with employers, landlords, banks, etc.

I think to ask children to find their own interests and "question things
critically" \- which I guess boils down to expressing individual likes and
dislikes if arguing based on facts is not part of it - at that young age
deprives them of learning about the structure and rules of society, and about
the choices you have available. How do you know you are interested in biology
if you have not seen it somewhat in depth?

[0] Making this up; it is not clear to me if the social constructivist' take
on education makes even the basic promise of preparing students for life,
whereas in traditional fact-based education the promise is clear: learn facts
that will help you at work and in life.

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Melchizedek
Immigration is a huge elephant in the room here. Sweden has admitted an
enormous number of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. If you don't
correct for that, your results will be meaningless.

~~~
vanderZwan
Well, to (again) speak as someone who was teaching at a Swedish university for
a while - in fact, in Malmö, _supposedly_ the "Detroit/Chicago of Sweden"
(depends on who you ask; it's a stupid exaggeration either way), and full of
immigrants, I have a simple request : _please stop spreading this bullshit._
Being from a foreign country creates its problems, but has very, _very_ little
to do with the issues raised here.

I had plenty of problem students, and they were all _Swedish_. The issues have
more to do with teachers not being allowed to tell them that they're wrong, to
the point where they develop glass jaws and/or a complete lack of respect for
their teachers and their own education. They just don't care, because nobody
sets boundaries for them or tells them to push themselves to get better at
something!

I was almost fired from a _university_ for telling my students that the
majority of them did not bother to write down their names, student number, use
paragraphs, capital letters at the start of a sentence, or even something as
basic as putting dots between sentences in their weekly one-page reports. That
they all knew that they wouldn't have made it past the first year of high-
school with that kind of attitude. That I could not in good faith accept this
from adults who were two years away of having to write their own CV letters.
And that therefore any report that did not meet these basic requirements would
immediately be sent back with a note "format it properly" until it did (note:
I would not even _fail_ them - they would still be graded after the
corrections).

This then resulted in a complaint to the higher-ups depicting me as some
raging lunatic, and the higher-ups took the side of the complaining students
with _extreme_ prejudice, resulting in a near-firing.

If anything, the immigrant students had more fighting spirit than the locals,
possibly because they're not pampered.

~~~
SamReidHughes
It's totally dishonest to analyze trends in an education system without
accounting for immigration and ethnic differences. In the USA, for example,
there is plenty to be learned about the education system by taking that into
account. If you discover the performance among native Swedes isn't changed,
you'll learn the problem isn't simply caused by changes to the Swedish school
system.

Something like 20% of Sweden's population is of foreign origin. If the paper
doesn't account for this, it's got a problem. The performance of American
students in PISA or TMSS by racial breakdown has been well-documented --
blacks and Hispanics drag the average down more than Asians drag it up. And
you can find that many comparisons between American states are just the result
of Simpson's paradox. So that's something you need to check for when looking
at Sweden's performance.

(In the paper you can find good evidence that a big portion of the
deterioration is _not_ caused by ethnic makeup. For example, advanced
proficiency dropping from 12% to 3% on page 9. But it's not so clear about
changes to performance at the bottom end.)

~~~
vanderZwan
You raise very valid points, but the way you address them has a very different
ring to it than _" the big elephant in the room is..."_, which is a pretty
blatant a dog-whistle for _" the problem is dumb foreigners"_.

Now, I do wish to give the GP the benefit of doubt, but the expression is
problematic regardless of intent. My comment was more of a response that
implied dog-whistle. Admittedly, it was a bit reactionary because of my own
personal experiences surrounding these issues, and the ease of which I have
seen people blame things on foreigners without even a hint of self-reflection.
But as you mention: the paper suggests these issues are _not_ caused by
immigration.

