Education

I hate to admit it, but the Alliance has actually come up with a couple of good suggestions educational wise. In fact, about the same ideas I've had since my own kids began their trip through our educational system. Once upon a time, in the late Sixities, the Swedish school was among the best schools in the world. Then the Social Democrats decided to reform it. Bad move.

That all people are equal, and deserve to be treated equal in terms of possibilities is just fine, but to not recognize that people are different in terms of personality, is completely wrong. From the late seventies and up until now those who where good at school were held back, while a lot of resources were put in those who maybe had been better off not attending theoretical classes as much as they had to.

Don't get me wrong here. I don't consider people who don't understand how to spell, add numbers or remember which Greek philosopher who said what as any less intelligent than people who know those things. Why? Because everybody, absolutely every kind of knowledge and skill is needed in every society. If everybody becomes a computer-wiz, who the hell is going to repair our cars, drive our buses or manufacture all those things we need?

The problem is, as I see it, the fact that many people who are able to complete a long education, look down on those who can't. For some reason some of these people seem to forget that society wouldn't work without every kind of knowledge and all kinds of professions.

Anyway, one of the things the Social Democrats changed was the grades. Today, a student doesn't reveive any grades at all until the eighth year of mandatory school. How the hell is a student to know how he or she performes compared to others? Even LazyWorm, my very smart and street-wise 14-year old, surprised me by saying he wanted grades. All this time I've been struggling with getting him to school it never even occured to me that he might have struggled harder had he had a way of judging his own progress. A grading system might have sparked his sense for competition. As of now, he's on the verge of failing totally.

We have something called mid-term conversation where the parents, the student and the teacher participate. This is supposed to give the parents a feeling of how their offspring is coping with his/her education. That's just bullshit. Mostly they talk about the negative things which just makes the student even more negative towards school and make the parents angry. In LazyWorm's case he's hated school since day one and the school has totally failed in making him feel comfortable and education as fun as it should be. I, as a parent can only encourage him as much as I possibly can, but it's up to the educational system to:

A: Make the education as fun and rewarding as possible.
B: Spark every kids sense for competition.
C: Give the students a receipt on their progress.

Sad to say but one of the areas where the Social Democrats went overboard was in their effort to try and create a school where everybody was treated exactly the same, but people are different, hence the educational system has to be more flexible. And to take away the grades and justify it by claiming that the less brighter students felt inferior because they couldn't get high grades just showed how far away from reality politicians live. Because at the same time they took away the fun for all those bright students who had their speciality in theoretical subjects.

If the system already from the start had a built-in safety net where students were recognized for their different talents and encouraged to, as an example, use their skills in handicraft TOGETHER with lessons in math or any other subject that applied, they would still be able to improve their grades.

I know, it sounds like Utopia but I firmly believe in flexibility instead of rigidity, especially in school.


Also, the situation for immigrants is going to change a bit. You can read more about it by following the links below.

About school.
More about schools.
About immigrants.


Now, what else is new around here? Well there's this article about our Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and his shares in a Russian holding company. As for me, I'm more interested in his involvment in Lundin Oil, a company that has a reputation of using illegal methods to get local fishermen in African countries to succumb to the companys will. Now there's a scandal if it's true.

The biggest news for the last two days however, has been about this first storm. It's actually the first bad storm since "Gudrun" in 2005. It was supposed to hit southern Sweden this evening, but this far, at midnight, it's not even started to rain. Might it be a case of "Cry Wolf"? We wont know until tomorrow.



Oh, and I've done some tests during the two last weeks! In Mathematics I just barely passed, which was expected. In Social studies I was second best in class (PwHH) and in Geography I was also awarded with the highest grades (PwHH = Passed with High Honor). Tomorrow I will do a test in Programming, which I expect will be at least PwH (Passed with Honor). And next week we have a seven day leave. Well, the kids have, because I will try and understand more complex equations, write a paper on media and a paper on the Three Gorges Dam in China.

Oh, I found another book by Desmond Morris, the writer of "The Naked Ape". The book is called, translated from Swedish; The Opposite Sex. It's one of the most educating and thought worthy books about us humans I've read in a long time. Did you know that there are around 3.000 young girls who get circumcized (mutilated) in Egypt, every single day? Mindboggling. And sad.