Reprinted with permission from the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 7, 1992. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. For decades Sweden was the premier welfare state. Progressives touted its smorgasbord of subsidies that ranged from government-run day care to nearly unlimited sick leave. But to pay for all that Sweden imposed taxes that at one point consumed 56 percent of the nation's output. The Swedish people, saddled with inefficient monopoly services and two decades of low growth, finally voted the Socialists out of power last fall. Carl Bildt, Sweden's new 42-year-old conservative prime minister, aims to steer Sweden back into the family of freemarket nations. "Collectivism and socialism have been thrown on the scrap heap of history," he told us during a recent visit. "There is no compromise worth having between state control and capitalism." After only six months in power, Mr. Bildt has already abolished taxes on wealth and inheritance, cut government spending by two percent in real terms, and begun an aggressive privatization program. Services from medicine to child care are being opened up to private competition. But nowhere is the break with the past as sharp as it is in education.
Swedish schools have been touted as the most progressive" in the world,
relentlessly pursuing equality at the expense of excellence. Grades were
abolished for students under the age of 15, because they were said to foster
competition rather than cooperation among students.
Ms. Ask has a bold reform agenda which begins with reintroducing grades, requiring that English be taught from the first grade on and encouraging the study of Christian ethics in schools. Ms. Ask says Americans should think carefully before they follow Sweden's former example and view schools as a center for the delivery of social services. "Swedish schools have diluted the quality of education by trying to do too much," she says. "They may then neglect their basic function - educating children." The government will also end the state's virtual monopoly on education. Government education money will go to individual students instead of schools, allowing parents the freedom to send their children to any private or public school. "Free competition will provide better value for the money spent, increase the role of parents in education and lead to more innovation, says Ms. Ask. She is a fan of Poland's educational reforms, which include a voucher program to encourage the formation of a private-school sector. After being praised for six decades for supposedly finding a "Third Way" between socialism and capitalism, Sweden's new leaders are amused that their bold reforms aren't getting more attention in the West. "Now that we have decided the Third Way is actually a blind alley, we had hoped the world would want to learn from our pioneering example," says Finance Minister Bo Lundgren. Indeed, Sweden's experience with collectivism and the nanny-state contains valuable lessons for those American liberals who continue to oppose educational choice and promote industrial policy and centralized health care. Perhaps some foundation should fly a few of them over to Stockholm so they can learn from the New Swedish Model. Get The Book!Outcome Based Education: Understanding the Truth About Education Reform by Ron SunseriSuggested Reading List - the Demise of the Educational System - OBE (Outcome-Based Education), NEA (National Education Association), educational psychology, German psychology & influences, demise of public education, educational sabotage, Wundt, Pavlov, Dewey, Skinner, Watson. Say NO To Psychiatry! Back to Education Main Page Back to Main SNTP Page
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
