One could argue, as often happens, that Sweden is a great country. The arguments usually refer to our social welfare model, the lack of poverty and a well developed democracy. But Sweden is not famous for Nobel prizes in science (even though we hand them out), or great academic results, or cutting edge technology, or many other signs of excellence. I’d say that Sweden is very good at a lot of things, but its only greatness lies in not being bad.
A good example is the early education for kids, as I remember it very clearly myself. I was extremely average in primary school, while there were 3-4 students at the lower end of the bell curve, and 1-2 at the upper end. Each of the students struggling to keep up with the rest of the class had extra hours with 1 teacher assigned to each of them, to fully customize the curriculum for their special needs. This is the great thing about Sweden.
However, what was done to fully capture the talent and ambition of the 1-2 students way ahead of the class? Nothing. They were kindly asked to slow down. And really, imagining any other reaction would be impossible in Sweden — the world capital of crab mentality.
Failing to help early talent blossom is at least a crime as big as if not assisting the struggling students. It’s really an analogue for the broken window fallacy in economics – in the short term it’s easy to believe that spending resources on the struggling students will contribute the most to the overall performance of the class. But all it really creates is an equally average mass of disillusioned kids.
As long as talent and ambition is not met with appropriate resources, but instead frown upon with arguments such as “if you’re so good, you’ll manage anyway”, there will be a large number of possibly extraordinary children who will never learn to love a subject, whose ambition will never be satisfied and who will end up just as average as everybody else.
The elimination of all things bad is not a sign of greatness. Only of ugly mediocrity.
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The term “struggling student” is really not very accurate, since top achieving students struggle too. At least as much. I didn’t find a better term.
July 26th, 2009
by Fredrik
Sweden, the capital of average, everything is supposed to be at a flat line. Everything is lagom.
July 27th, 2009
by Ehsan
Well said brother. If we use gold and copper worth of society will descend.
Apart from what you say Sweden is very bad at one thing, and that is material welfare accompanied with spiritual growth. In our pursuit for economic treasures we even sacrifice our souls and hence at the end of the day we are tired and can only lay in the sofa and watch whatever garbage comes out of the TV.
Now that is sad!