Denmark:A Case Study in Social Democracy

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Hmmm I just looked up the (High School) graduation rates of Denmark and the US.

Denmark: 47.3 in 2007
United States: 36.5 in 2007

But I guess its easier to graduate from a Danish school since they only do 9 years while we have to do 12. So either we have fewer people with only 9 years of schooling since 12 is mandatory or so few of our students reach 9 years...

Comparing notes or ammount of graduates means little if the criterions for notes are not the same. In Germany for example the general performance level of schoolkids gets artifically counted up by lowering the standards. Kids now get the same note for more mistakes or less performance, or get a better note for the same ammount of mistake and the same performance than earlier.

when my mom went to school, in a written dictate her generation was not given an "A" with one single mistake in it. My generation got used to things like "half-mistakes", two of whch got counted as one full mistake, and an "A" still being given with 1 or 1.5 errors. I have been told by teachers that today the ministry leaves teachers no room anymore and orderesy them either to give a good note for even an higher ammount of mistakes (I know of one school where you still get an A with 4 errors), or the final note for such a classroom work must bcalculated versus the mean averga note of all the class, to achieve a wanted and demanded and ordered-for preset avergae note.

Performance levbels have become fully negotiable, their are no set standards anymore. The result is that one quarter of kids in third class of elementary school still cannot read or write reliably and cannot do elemnatary maths. At my time, all kids could do that by the end of first class. Companies complain that they desperately search for young people to get them into the jobs they have to offer and needs to crew. but they must first hold weeks of school teaching to teach them how to write without making to many errors, and basic maths like addition, divion, percent-caluclation or rule-of-three.

But politicians boast with terms like "education offensives", "excellence initiatives" etc. Yeah. First kick it into the drain, than give it a shiny paint.