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> “I think the skills that should be emphasized are how do you think for yourself? How do you develop critical reasoning for solving problems? How do you develo

> “I think the skills that should be emphasized are how do you think for yourself? How do you develop critical reasoning for solving problems? How do you develop creativity? How do you develop a learning mindset that you're going to go learn to do the next thing?” In the Swedish schoolsystem, the idea for the past 20 years has been exactly this, that is to try to teach critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving etc rather than hard facts. The results has been...not great. We discovered that reasoning and critical thinking is impossible without a foundational knowledge about what to be critical about. I think the same can be said about software development.

rkomorn 1y ago
Most of what I remember of my high school education in France was: here are the facts, and here is the reasoning that got us there. The exams were typically essay-ish (even in science classes) where you either had to basically reiterate the reasoning for a fact you already knew, or use similar reasoning to establish/discover a new fact (presumably unknown to you because not taught in class). Unfortunately, it didn't work for me and I still have about the same critical thinking skills as a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau.
- darkwater 1y ago
  > Unfortunately, it didn't work for me and I still have about the same critical thinking skills as a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. Why do you say so? Even just stating this probably means you are one or a few steps further...
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    Perhaps you overestimate me (or underestimate Beaujolais Nouveau (though how one could underestimate Beaujolais Nouveau is a mystery to me, but I digress)). But also, it takes a lot of actual learning of facts and understanding reasoning to properly leverage that schooling and I've had to accept that I am somewhat deficient at both. :)
    - klondike_klive 1y ago
      One thing I've come to understand about myself since my ADHD diagnosis is how hard thinking actually is for me. Especially thinking "to order", like problem solving or planning ahead. I'm great at makeshift solutions that will hold together until something better comes along. But deep and sustained thought for any length of time increases the chance that I'll become aware that I'm thinking and then get stuck in a fruitless meta cognition spiral. An analogy occurred to me the other day that it's like diving into a burning building to rescue possessions. If I really go for it I could get lucky and retrieve a passport or pet, but I'm just as likely to come back with an egg whisk!
      - rkomorn 1y ago
        Your description feels relatable. I think all this stuff is so complex and multi-faceted that we often get only a small part of the picture at a time. I likely have some attention/focus issues, but I also know they vary greatly (from "can't focus at all" to "I can definitely grok this") based on how actually interested I am in a topic (and I often misjudge that actual level of interest). I also know my very negative internal discourse, and my fixed mindset, are both heavily influenced by things that occurred decades ago, and keeping myself positively engaged in something by trying to at least fake a growth mindset is incredibly difficult. Meanwhile, I'm perfectly willing to throw unreasonable brute force effort at things (ie I've done many 60+ hour weeks working in tech and bunches of 12 hour days in restaurant kitchens), but that's probably been simultaneously both my biggest strength and worst enemy. At the same time, I don't think you should ignore the value of an egg whisk. You can use it to make anything from mayonnaise to whipped cream, not to mention beaten egg whites that have a multitude of applications. Meanwhile, the passport is easy enough to replace, and your pet (forgive me if I'm making the wrong assumption here) doesn't know how to use the whisk properly.
- jve 1y ago
  I don't know if I have critical thinking or not. But I often question - WHY is this better? IS there any better way? WHY it must be done such a way or WHY such rule exists? For example in electricity you need at least that amount of cross section if doing X amount of amps over Y length. I want to dig down and understand why? Ohh, the smaller the cross section, the more it heats! Armed with this info I get many more "Ohhs": Ohh, that's why you must ensure the connections are not loose. Oohhh, that's why an old extension cord where you don't feel your plug solidly clicks in place is a fire hazard. Ohh, that's why I must ensure the connection is solid when joining cables and doesn't lessen cross section. Ohh, that's why it's a very bad idea to join bigger cables with a smaller one. Ohh, that's why it is a bad idea to solve "my fuse is blowing out" by inserting a bigger fuse but instead I must check whether the cabling can support higher amperage (or check whether device has to draw that much). And yeah, this "intuition" is kind of a discovery phase and I can check whether my intuition/discovery is correct. Basically getting down to primitives lets me understand things more intuitively without trying to remember various rules or formulas. But I noticed my brain is heavily wired in not remembering lots of things, but thinking logically.
  - fx1994 1y ago
    We don't have enough time to go over things like this over and over again. Somebody already analyzed/tried all this and wrote in a book and they teach you in school from that book how it works and why. Yeah if you want to know more or understand better you can always dig it out yourself. At least today you can learn tons of stuff.
    - wongarsu 1y ago
      We don't have enough time to derive everything from first principles, but we do have the time to go over how something was derived, or how something works. A common issue when trying this is trying to teach all layers at the same level of detail. But this really isn't necessary. You need to know the equation for Ohms law, but you can give very handwavy explanations for the underlying causes. For example: why do thicker wires have less resistance? Electricity is the movement of electrons, more cross section means more electrons can move, like having more lanes on a highway. Why does copper have less resistance than aluminum? Copper has an electron that isn't bound as tightly to the atom. How does electricity know which path has the least resistance? It doesn't, it starts flowing down all paths equally at a significant fraction of the speed of light, then quickly settles in a steady state described by Ohm's law. Reserve the equations and numbers for the layers that matter, but having a rough understanding of what's happening on the layer below makes it easier to understand the layer you care about, and makes it easier to know when that understanding will break down (because all of science and engineering are approximations with limited applicability)
- biztos 1y ago
  I’ve heard many bad things said of the Beaujolais Nouveau, and of my sense of taste for liking it, but this is the first time I’ve seen its critical-thinking skills questioned. In its/your/our defense, I think it’s a perfectly smart wine, and young at heart!
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I appreciate the thought! ... even if it makes me question your judgement a bit.
- jech 1y ago
  > the same critical thinking skills as a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau I'm loving this expression. May I please adopt it?
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    You absolutely may, but I think you should personalize it with a wine reference that is geographically and qualitatively appropriate. And you may only use it to describe yourself, not others.
- Saline9515 1y ago
  On the contrary, the French "dissertation" exercise requires to articulate reasoning and facts, and come up with a plan for the explanation. It is the same kind of thinking that you are required to produce when writing a scientifically paper. It is however not taught very well by some teachers, who skirt on explaining how to properly do it, which might be your case.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure my teachers in the 90s were teaching properly. I also don't see what's "on the contrary" there.
    - Saline9515 1y ago
      On the contrary, your OP claims that dissertations require a rehash of the references cited in class. A real dissertation exercises logic and requires mobilizing facts and verbal precision to ground arguments. It is also highly teacher-dependent: if the correction is lax or not properly explained, you won’t understand what the exercise really is or how you are supposed to think in order to succeed.
Frieren 1y ago
> The results has been...not great. Sweden is the 19th country in the PISA scores. And it is in the upper section on all education indexes. There has been a world decline on scores, but has nothing to do with the Swedish education system. (That does not mean that Sweden should not continue monitoring it and bringing improvements) From Swedish news: https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/swedish-students-get-historically-bad-result-in-world-education-study https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/swedish-students-get-hi... - Swedish students skills in maths and reading comprehension have taken a drastic downward turn, according to the latest PISA study. - Several other countries also saw a decline in their PISA results, which are believed to be a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
- whizzter 1y ago
  Considering our past and the Finnish progress (they considered following us in the 80s/90s as they had done but stopped), 19th is an disappointment. Having teenagers that's been through most of the primary and secondary schools I kind agree with GP, especially when it comes to math,etc. Teaching concepts and ideas is _great_, and what we need to manage with advanced topics as adults. HOWEVER, if the foundations are shaky due to too little repetition of basics (that is seemingly frowned upon in the system) then being taught thinking about some abstract concepts doesn't help much because the tools to understand them aren't good enough.
- cess11 1y ago
  One should note that from the nineties onwards we put a large portion of our kids' education on the stock exchange and in the hands of upper class freaks instead of experts.
  - Frieren 1y ago
    That is true. And I do not argue that education cannot be better and more fair. We saw how train privatization worked for Sweden. Education should not follow the same path. But I have seen too many people arguing that education is collapsing and privatization is the answer. It is not. Improving the current system and removing private schools is the actual solution.
throw8349498 1y ago
> what to be critical about Media can fill that gap. People should be critical about global warming, antivax, anti israel, anti communism, racism, hate, whitr man, anti democracy, russia, china, trump... This thing is bad, imhate it, problem solved! Modern critical thinking is pretty simple! In future goverment can provide daily RSS feed, of things to be critical about. You can reduce national schooling system to a single vps server!
torben-friis 1y ago
I think there’s a balance to be had. My country (Spain) is the very opposite, with everything from university access to civil service exams being memory focused. The result is usually bottom of the barrel in the subjects that don’t fit that model well, mostly languages and math - the latter being the main issue as it becomes a bottleneck for teaching many other subjects. It also creates a tendency for people to take what they learn as truth, which becomes an issue when they use less reputable sources later in life - think for example a person taking a homeopathy course. Lots of parroting and cargo culting paired with limited cultural exposition due to monolingualism is a bad combination.
0points 1y ago
Indeed, the swedish school system is an ongoing disaster.
dsign 1y ago
This is, in my opinion, quite accurate. In the world of software development I meet a breed of Swedish devs younger than 30 that can't write code very well, but who can wax Jira tickets and software methodologies and do all sort of things to get them into a management position without having to write code. The end result is toxic teams where the seniors and the devs brought from India are writing all the code while all the juniors are playing software architect, scrum master an product owners. Not everybody is like that; seniors tend to be reliable and practical, and some juniors with programming-related hobbies are extremely competent and reasonable. But the chunk of "waxers" is big enough to be worrying.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
oerdier 1y ago
Check out E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s work, e.g.'Why Knowledge Matters'.
NalNezumi 1y ago
I'm glad my east Asian mother put me through Saturday school for natives during my school years in Sweden. The most damning example I have about Swedish school system is anecdotal: by attending Saturday school, I never had to study math ever in the Swedish school. (same for my Asian classmates) when I finished 9th grade Japanese school curriculum taught ONLY one day per week (2h), I had learned all of advanced math in high school and never had to study math until college. The focus on "no one left behind == no one allowed ahead" also meant that young me complaining math was boring and easy didn't persuade teachers to let me go ahead, but instead, they allowed me to sleep during the lecture.
- ta555555 1y ago
  [dead]
- siva7 1y ago
  It's better to leave no one behind than to focus solely on those ahead. Society needs a stable foundation and not more ungrateful privileged people.
  - torben-friis 1y ago
    But it is a false dichotomy. You can both offer resources to the ones behind and support high achievers. The latter can pretty much teach themselves with little hands on guidance, you just have to avoid actively sabotaging them. Many western school systems fail that simple requirement in several ways: they force unchallenging work even when unneeded, don’t offer harder stimulating alternatives, fail to provide a safe environment due to the other student’s disruption…
    - siva7 1y ago
      You say we should provide those ahead a safe environment.. but that's what accelerates social segregation and leaves those other poor kids behind
      - 1y ago
JackFr 1y ago
I think that’s a disingenuous take. Earlier in the piece the AWS CEO specifically says we should teach everyone the correct ways to build software despite the ubiquity of AI. The quote about creative problem solving was with respect to how to hire/get hired in a world where AI can let literally anyone code.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 1y ago
Here is the thing though. You can’t teach critical thinking like that. You need to teach hard facts and then people can learn critical thinking inductively from the hard facts with some help.
diggan 1y ago
> In the Swedish schoolsystem, the idea for the past 20 years has been exactly this, that is to try to teach critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving etc rather than hard facts. The results has been...not great. I'm not sure I'd agree that it's been outright "not great". I myself am the product of that precise school-system, being born in 1992 in Sweden (but now living outside the country). But I have vivid memories of some of the classes where we talked about how to learn, how to solve problems, critical thinking, reasoning, being critical of anything you read in newspapers, difference between opinions and facts, how propaganda works and so on. This was probably through year/class 7-9 if I remember correctly, and both me and others picked up on it relatively quick, and I'm not sure I'd have the same mindset today if it wasn't for those classes. Maybe I was just lucky with good teachers, but surely there are others out there who also had a very different experience than what you outline? To be fair, I don't know how things are working today, but at least at that time it actually felt like I had use of what I was thought in those classes, compared to most other stuff.
staticelf 1y ago
> The results has been...not great. Well, I kind of disagree. The results are bad mainly because we have a mass immigration from low education countries with extremely bad cultures. If you look at the numbers, it's easy to say swedes are stupid when in the real sense, ethnic swedes do very well in school.
tmcdos 1y ago
I have heard that in Netherlands there used to be (not sure if it is still there) a system where you have for example 4 rooms of children. Room A contains all children that are ahead of rooms B, C, D. If a child from room B learns pretty quickly - the child is moved to room A. However, if the child leaves behind the other children in room B - that child is moved in room C. Same for room C - those who can not catch up are moved to room D. In this way everyone is learning at max capacity. Those who can learn faster and better are not slowed down by others who can not (or do not want to) keep the pace. Everyone is happy - children, teachers, parents, community.
Salgat 1y ago
The problem is, in a capitalist society, who is going to be the company that will donate their time and money to teaching a junior developer who will simply go to another company for double the pay after 2 years?

rkomorn 1y ago

Most of what I remember of my high school education in France was: here are the facts, and here is the reasoning that got us there. The exams were typically essay-ish (even in science classes) where you either had to basically reiterate the reasoning for a fact you already knew, or use similar reasoning to establish/discover a new fact (presumably unknown to you because not taught in class). Unfortunately, it didn't work for me and I still have about the same critical thinking skills as a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau.

darkwater 1y ago
> Unfortunately, it didn't work for me and I still have about the same critical thinking skills as a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. Why do you say so? Even just stating this probably means you are one or a few steps further...
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Perhaps you overestimate me (or underestimate Beaujolais Nouveau (though how one could underestimate Beaujolais Nouveau is a mystery to me, but I digress)). But also, it takes a lot of actual learning of facts and understanding reasoning to properly leverage that schooling and I've had to accept that I am somewhat deficient at both. :)
  - klondike_klive 1y ago
    One thing I've come to understand about myself since my ADHD diagnosis is how hard thinking actually is for me. Especially thinking "to order", like problem solving or planning ahead. I'm great at makeshift solutions that will hold together until something better comes along. But deep and sustained thought for any length of time increases the chance that I'll become aware that I'm thinking and then get stuck in a fruitless meta cognition spiral. An analogy occurred to me the other day that it's like diving into a burning building to rescue possessions. If I really go for it I could get lucky and retrieve a passport or pet, but I'm just as likely to come back with an egg whisk!
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      Your description feels relatable. I think all this stuff is so complex and multi-faceted that we often get only a small part of the picture at a time. I likely have some attention/focus issues, but I also know they vary greatly (from "can't focus at all" to "I can definitely grok this") based on how actually interested I am in a topic (and I often misjudge that actual level of interest). I also know my very negative internal discourse, and my fixed mindset, are both heavily influenced by things that occurred decades ago, and keeping myself positively engaged in something by trying to at least fake a growth mindset is incredibly difficult. Meanwhile, I'm perfectly willing to throw unreasonable brute force effort at things (ie I've done many 60+ hour weeks working in tech and bunches of 12 hour days in restaurant kitchens), but that's probably been simultaneously both my biggest strength and worst enemy. At the same time, I don't think you should ignore the value of an egg whisk. You can use it to make anything from mayonnaise to whipped cream, not to mention beaten egg whites that have a multitude of applications. Meanwhile, the passport is easy enough to replace, and your pet (forgive me if I'm making the wrong assumption here) doesn't know how to use the whisk properly.
jve 1y ago
I don't know if I have critical thinking or not. But I often question - WHY is this better? IS there any better way? WHY it must be done such a way or WHY such rule exists? For example in electricity you need at least that amount of cross section if doing X amount of amps over Y length. I want to dig down and understand why? Ohh, the smaller the cross section, the more it heats! Armed with this info I get many more "Ohhs": Ohh, that's why you must ensure the connections are not loose. Oohhh, that's why an old extension cord where you don't feel your plug solidly clicks in place is a fire hazard. Ohh, that's why I must ensure the connection is solid when joining cables and doesn't lessen cross section. Ohh, that's why it's a very bad idea to join bigger cables with a smaller one. Ohh, that's why it is a bad idea to solve "my fuse is blowing out" by inserting a bigger fuse but instead I must check whether the cabling can support higher amperage (or check whether device has to draw that much). And yeah, this "intuition" is kind of a discovery phase and I can check whether my intuition/discovery is correct. Basically getting down to primitives lets me understand things more intuitively without trying to remember various rules or formulas. But I noticed my brain is heavily wired in not remembering lots of things, but thinking logically.
- fx1994 1y ago
  We don't have enough time to go over things like this over and over again. Somebody already analyzed/tried all this and wrote in a book and they teach you in school from that book how it works and why. Yeah if you want to know more or understand better you can always dig it out yourself. At least today you can learn tons of stuff.
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    We don't have enough time to derive everything from first principles, but we do have the time to go over how something was derived, or how something works. A common issue when trying this is trying to teach all layers at the same level of detail. But this really isn't necessary. You need to know the equation for Ohms law, but you can give very handwavy explanations for the underlying causes. For example: why do thicker wires have less resistance? Electricity is the movement of electrons, more cross section means more electrons can move, like having more lanes on a highway. Why does copper have less resistance than aluminum? Copper has an electron that isn't bound as tightly to the atom. How does electricity know which path has the least resistance? It doesn't, it starts flowing down all paths equally at a significant fraction of the speed of light, then quickly settles in a steady state described by Ohm's law. Reserve the equations and numbers for the layers that matter, but having a rough understanding of what's happening on the layer below makes it easier to understand the layer you care about, and makes it easier to know when that understanding will break down (because all of science and engineering are approximations with limited applicability)
biztos 1y ago
I’ve heard many bad things said of the Beaujolais Nouveau, and of my sense of taste for liking it, but this is the first time I’ve seen its critical-thinking skills questioned. In its/your/our defense, I think it’s a perfectly smart wine, and young at heart!
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I appreciate the thought! ... even if it makes me question your judgement a bit.
jech 1y ago
> the same critical thinking skills as a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau I'm loving this expression. May I please adopt it?
- rkomorn 1y ago
  You absolutely may, but I think you should personalize it with a wine reference that is geographically and qualitatively appropriate. And you may only use it to describe yourself, not others.
Saline9515 1y ago
On the contrary, the French "dissertation" exercise requires to articulate reasoning and facts, and come up with a plan for the explanation. It is the same kind of thinking that you are required to produce when writing a scientifically paper. It is however not taught very well by some teachers, who skirt on explaining how to properly do it, which might be your case.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure my teachers in the 90s were teaching properly. I also don't see what's "on the contrary" there.
  - Saline9515 1y ago
    On the contrary, your OP claims that dissertations require a rehash of the references cited in class. A real dissertation exercises logic and requires mobilizing facts and verbal precision to ground arguments. It is also highly teacher-dependent: if the correction is lax or not properly explained, you won’t understand what the exercise really is or how you are supposed to think in order to succeed.

Frieren 1y ago

> The results has been...not great. Sweden is the 19th country in the PISA scores. And it is in the upper section on all education indexes. There has been a world decline on scores, but has nothing to do with the Swedish education system. (That does not mean that Sweden should not continue monitoring it and bringing improvements) From Swedish news: https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/swedish-students-get-historically-bad-result-in-world-education-study https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/swedish-students-get-hi... - Swedish students skills in maths and reading comprehension have taken a drastic downward turn, according to the latest PISA study. - Several other countries also saw a decline in their PISA results, which are believed to be a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.

whizzter 1y ago
Considering our past and the Finnish progress (they considered following us in the 80s/90s as they had done but stopped), 19th is an disappointment. Having teenagers that's been through most of the primary and secondary schools I kind agree with GP, especially when it comes to math,etc. Teaching concepts and ideas is _great_, and what we need to manage with advanced topics as adults. HOWEVER, if the foundations are shaky due to too little repetition of basics (that is seemingly frowned upon in the system) then being taught thinking about some abstract concepts doesn't help much because the tools to understand them aren't good enough.
cess11 1y ago
One should note that from the nineties onwards we put a large portion of our kids' education on the stock exchange and in the hands of upper class freaks instead of experts.
- Frieren 1y ago
  That is true. And I do not argue that education cannot be better and more fair. We saw how train privatization worked for Sweden. Education should not follow the same path. But I have seen too many people arguing that education is collapsing and privatization is the answer. It is not. Improving the current system and removing private schools is the actual solution.

throw8349498 1y ago

> what to be critical about Media can fill that gap. People should be critical about global warming, antivax, anti israel, anti communism, racism, hate, whitr man, anti democracy, russia, china, trump... This thing is bad, imhate it, problem solved! Modern critical thinking is pretty simple! In future goverment can provide daily RSS feed, of things to be critical about. You can reduce national schooling system to a single vps server!

torben-friis 1y ago

I think there’s a balance to be had. My country (Spain) is the very opposite, with everything from university access to civil service exams being memory focused. The result is usually bottom of the barrel in the subjects that don’t fit that model well, mostly languages and math - the latter being the main issue as it becomes a bottleneck for teaching many other subjects. It also creates a tendency for people to take what they learn as truth, which becomes an issue when they use less reputable sources later in life - think for example a person taking a homeopathy course. Lots of parroting and cargo culting paired with limited cultural exposition due to monolingualism is a bad combination.

0points 1y ago

Indeed, the swedish school system is an ongoing disaster.

dsign 1y ago

This is, in my opinion, quite accurate. In the world of software development I meet a breed of Swedish devs younger than 30 that can't write code very well, but who can wax Jira tickets and software methodologies and do all sort of things to get them into a management position without having to write code. The end result is toxic teams where the seniors and the devs brought from India are writing all the code while all the juniors are playing software architect, scrum master an product owners. Not everybody is like that; seniors tend to be reliable and practical, and some juniors with programming-related hobbies are extremely competent and reasonable. But the chunk of "waxers" is big enough to be worrying.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

oerdier 1y ago

Check out E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s work, e.g.'Why Knowledge Matters'.

NalNezumi 1y ago

I'm glad my east Asian mother put me through Saturday school for natives during my school years in Sweden. The most damning example I have about Swedish school system is anecdotal: by attending Saturday school, I never had to study math ever in the Swedish school. (same for my Asian classmates) when I finished 9th grade Japanese school curriculum taught ONLY one day per week (2h), I had learned all of advanced math in high school and never had to study math until college. The focus on "no one left behind == no one allowed ahead" also meant that young me complaining math was boring and easy didn't persuade teachers to let me go ahead, but instead, they allowed me to sleep during the lecture.

ta555555 1y ago
[dead]
siva7 1y ago
It's better to leave no one behind than to focus solely on those ahead. Society needs a stable foundation and not more ungrateful privileged people.
- torben-friis 1y ago
  But it is a false dichotomy. You can both offer resources to the ones behind and support high achievers. The latter can pretty much teach themselves with little hands on guidance, you just have to avoid actively sabotaging them. Many western school systems fail that simple requirement in several ways: they force unchallenging work even when unneeded, don’t offer harder stimulating alternatives, fail to provide a safe environment due to the other student’s disruption…
  - siva7 1y ago
    You say we should provide those ahead a safe environment.. but that's what accelerates social segregation and leaves those other poor kids behind
    - 1y ago

JackFr 1y ago

I think that’s a disingenuous take. Earlier in the piece the AWS CEO specifically says we should teach everyone the correct ways to build software despite the ubiquity of AI. The quote about creative problem solving was with respect to how to hire/get hired in a world where AI can let literally anyone code.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 1y ago

Here is the thing though. You can’t teach critical thinking like that. You need to teach hard facts and then people can learn critical thinking inductively from the hard facts with some help.

diggan 1y ago

> In the Swedish schoolsystem, the idea for the past 20 years has been exactly this, that is to try to teach critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving etc rather than hard facts. The results has been...not great. I'm not sure I'd agree that it's been outright "not great". I myself am the product of that precise school-system, being born in 1992 in Sweden (but now living outside the country). But I have vivid memories of some of the classes where we talked about how to learn, how to solve problems, critical thinking, reasoning, being critical of anything you read in newspapers, difference between opinions and facts, how propaganda works and so on. This was probably through year/class 7-9 if I remember correctly, and both me and others picked up on it relatively quick, and I'm not sure I'd have the same mindset today if it wasn't for those classes. Maybe I was just lucky with good teachers, but surely there are others out there who also had a very different experience than what you outline? To be fair, I don't know how things are working today, but at least at that time it actually felt like I had use of what I was thought in those classes, compared to most other stuff.

staticelf 1y ago

> The results has been...not great. Well, I kind of disagree. The results are bad mainly because we have a mass immigration from low education countries with extremely bad cultures. If you look at the numbers, it's easy to say swedes are stupid when in the real sense, ethnic swedes do very well in school.

tmcdos 1y ago

I have heard that in Netherlands there used to be (not sure if it is still there) a system where you have for example 4 rooms of children. Room A contains all children that are ahead of rooms B, C, D. If a child from room B learns pretty quickly - the child is moved to room A. However, if the child leaves behind the other children in room B - that child is moved in room C. Same for room C - those who can not catch up are moved to room D. In this way everyone is learning at max capacity. Those who can learn faster and better are not slowed down by others who can not (or do not want to) keep the pace. Everyone is happy - children, teachers, parents, community.

Salgat 1y ago

The problem is, in a capitalist society, who is going to be the company that will donate their time and money to teaching a junior developer who will simply go to another company for double the pay after 2 years?