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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

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
    - cutemonster 1y ago
      That's a good point. Maybe you can have all quiet and focused students together in the same classroom? They might be reading different books, different speed, and have different questions to the teachers. But when they focus and don't interrupt each other, that can be fine? Noisy students who sabotage for everyone shouldn't be there though. Grouping students on some combination of learning speed and ability to focus / not disturbing the others. Rather than only learning speed. Might depend on the size of the school (how many students)
      - antasvara 1y ago
        For what it's worth, that's how the Montessori school I went to worked. I have my critiques of the full Montessori approach (too long for a comment), but the thing that always made sense was mixed age and mixed speed classrooms. The main ideas that I think should be adopted are: 1. A "lesson" doesn't need to take 45 minutes. Often, the next thing a kid will learn isn't some huge jump. It's applying what they already know to an expanded problem. 2. Some kids just don't need as much time with a concept. As long as you're consistently evaluating understanding, it doesn't really matter if everyone gets the same amount of teacher interaction. 3. Grade level should not be a speed limit; it also shouldn't be a minimum speed (at least as currently defined). I don't think it's necesarily a problem for a student to be doing "grade 5" math and "grade 2" reading as a 3rd grader. Growth isn't linear; having a multi-year view of what constitutes "on track" can allow students to stay with their peers while also learning at an appropriate pace for their skill level. Some of this won't be feasible to implement at the public school level. I'm a realist in the sense that student to teacher ratios limit what's possible. But I think when every education solution has the same "everyone in a class goes the same speed" constraint, you end up with the same sets of problems.
    - torben-friis 1y ago
      Counterintuitive argument:'No one left behind' policies increase social segregation. Universal education offers a social ladder. "Your father was a farmer, but you can be a banker, if put in the work". When you set a lower bar (like enforcing a safe environment), smart kids will shoot forward. Yes, statistically, a large part of succesful kids will be the ones with better support networks, but you're stil judging results, for which environment is just a factor. When you don't set this lower bar, rich kids who can move away will do it, because no one places their children in danger voluntarily. Now the subset of successful kids from a good background will thrive as always, but succesful kids from bad environments are stuck with a huge handicap and sink. You've made the lader purely, rather than partly, based on wealth. And you get two awful side effects on top: - you're not teaching the bottom kids that violating the safety of others implies rejection. That's a rule enforced everywhere, from any workplace through romantic relationships to even prison, and kids are now unprepared for that. - you've taught the rest of the kids to think of the bottom ones as potential abusers and disruptors. Good luck with the resulting classism and xenophobia when they grow up.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  Ridiculous. Progress, by definition, is made by the people in front. No one is saying to "focus solely on those ahead," but as long as resources are finite, some people will need to be left behind to find their own way. Otherwise those who can benefit from access to additional resources will lose out.
  - Epa095 1y ago
    Although in a global world, it's not clear that it's best for a country to focus on getting the absolute best, IF if means the average suffers from it. There is value in being the best, but for the economy it's also important to have enough good enough people to utilise the new technology/science(which gets imported from abroad), and they don't need to be the absolute best. As a bit of a caricature example, if cancer is completely cured tomorrow, it's not necessarily the country inventing the cure which will be cancer free first, but the one with the most doctors able to use and administer the cure.
  - gjm11 1y ago
    "Progress is made by the people in front" is plausibly true by definition. "Progress is made by the people who were in front 15 years earlier" is not true by definition. (So: you can't safely assume that the people you need for progress are exactly the people who are doing best in school. Maybe some of the people who aren't doing so well there might end up in front later on.) "Progress is made by the people who end up in front without any intervention" is not true by definition. (So: you can't safely assume that you won't make better progress by attending to people who are at risk of falling behind. Perhaps some of those people are brilliant but dyslexic, for a random example.) "Progress is made by the people in front and everyone else is irrelevant to it" is not true by definition. (So: you can't safely assume that you will make most progress by focusing mostly on the people who will end up in front, even if you can identify who those are. Maybe their brilliant work will depend on a whole lot of less glamorous work by less-brilliant people.) I strongly suspect that progress is made mostly by people who don't think in soundbite-length slogans.
- dmitrygr 1y ago
  Which of the two give us progress? Are you sure you wanna give up all progress for the sake of stability?
  - siva7 1y ago
    I'd rather live in a stable society than some tech utopia.
    - dmitrygr 1y ago
      Ok, please surrender your cellphones, internet, steam, tools, writing, etc... all those were given to you by the best of the crop and not the median slop. Go gather tubers in a forest
      - nicman23 1y ago
        the worst part about the average person is that 49% are worse than average
        dmitrygr 1y ago
        > the worst part about the average person is that 49% are worse than average That is not how that works... It would if you said "median"
        nicman23 1y ago
        math terminology is hard when English is not your native :/
      - selimthegrim 1y ago
        I guess we should tell that guy from Tula who makes watches to go mushroom picking too
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      So, here's a time machine. You can go back to a time and place of lasting, enduring stability. There have been been numerous such periods in recorded history that have lasted for more than a human lifetime, and likely even more prior to that. (Admittedly a bit of a tautology, given that most 'recorded history' is a record of things happening rather than things staying the same.) It will be a one-way trip, of course. What year do you set the dial to?
- draw_down 1y ago
  [dead]
- hyangelo 1y ago
  That sounds like a recipe for mediocrity.
- Viliam1234 1y ago
  If everyone can't get a Nobel prize, no one should! The so-called intelligent kids selfishly try to get ahead and build rockets or cure cancer, but they don't care about the feelings of those who can't build rockets or cure cancer. We need education to teach them that everyone is special in exactly the same way.
StableAlkyne 1y ago
> no one left behind == no one allowed ahead It's like this in the US (or rather, it was 20 years ago. But I suspect it is now worse anyway) Teachers in my county were heavily discouraged from failing anyone, because pass rate became a target instead of a metric. They couldn't even give a 0 for an assignment that was never turned in without multiple meetings with the student and approval from an administrator. The net result was classes always proceeded at the rate of the slowest kid in class. Good for the slow kids (that cared), universally bad for everyone else who didn't want to be bored out of their minds. The divide was super apparent between the normal level and honors level classes. I don't know what the right answer is, but there was an insane amount of effort spent on kids who didn't care, whose parents didn't care, who hadn't cared since elementary school, and always ended up dropping out as soon as they hit 18. No differentiation between them, and the ones who really did give a shit and were just a little slow (usually because of a bad home life). It's hard to avoid leaving someone behind when they've already left themselves behind.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  I'm not sure when this changed, but in school for me in the 1970s and early '80s the teachers (at least the older ones) were all pretty much of the attitude that "what you get out of school depends on what you put into it" i.e. learning is mostly up to the student. Grades of "F" or zero for uncompleted or totally unsatisfactory work were not uncommon and students did get held back. Dropout age was 16 and those who really didn't care mostly did that. So at least the last two years of high school were mostly all kids who at least wanted to finish.
- h2zizzle 1y ago
  I'm gonna add another perspective. I was placed, and excelled, in moderately advanced math courses from 3rd grade on. Mostly 'A's through 11th grade precalc (taken because of the one major hiccup, placing only in the second most rigorous track when I entered high school). I ended that year feeling pretty good, with a superior SAT score bagged, high hopes for National Merit, etc. Then came senior year. AP Calculus was a sh/*tshow, because of a confluence of factors: dealing with parents divorcing, social isolation, dysphoria. I hit a wall, and got my only quarterly D, ever. The, "if you get left behind, that's on you, because we're not holding up the bright kids," mentality was catastrophic for me - and also completely inapplicable, because I WAS one of the bright kids! I needed help, and focus. I retook the course in college and got the highest grade in the class, so I confirmed that I was not the problem; unfortunately, though, the damage had been done. I'd chosen a major in the humnities, and had only taken that course as an elective, to prove to myself that I could manage the subject. You would never know that I'd been on-track for a technical career. So, I don't buy that America/Sweden/et al. are full of hopeless demi-students. I was deemed one, and it wasn't true, but the simple perception was devastating. I think there is a larger, overarching deficit of support for students, probably some combination of home life, class structure, and pedagogical incentives. If "no child left behind" is anathema in these circles, the "full speed ahead" approach is not much better.
JustExAWS 1y ago
I have as much of a fundamental issue with “Saturday school” for children as I do with professionals thinking they should be coding on their days off. When do you get a chance to enjoy your childhood?
- NalNezumi 1y ago
  As a kid, the "fun" about Saturday school fluctuated. In the beginning it was super fun, after a while it became a chore (and I whined to my mom) but in the end I enjoyed it and it was tremendously valuable. The school had a lot of cultural activities (sport day, new years celebration / setsubun etc) and having a second set of classmates that shared a different side of you was actually fun for me. So it added an extra dimension of enjoyment in my childhood :) Especially since (back then) being an (half) asian nerd kid in a 99.6% White (blonde & blue eyed) school meant a lot of ridicule and minor bullying. The saturday school classes were too small for bullying to not get noticed, and also served as a second community where you could share your stuff without ridicule or confusion :) The experience made me think that it's tremendously valuable for kids to find multiple places (at least one outside school) where they can meet their peers. Doesn't have to be a school, but a hobby community, sport group, music groups, etc. Anything the kid might like, and there's shared interest. It teaches kid that being liked by a random group of people (classmates) is not everything in life, and you increase the chance of finding like-minded people. Which reflect rest of life better anyway (being surrounded by nerds is by far the best perk of being an engineer) I know 2 class mates (out of 7) that hated it there, and since it's not mandatory they left after elementary school. So a parent should ofc check if t he kids enjoy it (and if not, why) and let the kid have a say in it.
  - selimthegrim 1y ago
    So you’re telling me the entire point of life is being able to segregate yourself with a bunch of people like you?
    - NalNezumi 1y ago
      That's a very bad-faith take on what I wrote. I'll self-quote: >The experience made me think that it's tremendously valuable for kids to find *multiple places* (at least one outside school) where they can meet their peers. Most people don't neatly fit in to "one" category. Trying to find many places you could meet peers can open up your mind (and also people around you)
torben-friis 1y ago
>I'm glad my east Asian mother put me through Saturday school for natives during my school years in Sweden. I’m curious, could you share your Saturday school‘s system? I’m very interested in knowing what a day of class was like, the general approach, etc.
- cutemonster 1y ago
  And who were the teachers? Did it cost money, how much? How long ago? I guess the students were motivated and disciplined? Who were the other students? Natives, you mean swedes?
  - NalNezumi 1y ago
    Sorry, by natives I meant Japanese Natives; A school for japanese kids (kids of japanese parents). Although I read that in Canada they recently removed that restriction, since there's now 3rd and 4th generation Canadian that teaches Japanese to the kids. The teachers was often Japanese teachers. Usually they did teaching locally (in Sweden) or had other jobs, but most of them with a teaching license (in Japan). My Mother also did teaching there for a short time, and told me that the salary was very very low (like 300$ or something, per month) and people mostly did it for passion or part of the community thing. I did a quick googling and right now the price seems 100$ for entering the school, and around 850$ per year. Not sure about the teachers salary now or what back then. Other students were either: Half-Swedish/Japanese, settled in Sweden. Immigrants with both parent Japanese, settled in Sweden. Expats kids (usually in Sweden for a short time, 1-2 years, for work) both parent Japanese. The former two spoke both language, the latter only spoke Japanese.
    - cutemonster 1y ago
      Ok :-) Thanks for explaining. Sounds like a good school
- NalNezumi 1y ago
  Sure! as far as I know, it's somewhat standardized and the east asian countries all have it (Korea, China, Japan). I know this because the Chinese Saturday School was close by. It's usually sponsored by the embassy & in the capital cities, or places with many Japanese families. (London, Germany, Canada afaik) Because it's only once a week, it was from 09:00 - 14:00 or similar. The slots was: Language (Japanese), Social Studies (History, Geography, Social systems) and then Math. They usually gave homework, which was a little up to the parent to enforce. Classes was quite small: elementary school the most, but no more than 10. Middle school was always single digit (5 for my class). Depends on place and economy: When the comapnies Ericsson (Sweden) and Sony (Japan) had a joint division Sony-Ericsson, many classes doubled. Class didn't differ so much from the normal school in Asia. Less strict. But the school organized a lot of events such as Undoukai (Sports Day), Theater play, and new years/setsubun festival and other things common in Japanese schools. It served as a place for many asian parents to meet each other too, so it became a bit of a community. Because lack of students the one I went to only had from 1th to 9th grade. In London and bigger cities I heard they have up until high-school. But in Japan, Some colleges have 帰国子女枠 (returnee entrance system) so I know one alumni that went to Tokyo Uni after highschool. Personally, I liked it. I hated having to go one extra day to school, but being able to have classmate to share part of your culture (before internet was wide-spread) by sharing games, books, toys you brought home from holiday in Japan was very valuable. Related to the "critical thinking" part of the original article: It was also interesting to read two history books. Especially modern history. The Swedish (pretending to be neutral) one and the Japanese one (pretending they didn't do anything bad) as an example, for WW2 and aftermath. Being exposed to two rhetoric, both technically not a lie (but by omission), definitely piqued my curiosity as a kid.
Epa095 1y ago
And still (or maybe because?) the resulting adults in Sweeden score above e.g Korea in both numeracy and adaptive problem solving (but slightly less than Japan). The race is not about being best at 16 after all. https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&primaryCountry=SWE&treshold=5&topic=AS https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&prim... https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&primaryCountry=KOR&treshold=5&topic=AS https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&prim...
- sunrisetiger 1y ago
  Probably attributable to a time lag as the Korean GDP per capita in the 1960's was close to sub-Saharan African levels + military junta rule that stymied liberal education for a good cohort of the population. Countries like Spain also show similarities to Korea and when looking at youth scoring, things tend to be more equal.

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
  - cutemonster 1y ago
    That's a good point. Maybe you can have all quiet and focused students together in the same classroom? They might be reading different books, different speed, and have different questions to the teachers. But when they focus and don't interrupt each other, that can be fine? Noisy students who sabotage for everyone shouldn't be there though. Grouping students on some combination of learning speed and ability to focus / not disturbing the others. Rather than only learning speed. Might depend on the size of the school (how many students)
    - antasvara 1y ago
      For what it's worth, that's how the Montessori school I went to worked. I have my critiques of the full Montessori approach (too long for a comment), but the thing that always made sense was mixed age and mixed speed classrooms. The main ideas that I think should be adopted are: 1. A "lesson" doesn't need to take 45 minutes. Often, the next thing a kid will learn isn't some huge jump. It's applying what they already know to an expanded problem. 2. Some kids just don't need as much time with a concept. As long as you're consistently evaluating understanding, it doesn't really matter if everyone gets the same amount of teacher interaction. 3. Grade level should not be a speed limit; it also shouldn't be a minimum speed (at least as currently defined). I don't think it's necesarily a problem for a student to be doing "grade 5" math and "grade 2" reading as a 3rd grader. Growth isn't linear; having a multi-year view of what constitutes "on track" can allow students to stay with their peers while also learning at an appropriate pace for their skill level. Some of this won't be feasible to implement at the public school level. I'm a realist in the sense that student to teacher ratios limit what's possible. But I think when every education solution has the same "everyone in a class goes the same speed" constraint, you end up with the same sets of problems.
  - torben-friis 1y ago
    Counterintuitive argument:'No one left behind' policies increase social segregation. Universal education offers a social ladder. "Your father was a farmer, but you can be a banker, if put in the work". When you set a lower bar (like enforcing a safe environment), smart kids will shoot forward. Yes, statistically, a large part of succesful kids will be the ones with better support networks, but you're stil judging results, for which environment is just a factor. When you don't set this lower bar, rich kids who can move away will do it, because no one places their children in danger voluntarily. Now the subset of successful kids from a good background will thrive as always, but succesful kids from bad environments are stuck with a huge handicap and sink. You've made the lader purely, rather than partly, based on wealth. And you get two awful side effects on top: - you're not teaching the bottom kids that violating the safety of others implies rejection. That's a rule enforced everywhere, from any workplace through romantic relationships to even prison, and kids are now unprepared for that. - you've taught the rest of the kids to think of the bottom ones as potential abusers and disruptors. Good luck with the resulting classism and xenophobia when they grow up.
CamperBob2 1y ago
Ridiculous. Progress, by definition, is made by the people in front. No one is saying to "focus solely on those ahead," but as long as resources are finite, some people will need to be left behind to find their own way. Otherwise those who can benefit from access to additional resources will lose out.
- Epa095 1y ago
  Although in a global world, it's not clear that it's best for a country to focus on getting the absolute best, IF if means the average suffers from it. There is value in being the best, but for the economy it's also important to have enough good enough people to utilise the new technology/science(which gets imported from abroad), and they don't need to be the absolute best. As a bit of a caricature example, if cancer is completely cured tomorrow, it's not necessarily the country inventing the cure which will be cancer free first, but the one with the most doctors able to use and administer the cure.
- gjm11 1y ago
  "Progress is made by the people in front" is plausibly true by definition. "Progress is made by the people who were in front 15 years earlier" is not true by definition. (So: you can't safely assume that the people you need for progress are exactly the people who are doing best in school. Maybe some of the people who aren't doing so well there might end up in front later on.) "Progress is made by the people who end up in front without any intervention" is not true by definition. (So: you can't safely assume that you won't make better progress by attending to people who are at risk of falling behind. Perhaps some of those people are brilliant but dyslexic, for a random example.) "Progress is made by the people in front and everyone else is irrelevant to it" is not true by definition. (So: you can't safely assume that you will make most progress by focusing mostly on the people who will end up in front, even if you can identify who those are. Maybe their brilliant work will depend on a whole lot of less glamorous work by less-brilliant people.) I strongly suspect that progress is made mostly by people who don't think in soundbite-length slogans.
dmitrygr 1y ago
Which of the two give us progress? Are you sure you wanna give up all progress for the sake of stability?
- siva7 1y ago
  I'd rather live in a stable society than some tech utopia.
  - dmitrygr 1y ago
    Ok, please surrender your cellphones, internet, steam, tools, writing, etc... all those were given to you by the best of the crop and not the median slop. Go gather tubers in a forest
    - nicman23 1y ago
      the worst part about the average person is that 49% are worse than average
      - dmitrygr 1y ago
        > the worst part about the average person is that 49% are worse than average That is not how that works... It would if you said "median"
        nicman23 1y ago
        math terminology is hard when English is not your native :/
    - selimthegrim 1y ago
      I guess we should tell that guy from Tula who makes watches to go mushroom picking too
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    So, here's a time machine. You can go back to a time and place of lasting, enduring stability. There have been been numerous such periods in recorded history that have lasted for more than a human lifetime, and likely even more prior to that. (Admittedly a bit of a tautology, given that most 'recorded history' is a record of things happening rather than things staying the same.) It will be a one-way trip, of course. What year do you set the dial to?
draw_down 1y ago
[dead]
hyangelo 1y ago
That sounds like a recipe for mediocrity.
Viliam1234 1y ago
If everyone can't get a Nobel prize, no one should! The so-called intelligent kids selfishly try to get ahead and build rockets or cure cancer, but they don't care about the feelings of those who can't build rockets or cure cancer. We need education to teach them that everyone is special in exactly the same way.

StableAlkyne 1y ago

> no one left behind == no one allowed ahead It's like this in the US (or rather, it was 20 years ago. But I suspect it is now worse anyway) Teachers in my county were heavily discouraged from failing anyone, because pass rate became a target instead of a metric. They couldn't even give a 0 for an assignment that was never turned in without multiple meetings with the student and approval from an administrator. The net result was classes always proceeded at the rate of the slowest kid in class. Good for the slow kids (that cared), universally bad for everyone else who didn't want to be bored out of their minds. The divide was super apparent between the normal level and honors level classes. I don't know what the right answer is, but there was an insane amount of effort spent on kids who didn't care, whose parents didn't care, who hadn't cared since elementary school, and always ended up dropping out as soon as they hit 18. No differentiation between them, and the ones who really did give a shit and were just a little slow (usually because of a bad home life). It's hard to avoid leaving someone behind when they've already left themselves behind.

SoftTalker 1y ago
I'm not sure when this changed, but in school for me in the 1970s and early '80s the teachers (at least the older ones) were all pretty much of the attitude that "what you get out of school depends on what you put into it" i.e. learning is mostly up to the student. Grades of "F" or zero for uncompleted or totally unsatisfactory work were not uncommon and students did get held back. Dropout age was 16 and those who really didn't care mostly did that. So at least the last two years of high school were mostly all kids who at least wanted to finish.
h2zizzle 1y ago
I'm gonna add another perspective. I was placed, and excelled, in moderately advanced math courses from 3rd grade on. Mostly 'A's through 11th grade precalc (taken because of the one major hiccup, placing only in the second most rigorous track when I entered high school). I ended that year feeling pretty good, with a superior SAT score bagged, high hopes for National Merit, etc. Then came senior year. AP Calculus was a sh/*tshow, because of a confluence of factors: dealing with parents divorcing, social isolation, dysphoria. I hit a wall, and got my only quarterly D, ever. The, "if you get left behind, that's on you, because we're not holding up the bright kids," mentality was catastrophic for me - and also completely inapplicable, because I WAS one of the bright kids! I needed help, and focus. I retook the course in college and got the highest grade in the class, so I confirmed that I was not the problem; unfortunately, though, the damage had been done. I'd chosen a major in the humnities, and had only taken that course as an elective, to prove to myself that I could manage the subject. You would never know that I'd been on-track for a technical career. So, I don't buy that America/Sweden/et al. are full of hopeless demi-students. I was deemed one, and it wasn't true, but the simple perception was devastating. I think there is a larger, overarching deficit of support for students, probably some combination of home life, class structure, and pedagogical incentives. If "no child left behind" is anathema in these circles, the "full speed ahead" approach is not much better.

JustExAWS 1y ago

I have as much of a fundamental issue with “Saturday school” for children as I do with professionals thinking they should be coding on their days off. When do you get a chance to enjoy your childhood?

NalNezumi 1y ago
As a kid, the "fun" about Saturday school fluctuated. In the beginning it was super fun, after a while it became a chore (and I whined to my mom) but in the end I enjoyed it and it was tremendously valuable. The school had a lot of cultural activities (sport day, new years celebration / setsubun etc) and having a second set of classmates that shared a different side of you was actually fun for me. So it added an extra dimension of enjoyment in my childhood :) Especially since (back then) being an (half) asian nerd kid in a 99.6% White (blonde & blue eyed) school meant a lot of ridicule and minor bullying. The saturday school classes were too small for bullying to not get noticed, and also served as a second community where you could share your stuff without ridicule or confusion :) The experience made me think that it's tremendously valuable for kids to find multiple places (at least one outside school) where they can meet their peers. Doesn't have to be a school, but a hobby community, sport group, music groups, etc. Anything the kid might like, and there's shared interest. It teaches kid that being liked by a random group of people (classmates) is not everything in life, and you increase the chance of finding like-minded people. Which reflect rest of life better anyway (being surrounded by nerds is by far the best perk of being an engineer) I know 2 class mates (out of 7) that hated it there, and since it's not mandatory they left after elementary school. So a parent should ofc check if t he kids enjoy it (and if not, why) and let the kid have a say in it.
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  So you’re telling me the entire point of life is being able to segregate yourself with a bunch of people like you?
  - NalNezumi 1y ago
    That's a very bad-faith take on what I wrote. I'll self-quote: >The experience made me think that it's tremendously valuable for kids to find *multiple places* (at least one outside school) where they can meet their peers. Most people don't neatly fit in to "one" category. Trying to find many places you could meet peers can open up your mind (and also people around you)

torben-friis 1y ago

>I'm glad my east Asian mother put me through Saturday school for natives during my school years in Sweden. I’m curious, could you share your Saturday school‘s system? I’m very interested in knowing what a day of class was like, the general approach, etc.

cutemonster 1y ago
And who were the teachers? Did it cost money, how much? How long ago? I guess the students were motivated and disciplined? Who were the other students? Natives, you mean swedes?
- NalNezumi 1y ago
  Sorry, by natives I meant Japanese Natives; A school for japanese kids (kids of japanese parents). Although I read that in Canada they recently removed that restriction, since there's now 3rd and 4th generation Canadian that teaches Japanese to the kids. The teachers was often Japanese teachers. Usually they did teaching locally (in Sweden) or had other jobs, but most of them with a teaching license (in Japan). My Mother also did teaching there for a short time, and told me that the salary was very very low (like 300$ or something, per month) and people mostly did it for passion or part of the community thing. I did a quick googling and right now the price seems 100$ for entering the school, and around 850$ per year. Not sure about the teachers salary now or what back then. Other students were either: Half-Swedish/Japanese, settled in Sweden. Immigrants with both parent Japanese, settled in Sweden. Expats kids (usually in Sweden for a short time, 1-2 years, for work) both parent Japanese. The former two spoke both language, the latter only spoke Japanese.
  - cutemonster 1y ago
    Ok :-) Thanks for explaining. Sounds like a good school
NalNezumi 1y ago
Sure! as far as I know, it's somewhat standardized and the east asian countries all have it (Korea, China, Japan). I know this because the Chinese Saturday School was close by. It's usually sponsored by the embassy & in the capital cities, or places with many Japanese families. (London, Germany, Canada afaik) Because it's only once a week, it was from 09:00 - 14:00 or similar. The slots was: Language (Japanese), Social Studies (History, Geography, Social systems) and then Math. They usually gave homework, which was a little up to the parent to enforce. Classes was quite small: elementary school the most, but no more than 10. Middle school was always single digit (5 for my class). Depends on place and economy: When the comapnies Ericsson (Sweden) and Sony (Japan) had a joint division Sony-Ericsson, many classes doubled. Class didn't differ so much from the normal school in Asia. Less strict. But the school organized a lot of events such as Undoukai (Sports Day), Theater play, and new years/setsubun festival and other things common in Japanese schools. It served as a place for many asian parents to meet each other too, so it became a bit of a community. Because lack of students the one I went to only had from 1th to 9th grade. In London and bigger cities I heard they have up until high-school. But in Japan, Some colleges have 帰国子女枠 (returnee entrance system) so I know one alumni that went to Tokyo Uni after highschool. Personally, I liked it. I hated having to go one extra day to school, but being able to have classmate to share part of your culture (before internet was wide-spread) by sharing games, books, toys you brought home from holiday in Japan was very valuable. Related to the "critical thinking" part of the original article: It was also interesting to read two history books. Especially modern history. The Swedish (pretending to be neutral) one and the Japanese one (pretending they didn't do anything bad) as an example, for WW2 and aftermath. Being exposed to two rhetoric, both technically not a lie (but by omission), definitely piqued my curiosity as a kid.

Epa095 1y ago

And still (or maybe because?) the resulting adults in Sweeden score above e.g Korea in both numeracy and adaptive problem solving (but slightly less than Japan). The race is not about being best at 16 after all. https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&primaryCountry=SWE&treshold=5&topic=AS https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&prim... https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&primaryCountry=KOR&treshold=5&topic=AS https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&prim...

sunrisetiger 1y ago
Probably attributable to a time lag as the Korean GDP per capita in the 1960's was close to sub-Saharan African levels + military junta rule that stymied liberal education for a good cohort of the population. Countries like Spain also show similarities to Korea and when looking at youth scoring, things tend to be more equal.