A few days ago another article about education from The Atlantic made it to the front page [0] and the subtitle was: "The Scandinavian country is an education s

A few days ago another article about education from The Atlantic made it to the front page [0] and the subtitle was: "The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence." . I tend to agree with the other article rather than with this one: I tend to think that we often underestimate the power of positive peer interaction. A student that is momentarily better at math can tutor one of his classmates, while later during the day the roles could be inverted for biology or grammar. What is really happening is that equality has become a race to the bottom, where as the article says: the overall quality of education has plummeted and the only acceptable form of testing is by multiple choice. A little anecdote: my girlfriend has studied in France, she's been to a generalist high school (as opposed to professional) and it was generally well known that if you didn't want to be in a class where the lower class, troubled kids were, you had to choose German as a second foreign language, because the trouble kids largely went for Spanish. This goes to say that even a fairly egalitarian system will be gamed, and that the dynamics involved often involve wealth and social status (let's call it class) rather than raw brainpower. And even raw brainpower is largely a function of social standing. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399143