[Muzza]

The school system in Sweden is many things (despicable, horrendous, etc etc), but free market it is not. These private schools don't operate on a free market - the government supplies the "customers" (students) under penalty of prison* for the students' parents, for crying out loud.

* Or possibly even worse: a student who doesn't go to school is liable to end up in the clutches of the meddling welfare board.

[olifante]

I very much doubt that the Swedish school system can be seriously described as despicable or horrendous, even if it has fallen from its former glory. Would you care to elaborate?

[Muzza]

All mandatory school systems are despicable and horrendous. The first major issue is the coercion involved: they control a child's life for 9 years (or even 12 years in some countries). It's absurd. This alone should be reason enough to dissolve the entire public school system (and possibly put various Ministers of Eduction to trial).

The second major issue is that they are a tool the state uses to indoctrinate children (naive by nature) with whatever the correct values of the day are. Prussia (where public schooling originated) needed obedient soldiers, modern-day Sweden needs a large underclass of socialists willing to support various hare-brained political schemes. The schools reflect this. What happens, for instance, if you call homosexuality "not normal"[1] in a Swedish school? It gets you an F in biology and a label as a "homophobe" in the state-run media[2]. One wonders what happened to students who questioned communism in the Soviet Union.

See "Deschooling society" by Ivan Illich, "Underground history of the American school system" by John Taylor Gatto.

[1] Which is surely true, statistically speaking.

[2] http://www.svt.se/nyheter/regionalt/abc/homofobi-gav-underka...

[hjalle]

I think I didn't really get this comment. Care to explain further?

[Muzza]

I'll try, but I don't see how I can make it any simpler.

These "free market" schools receive payments from the government for each student they have.

The government mandates that everyone attend school between the ages of 7 and 16 (or 6 and 15).

This is not a free market. You cannot have the government create customers like this in a free market.

[Retric]

That's a BS semantic argument. First off you can be 'home schooled'. Far more importantly the question is does privatizing the school system improve average student performance OR lower costs and the answer is no.

[treerock]

It's not bullshit. The government are effectively outsourcing education to private companies. That's always going to result in rent-seeking on the part of the private companies. And it's not the same as free market/full privatisation, where the parents would pay the schools.

(Not that I think private schooling would be better or cheaper than publicly funded schooling.)

[Muzza]

What on earth do you mean? Someone (the article) claimed the system was free market. I showed otherwise. It's about as far from semantic BS arguments as you can come.

I was not debating the efficiency of the private schools visavi public schools. Introducing strawmen is stupid.

Also: home schooling has been illegal in Sweden since 2010.

[Retric]

People still home-school in Sweden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_sta...

More to the point, while it's mandated that people buy car insurance few people argue that that's not a 'free market' because regulation is not the same thing as a state monopoly. After-all people also need food.

[Muzza]

"Status: Virtually illegal"

Yeah, you got me (insert rolleyes).

Car insurance also doesn't operate on a free market, for the reason you cite. I don't care that "few people" would argue it (appeal to authority; you like fallacies don't you?). You seem to think that something is either a state monopoly or a free market, but it is not so.