School reform and the pursuit of liberty

 In the past days I have been teaching a class in the teachers programe on the subject of different educational systems. During one of the seminars some students were rather critical towards the principle of free choice of schools and tax-funded privately-run schools, which led me to actually talk to them about the principles behind freedom of choice in the swedish educational system. Having a background in the Swedish left party, this was a rather intresting task since I on the private level is strongly against private initiatives in schools but here had to explain and defend the idea. 

In Sweden there does not exist a school were students pays tution (there are a few hybrids of private school where you pay for lodging that in the works similar to a tution, but those can be counted on the fingers of one hand). Yet we have highly criticized system where people can create private schools that are founded by public means and also take out some of that founding in revenue. Closely linked to this there also exist a principle of freedom of choice, where parents can choose which schools they place their children in, instead of having their children placed at the closest school. This have led to a system where some of the the privately runed schools are underfinanced due to their share-holders taking out to large revenues and that some schools have become very segregrated since many (predominantly white) parents do not place their kids there. 

This situation can hardly be said to be acceptable, but still politicians have for the past decade done little about the problem which has it's roots in the late 1980's and early 1990's. During this period Swedish society like the rest of the world underwent a neo-liberalization of society where new public management are one example. This is an explanation that is commonly used by both academics and the left, but their criticism do however look past one of the aims of these reforms: which originally was to increase civic liberty in Sweden. 

If we look back at Sweden in the late 1960's and onwards throughout the seventies we can see a society which to a large degree differs from that of today. During this time Sweden had a very strong state, but also a very large administration and bureacry. One of the consequences of this was that the individual was very far removed from the places in which decisions about their life's were made and thus every-day democracy was rather week. By de-centralizing several parts of the state, including the state run education system, the ambition was to increase civic participation and the freedom of choice for the individual. This was important not only for democratic reasons, but also to give the individual the chance the claim their rights of they were subjected to abuse from those in power. 

From todays point of view, very little of these ambitions have actually been fulfilled. When private schools were allowed, they were seen as a tool to increase civic liberty and the freedom of choice, and not to create profit for already rich individuals that had the possibility to set up a school. And this is a perspective that in my view perhaps is lost in this debate. The main mistake was perhaps not to de-centralize the school system, but instead the states failure to follow up on what evolved instead. A key part of the discussion should instead be if we actually made society better and increased the freedom of choice, or if we simply created new problems. 

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