this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024

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Free lunches, brain breaks and happy teachers: why Estonia has the best schools in Europe (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I just don't understand why not all countries are investing heavily in schools and education. Today's kids are the future tax payers and citizens. It should be one of the most important things to invest in and yet, school buildings are falling apart, text books are either worn and outdated or massively overprized, teachers are overworked, underpaid and disrespected, staff is never enough, digitalization is nothing more than a hopeful wish because there simply is no funding to implement it, buy the hardware or hire IT experts to introduce and maintain it

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The (over)simplified reason: Students have no lobby. They pay no taxes and generally create no public or monetary values while going to school. Investing in them might be a really good idea for the wider future, but a legislature is only so long and noone wants to invest a fortune only to get nothing back. Later when the students grow up, they forget the struggle or even romanticize it. Then it's "today's kids" that just seem lazy and demanding. So the people that used to go to school have no intention of changing the system either. Of course there are exceptions. That's probably the only reason things are changing at all. It's happening, just way too slow.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

And they're not a voting block to be won.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Because educated people are harder for authoritarians to control.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Exactly.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's cheaper to brainwash them by forcing pledge of allegiance every morning.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Many people seem to have a problem with teaching religion at school, but saluting the flag and reciting the pledge of allegiance are apparently perfectly fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

And also somehow have no problem with religion even being shoehorned into that

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I agree completely - same for stuff like free school meals, sure there's some complexity in the implementation - but the idea shouldn't be controversial to provide all children with healthy food and a level playing field.

But it's the same situation in healthcare, law enforcement, etc. too - Europe is just in a steep decline right now.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Europe isn't in a "steep decline" at all. What are you talking about?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68203820

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2022&locations=US-EU&start=1990&view=chart

We were already a lot poorer than the US, and now the gap is really opening up. At this rate China will overtake Europe by 2040 or so.

It's really the combination of the energy crisis (we are dependent on Russian gas or US LNG - we don't have enough nuclear), demographics crisis (the public pensions are unsustainable, and yet it continues to be forced upon workers having their income stolen by governments who almost certainly won't provide a pension for them in the future), and just a general lack of investment in the future infrastructure and technology (it's been over a decade, and we're still not ready for full electric vehicle switchover, nor is international high-speed rail competitive with airlines, etc.).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Your first article just shows the EU growing at 1% and the US growing above 2%. That's not plunging at all. By definition, 1% growth is increasing. This indicates to me that you either exaggerate pessimistically or believe article headlines. It's the same thing.

Your GDP chart is a bad comparison for two reasons:

You didn't use PPP to compare them. With PPP numbers they are closer. Unless you are looking at government budgets for buying jet fighters or something, you have to use PPP to compare economic strength accurately.
You should compare median personal or household income instead of GDP. GDP is influenced by large earners like billionaires, which the US has a lot of. Median income measurements are not. Which country Bill Gates calls home doesn't affect your personal economic situation.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Your first article just shows the EU growing at 1% and the US growing above 2%

This means that the gap between our economies is growing. And a lot of countries are in recession (or bouncing in and out) - like Sweden, Germany and the UK.

Median wealth and income are arguably worse:

Income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#Table

Wealth inequality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality#List

Sweden is far worse than the US for example - with much higher wealth inequality and much lower median purchasing power.

I don't think you can find a single area where the EU is performing better economically.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You didn't post anything about PPP median income. As I said earlier, you are being extremely pessimistic without any data.

I looked it up for you: the US is fifth in the world in median income. Switzerland, Norway, and Luxembourg all have higher median income than the US. That makes sense intuitively too, as those countries all have extremely high quality of life on many measures.

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/10-richest-countries-by-median-income-1248583/6/

Here's another source with older data, but it's easier to rank countries. The rest of Europe is very close to the US.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago

A 33% difference isn't exactly "very close".

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks. Really interesting article! I wish school in germany was more like this.

I especially like that they value music, Art, Sport and this hobby subject more. Its so true that -while the knowledge itself is not needed in many Jobs- you do learn a lot of softskills. I never understood why we cut these subjects More and More. And i was not even a big fan of Art and Sport at the tine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

It depends, I wish the students would have more freedom of choice.

Like I hated doing Sports class but liked when we had the gym - but we couldn't choose that, it was just assigned each term.

Likewise for choosing subjects, as soon as I could I studied only science and mathematics. I really liked Music before too, but being forced to do Art and English poetry (in England) was horrible, I'm terrible at Art and never cared for poetry - or for the assigned literature compared to what I would just read myself.

Stuff like that just makes people hate school and not want to take part.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Huh, who would have guessed. Try to make people enjoy what they do and the job less stressful and productivity increases.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Must've changed a lot in the decade I've been out of school. I remember teachers in particular being stressed and underpaid. As a student I also had bigger workloads and similarly long days compared to being a working professional in the software industry - the only saving grace being that I had excellent grades without doing homework and written homework that was to be graded, I'd usually do in recess, as I don't think I'd've survived finishing my homework at 6 PM when my school day started at 8 AM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Truly, I've never worked so hard as when I were still in school

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Except there are no free lunches, literally.

Parents still have to pay for part of the lunch.