Overview
- This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
- Utilizes official statistics and policy papers
- Examines education trends from the 1960s onward
- Examines the challenges and issues caused by a move to a privatized education system in Sweden
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This open access book examines the challenges and issues caused by a move to a marketized education system in Sweden. Observing the introduction of the school voucher system and a postmodern social constructivist view of knowledge, the move away from objective knowledge is identified as the core reason for Sweden’s current education crisis. The impact of declining education standards on the labor market is also discussed.
This book highlights the issues seen in Sweden and suggests policies that can improve education in the rest of the Western world as well. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in education and labor economics.
Reviews
- E.D. Hirsch, Theorist of education and professor emeritus of education and humanities, University of Virginia, author of Why Knowledge Matters
"A bold, brilliant, and controversial book, blaming the decline of Swedish school on the “post-truth” social constructivism guiding Swedish school policy since the 1940´s in combination with an extreme marketization of Swedish education."- Leif Lewin, Professor of political science, Uppsala University, and in charge of the government commission investigating the transfer of school governance to the municipalities
"This is the book that explains why students entering top university programs in Sweden are increasingly ignorant of fundamental facts of science, unable to construct correct sentences, and helpless in face of basic mathematical problems."
- Markus Heilig, Professor of neuropsychiatry, Linköping University, author of The Thirteenth Step: Addiction in the Age of Brain Science
“Henrekson and Wennström’s masterful documentation of the decline of Swedish education provides an important lesson: What ails Western education will not be solved by simply introducing market competition through charter schools or vouchers. The crux of the problem runs much deeper. It lies in foolish ideas about the nature of knowledge and truth.”
—David C. Rose, Professor of economics, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and
author of The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior and Why Culture
Matters Most
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Johan Wennström received his Ph.D. in Political Science in 2019 and works as a Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Dumbing Down
Book Subtitle: The Crisis of Quality and Equity in a Once-Great School System—and How to Reverse the Trend
Authors: Magnus Henrekson, Johan Wennström
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93429-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-93428-6Published: 21 February 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-93431-6Published: 21 February 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-93429-3Published: 20 February 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 212
Number of Illustrations: 11 b/w illustrations
Topics: Education Economics, Labor Economics, Political Economy/Economic Systems