Socialist Countries are the Happiest in the World

[Deleted]

But there are no high performance students on basic level (sure, they are those who perform better than others, but this can easily change with time, after all, we are talking about kids). The students from private school will tend to present higher performance than the students from public schools due to the difference of the quality between them.

Yes there are high performance students on basic level. That is the point, that private schools aren't vastly outperforming all public schools, because the reasons behind performance that is steered outside of the classroom can be the same.

You can't say that a 10 y/o kid is a higher performance student because he is rich. He will become a high perfomance student because he was exposed to the best schools, due to his income level. So, exposing more and more kids to the environment can only be healthy to a country.

Coming from a rich background does have a large influence on how well you will perform. But you are right that said performance is being expanded because that rich background leads to better schooling.
Now I agree that exposing more kids to that better schooling would be healthy to a country, I couldn't agree further. But the notion that private companies would be able to achieve this, something that public schools currently can't, would either indicate that everyone should be paying far more for their children's schooling through private schools, or you'd need to take those funds from somewhere else (which would make it public schooling in some sense).

I guess that in Denmark kids need to do some tests to enter private schools ?

I am asking this because i am suspecting, duo to your arguments, that the private schooling sytem in Denmark is much different that the way it works in Brazil. Here, private schools don't accept only those high grade kids, thet accept everyone as long as they can pay. The private schools that selects its students here is pretty much the exception.

There are some schools that do tests (the one I went to had one of the most strict ones). The problem I have with it, isn't that schools would turn away students for being poor performers, the problem I have is relying on for profit schools performing better, while maintaining a satisfying profit, while maintaining accessibility (in a monetary way).

[Deleted]

How about neither socialist nor communist but definitely shit?

I mean when the "socialist" government arrests union people to keep them from commenting on the life for the worker perhaps they should start taking a good hard look at wtf they are doing.

#NotRealSocialismOrCommunismWhenItFailsAgain

[May90]

Yep !! That's exactly what i think !!

I does not mean to abolish public school from a day to another, but focus on what works, insteand of wasting resource on what is subpar.

Instead of creating more public schools, why not giving financial incentives for poor kids to go to private schools instead ?

In unequal countries like USA and mine, where blacks are usually poor and thus, have no choice other than public schools, and white kids can go to private schools, sounds almost like an apartheid a subpar system for the blacks and a better system for the whites.

There are 2 ways to solve this - One is make all the education public. In this system we would set the bar really low, lower even than the quality of public schools today (actually even worse because this would demand a much bigger investiment from the government). But everyone would hae similar opportunities. Socialism yay !!

The other would be the one i am advocating here, where the focus would be slowly trying to make private schools avaliable for poor people trought state funding. Just like happens with the Higher education in USA (which happens to be the best of the world). So i think its fair to say we would increase the quality of the education, and allow for a reduction on inequality (slowly making whites and blacks studying together, without setting the quality level low, as the first way would do).

There is only one small issue with this: it is that it is really hard to perform quality control of private institutions. Since private institutions do not have to report as much information to the government as public institutions, it is possible that the government will end up funding kids' education in private schools similar to Trump University, where people don't really learn anything, and the governmental funding is wasted.

One way to address it is to simply leave the private schools to themselves, hoping that the competition will lead to an effect similar to quality control. I don't think it's been tried anywhere in the modern times, but it is something to explore.

Another is to subject the private schools to an enforced quality control by the government. It has an effect of the schools becoming less effective, because they have to focus on satisfying some arbitrary governmental standards, rather than focus on teaching kids what they really need in life and not just to pass a test.

I think the best solution is to combine the two approaches: encourage competition between private schools, while setting some basic bar as to what the kids graduating from the schools should know and be able to do. This way, no kids will get an inadequate education, and many will get a high quality one. If I am correct, this is how the system worked in 1800s.

[Smauldy]

These are not socialist countries.

They are countries that invest a lot in their own infrastructure and taking care of their own citizens. They also have capitalism, but a more regulated form of capitalism that doesn't destroy people that can't afford basic medical care like America does. American capitalism puts profits over people and generally encourages as much greed as possible no matter how much damage it does or who it hurts. There's a reason America leads the 1st world countries in poverty, and it's called the Republican party.

[Ragedaug]

If you mean the countries in the Warsaw Pact (old Soviet Union), that wasn't socialism. It was totalitarian Communism.

Communism as a practiced form of government isn't a real thing. No country that uses that label is actually a communism. The Soviet Union and China, for example, are both Republics (like the U.S. #NotADemocracy)

The Soviet Union was a Socialist Republic, while China has more in common with the U.S. as a Democratic Republic, more in line with what the U.S. did originally where in most states, people voted for who the elector would be instead of voting for a candidate, then the elector would choose their candidate on their own accord. In China, the people would elect those in the lowest office (local), and those in the lower offices would elect those in the higher offices, until you have the NPC electing their President. Of course, they pretty much have one political party - the Communist Party, which largely defeats the whole democratic process.

What I'll agree with you on is that their laws are totalitarian. As far as Socialist vs Communist, I can see both being applied. The Government technical owns and/or runs everything - you may say "but the people own everything" but I counter with the Ruling Class / Communist Party controls full power, not the people. Then they try to treat people outside the ruling class equally.

But like Cuba for example, you can hardly claim they are a communist when their leader's net worth was near a billion dollars.

From Forbes:
"Cuba’s revolution leader wasn’t as modest as he led on. A decade ago, Forbes estimated Fidel Castro’s personal net worth at $900 million. That's a lot of socialist rationing for one person."

That pretty much goes directly against what Communism stands for.

[artemishunter1]

Never will I understand why Americans are so against socialism. According to these numbers people in socialist countries are happier, have similar GDP per capita, and have a higher standard of living than U.S. citizens.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/...tries-in-2016/

http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top...-life-map.html

http://statisticstimes.com/economy/c...gdp-capita.php

homogenized cultures are genuinely the happiest. mixed culture is always unhappy, since it usually one group carrying the others.

[Ragedaug]

There's a reason America leads the 1st world countries in poverty, and it's called the Republican party.

When you make a completely wrong, easily proven BS statement, people will assume your conclusion is just as wrong. Same reason the U.S. media keeps pushing people into Trump's open arms. Instead of getting outraged at the bad things he does, they literally get outraged over every single detail, including the not-bad, not-true, or just inconsequential things.

Granted it's a false equivalency, but people will see that the media is going nuts over something that's either not a big deal, or something that's blatantly not true and the understandable conclusion that the viewer draws is, "well all that they just gave as their proof against Trump was a bunch of BS, so I guess that means Trump's not so bad".

And naturally you'll misread what I'm saying and suggest that I'm saying that Trump doesn't do anything bad, but I'm not saying that at all. Trump was a horrible pick for president and he does a LOT of stuff that is bad. And that stuff should be pointed out. It just shouldn't be inflated and they should leave the stuff that isn't a big deal or stuff that just isn't true out of it.

Anyway, back to your point, there are lots of 1st world countries with higher poverty rates than the U.S. and that's even with some of those other countries using BS standards compared to how the U.S. determines poverty level.

[May90]

The best system would be to get the best educators in any field to create online lectures on all topics and use an allocated time at school to work through problem sets and help any flaws in understanding. With the accessibility of the internet and the ability to learn at your own pace makes it so easy where kids who excel can and not be held back.

Whilst study engineering and then Medicine, all the top students would never even attend lectures but rather use other online sources and just use practicals or tutors for the problem materials.

Failing this there is still a need for conventional schooling for those that need it. Only know about American schooling from people I've spoken to in person. Milton Friedman came up with a profound idea for improving education. Rather than paying public schools to educate the students in their districts, the government should provide parents with vouchers to allow them to choose what school each child would attend. (Not sure if the district rules still apply.)

I'd assume like in most countries, public school teachers which excel end up teaching in the rich public schools and the young inexperienced ones end up in the harder schools.

This is something I've been dreaming about for a long time. I think in this time and age it is important to teach people from the very childhood how to rely on themselves in life. Setting up an advanced online system with high-quality lectures and tests, plus possibly optional classes to help those who cannot figure out the material on their own, would both release a lot of resources currently spent on supporting mandatory public schooling, and produce much better results, as kids now learn one of the most important skills in life: how to educate themselves.

Sadly, I think this is too innovative and won't be easily accepted by the society. Graduate and, to a smaller extent, undergraduate schools slowly move to online-based education, but with elementary-to-high schools it is harder, because the parents are very defensive of the older systems.

I think this is where the future is, regardless. And I like the idea of the vouchers, although I think there will still be difficulties related to families being somewhat limited to the district they live in.

[Ragedaug]

This is something I've been dreaming about for a long time. I think in this time and age it is important to teach people from the very childhood how to rely on themselves in life. Setting up an advanced online system with high-quality lectures and tests, plus possibly optional classes to help those who cannot figure out the material on their own, would both release a lot of resources currently spent on supporting mandatory public schooling, and produce much better results, as kids now learn one of the most important skills in life: how to educate themselves.

Sadly, I think this is too innovative and won't be easily accepted by the society. Graduate and, to a smaller extent, undergraduate schools slowly move to online-based education, but with elementary-to-high schools it is harder, because the parents are very defensive of the older systems.

I think this is where the future is, regardless. And I like the idea of the vouchers, although I think there will still be difficulties related to families being somewhat limited to the district they live in.

Once upon a time I agreed with what May90 said. I should print and frame this. (sorry couldn't help myself)

Regarding what you said, I think the younger ages are more difficult because of how many homes are either single parent or have both parents working. School is half viewed as day-care up to age 18, which is probably a self perpetuating problem.

[Chetnik]

The problem with socialists is that they're communists. Our good friends the Polish figured out exactly what to do with that:

[Aggrophobic]

First of all they are not socialists. Second, they are mostly small countries, canada in top 10 is the only one with over than 15mil people.
It's much easier to rule small countries and make people happy than it is with big ones like US, or even semi big ones like france, UK, italy, germany.

Third: much easier to make people happy when you have someone (US) pay for your own defense while you can use your money for your people. Countries like sweden, happy socialists, for 30 years had a secret pact with the US for their defense, in public they were neutral and anti military, yet to cover their asses from a possible russian attack they asked help secretly to the US.

On what do you base this?

[Macaquerie]

As someone actually involved with online teaching, I must point out that the way it works in practice is far from the pipe dream you guys describe. The thing is, simply reading books and watching video lectures doesn't really have much to do with the actual learning process. Sometimes the material just makes sense on an intuitive level and it's easily absorbed, but if not, then you really need to have that face to face time with an instructor to work out all of the kinks and reach that "a-ha" moment where everything clicks, and no matter what anyone says talking over Skype simply isn't the same. Also, since you don't have much direct contact with classmates either, you aren't able to collaborate well with them and you also miss out on that all-important competitive component. While I am sure online teaching methods will be refined over the years, I can't ever seeing it taking the place of classroom instruction.

[Dezerte]

"Socialist" as in generally having more Socialistic policies in their governance, sure. But nobody is truly a Socialist country (nor Capitalist) - politics is much more complicated.

[May90]

Once upon a time I agreed with what May90 said. I should print and frame this. (sorry couldn't help myself)

Regarding what you said, I think the younger ages are more difficult because of how many homes are either single parent or have both parents working. School is half viewed as day-care up to age 18, which is probably a self perpetuating problem.

This is a valid point, and in such cases some kind of instructorship is probably mandatory. Ultimately, however, online/home schooling should become the dominant education method at some point, especially a few decades later, when semi-AIs will be able to tailor the teaching program for every student individually, with their strengths, weaknesses and goals in mind.

As someone actually involved with online teaching, I must point out that the way it works in practice is far from the pipe dream you guys describe. The thing is, simply reading books and watching video lectures doesn't really have much to do with the actual learning process. Sometimes the material just makes sense on an intuitive level and it's easily absorbed, but if not, then you really need to have that face to face time with an instructor to work out all of the kinks and reach that "a-ha" moment where everything clicks, and no matter what anyone says talking over Skype simply isn't the same. Also, since you don't have much direct contact with classmates either, you aren't able to collaborate well with them and you also miss out on that all-important competitive component. While I am sure online teaching methods will be refined over the years, I can't ever seeing it taking the place of classroom instruction.

I've also had quite a bit of experience in online teaching, both on the giving and the receiving end. I think it really depends on how the material is delivered. A very well crafted online material can teach one better than most teachers/professors, if it manages to capture the essence of the subject and deliver it in a way that makes students understand it intuitively.

While it is true that, in case of online teaching, the feedback is somewhat limited, I think this issue is compensated for by the advantages of the online format. A student does not have to learn in isolation, an instructor can be assigned to every student, who can answer questions and provide feedback on what he/she thinks the student should focus on. A course may include a large number of external links, for those who don't find the explanation satisfactory.

Students should learn to rely on themselves. In real life, there won't be an instructor guiding them through every problem. They should learn how to handle the problems by themselves, without relying on external help. Not learning the material as well is a small price to pay, if in the end the student learns how to work independently - which is one of the most important skills to have in life.

I agree that collaboration with others becomes problematic in this format, but, I think, it can also be solved by using the modern online technologies. Forums, school social networks, scheduled meetings - students should learn how to form collaborations themselves, how to start mutual projects at their own initiative, rather than being assigned a pre-made group.

[Krille]

Didn't Sweeden have a strong mercenary economy, so much of your armed forces were privately funded? I should mention this is historical, no idea how national defence works these days.

It's a social democracy, about as close as you can get to socialism.

You what. First time i hear this, and i'm swedish. I can't even... Are you talking about Sweden anno 1600s? Then yes. But modern Sweden have in the past used a regular military. But it's been thinned out up until recently, the mandatory service was removed 10+ years ago and now reinstated.

[Macaquerie]

It wouldn't be all online, it would be supplemented by "workshops/tutors". The student could work through at their own pace and seek help when needed. You would then have the school / workshops open for a certain time during the day. Students who are having trouble with concepts would go to these workshops and work through the problems and get needed help on problem sets or materials they didn't understand.

I've tutored many kids in chemistry, maths and physics and taught them topics in two one hour lessons. In contrast some students had been learning the same topic at school for 4 weeks and still couldn't fully understand the content or were taught incorrectly. Having a good tutor/teacher is beneficial when they know what they're doing. I also had some students use khan academy and other online resources and their grades improved by 10-30% and no longer needed my help. The problem was the material and the explanations the teachers gave them.

What you're describing seems to be quite a drastic departure from the sort of "learning cloud" that was being described earlier. Of course when you have personalized tutoring for each student it's much easier to see results, but the ideal of online teaching is all based on the idea of having thousands of students from all over in the same course learning the same material, which is the exact opposite of what you're talking about.

[Masark]

Yeah I am talking about historically, I think the practice ended in like the 1860s. But as a whole Sweden is a lot more into private arms ownership than having a standing army from what i understand.

(technically the Pope's guard are Swedish mercenaries still)

You're confusing Sweden with Switzerland.

[Deleted]

Yeah I am talking about historically, I think the practice ended in like the 1860s. But as a whole Sweden is a lot more into private arms ownership than having a standing army from what i understand.

(technically the Pope's guard are Swedish mercenaries still)

???

Unless you're a collector, hunter or compete in shooting sports it's very hard to obtain guns in sweden. You can't even carry pepper spray legally.

[Puupi]

Yeah I am talking about historically, I think the practice ended in like the 1860s. But as a whole Sweden is a lot more into private arms ownership than having a standing army from what i understand.

(technically the Pope's guard are Swedish mercenaries still)

They are Swiss, not Swedish.

[Krille]

You're confusing Sweden with Switzerland.

Feels like a bad meme at this point lol. I didn't think people ACTUALLY confused Sweden with Switzerland.