The same is true in Australia: parents choose "not-bad" schools to minimize the chance of their kids being knifed or beaten up by other kids. But it's not due to immigration, instead just to "white trash" for lack of a better word raising violent, substance-abusing children.

The same is true in the UK. One of the highest rates of bullying in Europe (the other big one is Finland). Somehow, one of the highest rates of sexual violence against girls in schools too (this is globally, so including developing countries).

Obviously, this problem is multi-faceted, the best solution is everyone just going to a nice school. But part of the problem in the UK was that comprehensive education is very ideological, and the belief was: comp schools are so bad because all the good students go to grammar schools. This did not turn out to be accurate.

But London (which is currently in the midst of a knife-crime epidemic) was one of the worst places, and got significantly better due to more investment, and more exclusions/discipline. For example, some schools will get teachers to walk at-risk students directly to their homes from schools. And ofc, the exclusions have caused outcry (funnily enough, there is a split on this between unions, who hate it, and teachers, who quite like it). Incidentally, Glasgow also used to have a serious knife crime problem, and they got over this with enhanced stop-and-search...unf, this is politically impossible in London. There are solutions to all these problems though.

I grew up in the UK, and knew lots of smart kids now working deadend jobs who got chewed up and spit out by schools (almost always the issue was bullying, and schools not removing people who were behaving, in a non-school context, criminally). It is a seriously bad situation imo.

As an Australian you must know that when the middle class are sneering at the working or non-working class the term is bogan.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bogan

Yeah, but while "bogan" connotates unsophistication, bad fashion sense and the like, bogans are usually portrayed as somewhat likeable and not actively criminal.

We do the same here in the states. Some folks pay for private schools so their kids don't have to be exposed to perceived riff raff, while others choose to live in more expensive neighborhoods where the only benefit is often that there is less riff raff in the public schools.

Would that explain why my bachelor students were so unbelievable inept at emotionally dealing with and resolving conflicts when I taught at university there?

Haha I don't know where you're from but Swedish people are often stereotypically bad at both dealing with emotions and resolving conflicts. "Van der" = Gonna guess you are Dutch? Well Swedish people are, as you know well yourself, the opposite of the Dutch in how to handle things.

Source: My partner is Dutch.

You guessed right! Yeah, I know the stereotypes but the thing is that I already had studied a master in Sweden for two years myself, and thought I had gotten used to communicate "like a Swede", but I still was surprised how much more fragile the bachelor students were than anticipated

Haha, could you elaborate on that? That sounds like a fun read.

disclaimer: I'm Dutch.

Dutch and Finnish are known for being frank and to the point which is why they are quite well regarded in Sweden. Swedish is more conflict averse, always trying to protect each other and often failing because what happens is that people read in between the lines instead, which is much worse.

disclaimer: I’m Swedish.

How could you learn that from teaching a course? Did you create conflict among student and note how everything became chaos? Or do you just mean that a few complained about grades?

If the course is interactive and not just a lecture where students listen silently then you can easily observe what is going on. In college we have something called "seminars" where the teacher or teacher assistant work on problems and projects with small groups of students, that is highly interactive.

Neither. It was a design bachelor with group projects. You get to see a lot of interpersonal dynamics, and you also have a lot of direct interactions with your students.

I assumed you taught some technical class since this was HN, but if you didn't then I understand since those programs aren't well regarded in Sweden. If it isn't business, medical, law or STEM then it is almost surely ill regarded. I'm not talking badly about those fields in general, just that Sweden doesn't have any good programs for the so the students you get there are really poor.

It was an Interaction Design bachelor, and I taught programming. Maybe you should stop assuming so much.

Also, my goodness, blaming the students for systemic issues in society much?

I can agree to some extent, but wait until the middle class kids don’t perform well enough to make it into the middle class... Problem is: in a fair system that will happen, and many of those parents will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.