Jobs
Lowering the standard workday to 6 or 7 hours(do not apply to workplaces with labour shortage, like for example qualified doctors in hospitals) and of course lowering salary with an equivalent amount would lead to more jobs which would lead to better national economy. Less work time also means you can spend more time with family and friends which should generally improve mental health.
The current law protecting employees is outdated and hinder the younger generations from finding jobs even though they may be more qualified.
But lowering the hours people work will result in lower wages.
It will. But a lot of the luxury people have today people don't need.
Sexuality and Religion
Everyone should have the right to believe whatever they want without being discriminated against, however if your belief make you do things to hurt others then you should be ready to take the consequences, for example prison.
Nobody should be discriminated against because of their sexuality. However all sexual acts have to be between consenting partners with a full mental understanding of what they are doing. A child cannot understand the concept of sex and an animal cannot give consent.
Completely agree
Laws and Punishment
Today our laws are not hard enough. We need stricter laws, especially for crimes that directly violates a human being i.e. rape, battering, etc. Crimes directed at children should have harder punishments than crimes against adults. Criminals are not healthy mentally, they should of course be punished, but more studies and more resources should be made on how to treat them so that they may leave prison in a better mental state. Community service is something that would be beneficial to the society for those who commit lesser crimes, i.e. speeding, shoplifting.
Again, completely agree.
Children under the age of 15 who has committed a crime should not get away with it without punishment, however the punishments need to be different and not as harsh. For example having to attend behavioural classes and classes in ethics. The parents to a child under the age of 15 who commits a crime should be fined.
Sometimes, the parents have no idea about what the child is doing (it sounds stupid I know, but trust me, it's sometimes the case). First time offenders should get counselling and stuff, but repeat offenders who show blatant disregard for the law should be treated harsher.
I agree. However the case of children committing crimes is often a response to the parents not involving themselves enough in the children's life.
Schools/ Education
Schools are something that very badly needs to be remodelled. The most important thing schools need are more personnel. 30 people per class is unacceptable, and more focus need to be laid on those who have trouble in school, with for example the learning process, bullying, ditching school, etc. Grades are a good measurement on how well a student is doing, however starting with grades too early is neither effective nor healthy. Sixth- Seventh grade is a good time to start with grades, then the children may understand the significance of them.
Grades aren't the be-all and end-all of a child's education. If a child in 7th Grade receives a poor report (i.e. mostly fails), then they will get the idea that they are a total failure. This may serve to motivate the child, but I think it's more likely that it will do the opposite, and the child will stop caring.
That being said, I know that in the "real world" people are graded every day. It's just a question of how you introduce the concept of grading to 12-13 year olds.
When I went to school we got grades in 8th grade, now they want to start grading children from second grade
-9 years old). And grading is not constructive without motivation and telling the student how to improve themselves.There should be no private schools. Private schools add to segregation and take funds from private schools.
Did you mean to say private schools take funds from public schools?
yes.
There's also a lot of debate about this in Australia. However, people fail to realise that about 40% of the student body goes to private schools, and private schools get about 25-30% of the Federal Government's allocated funding for schools. A lot of the funding for private schools comes directly from the parents - and not all the parents of kids at private schools are lawyers who drive a BMW, have a Porsche in the garage and a holiday house up the coast where they spend every second weekend.
Here the percentage is much less, and virtually no money comes from the parents.
Also, in Australia anyway, if all the private schools shut down and the public schools got all of the education funding from the Federal Government, there is no way the public schools will be able to handle the demand.
I'm not sure what the case is in Sweden, but this is how it is in Australia. And yes, I did go to a private school. And no, my parents aren't insanely rich either.
Private schools are also much too often used to spread ideology and messages a school has no reason spreading. A school is an institution for learning, teaching children what to believe is up to the parents. Religion, however is an important subject to teach to make the children understand other cultures.
What kind of ideology are you talking about here?
I was thinking about religion mostly, forcing children to believe in a God of the choice of the school. Since that is mostly the cases here reported by media in Sweden.
School start need to be more individually adapted to each child, one child might be ready for school at age 7, one at 8, or at 6. Sexual education is an important subject to limit the spreading of diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
Well, in Australia anyway, some children can skip certain years and some can be held back and repeat, say, Grade 2.
Skipping a grade here seems to be almost impossible, and very few students are held back.
Sex education is taught from Year 6 or 7 onwards.
That's the case here too and I think that is good.
Schools also need classes on tolerance and learning about and accepting people of all colours, religion and sexual preferences.
That could easily cross the line to teaching about certain ideologies the school has no right teaching.
Tolerance is not the same thing as accepting. You may believe it is a sin to be black, but you shouldn't scream after them at the street or throw things at them or not hire them because of it.
There is too much "fluff" in schools these days. Teachers need to be stricter and have more tools to punish children(Not physically or mentally), but for example sending them home if they are a disturbance, or to detention, or make them help with cleaning the school or school yard.
I agree there, the teachers really have no power to discipline the wayward students these days.
The Right to Vote/ Legal Age/ Driving Age
The human brain takes a long time to fully develop, an 18 year old is not always fully capable of making an informed decision alone. Therefore the legal age, driving age and voting age should all be raised to age 20. There are of course individuals who develop faster, however the majority do not.
What do you mean by legal age here. Is it the age of consent, or the legal drinking age?
Drinking age, driving age, and voting age I was thinking about mostly. Age of consent I can't really say much about. If two consenting people near the same age have sex I'm fine with it, it's hard to say A 16 year old can't have sex with a 15 year old because the law says the age of consent is 16 or equivalent for other ages. The law here has to be flexible which it is here in Sweden already, one reason I didn't mention it. I think age of consent here is 15 but I am not sure.
Oh, and Australians can start driving once they turn 16. The way it works is:
1. You can get your learner's permit on your 16th birthday. You then have to do 120 hours supervised driving with someone who has their full license. You are not allowed to drink and drive (the legal drinking age is 18, but some people don't get their Learner's Permit until they are over 18 anyway). You have to have a learner's permit for 6 months or until you turn 17 (whichever comes last).
2. You then sit a driving test for your Provisional (P1) license. This means you can drive by yourself, but can never drive faster than 90km/h. You are not allowed to drink and drive. After 11pm, you can only have 1 passenger in the car. You have to have your P1 license for at leastg 1 year.
3. The next license is a Provisional (P2) license. You can drive by yourself, you can travel up to 100km/h and there are no passenger restrictions (apart from all passengers have to have a seatbelt). You are not allowed to drink and drive. You have to have this license for at least 2 years.
4. The final license is a full license. You can have a Blood-Alcohol concentration of 0.05. You can travel at the speed limit (even if it's over 100km/h). You can supervise learner drivers.
Here you can get a learning permit at 16, you can then only drive with someone who has had a license for at least 5 years. And if you are not going to a driving school. You and the person who is teaching you must take a course. I'm not sure exactly for how long an hour a day for 2 weeks or something, they didn't have this when I was that age.
Then you have to have one lesson where you practically drive on ice, or you use a machine thingy to make things slippery, I don't remember what it's called in English. Then you have to do a written exam about traffic rules etc. After that a driving test. Then you have your license.
However your license have a test period of 2 years, if you get a ticket or anything you lose the license.
In the above examples, when I said you can't drink and drive, I mean your blood alcohol concentration has to be 0.00
Here you can drive if you have under 0.0002% alcohol(if I've translated promille to percentage correctly, you can look up promille in wikipedia) in your body. But that is no matter how long you've had a license.
Information Technology
Today access to the Internet should be a right, all should be able to at least have a computer that can view web pages and Internet access. 10-15 years ago the most important news sources where TV and newspapers today it is the Internet. Therefore social security needs to cover this.
In Australia, the current government is considering introducing mandatory internet censorship. As expected, this idea isn't being well received by the majority.
Here we are still going on about how to stop copyrighted material, censorship would be very hard, we had somewhat of an "international crises" when someone wrote something about Israel and the government couldn't officially condemn it. Because it broke no laws in Sweden and for the government to condemn it would be breaking our copyright laws, which is one of our oldest and hardest to change laws.
All in all, a very interesting post and a lot of good points were made.
Formerly known as Jojjo.
Some changes Sweden really need.
- 28/09/2009 01:38:41 PM
600 Views
Wow, so much to disagree with, I think my brain over-loaded
- 28/09/2009 01:54:16 PM
404 Views
So... brains aren't fully developed until 20, but 16 year olds should be tried as adults?
- 28/09/2009 07:30:49 PM
385 Views
No, as juveniles?
- 28/09/2009 08:42:42 PM
345 Views
Sweden's driving age is 18?
- 28/09/2009 09:27:16 PM
362 Views
Re: Sweden's driving age is 18?
- 29/09/2009 10:30:50 AM
364 Views
Interesting
- 29/09/2009 02:08:42 AM
345 Views
Re: Interesting
- 29/09/2009 07:04:27 AM
479 Views
Re: Interesting
- 29/09/2009 10:49:35 AM
354 Views
I doubt it
- 29/09/2009 12:46:45 PM
387 Views
Re: Interesting
- 29/09/2009 11:43:49 AM
444 Views