SCHOOL CHOICE AND SOLIDARITY

Brits are used to political discussions about the merits (or not) of public (i.e. privately financed and run) schools. Danes are not.

The key concept in Danish "folkeskoler" (state schools) is faelleskab, which means community. Amongst other things, this is reflected in the fact that children stay in the same class, with the same class teacher, from the ages of 7 to about 13. The idea is to build up strong social bonds in these years.

Not everybody goes to a folkeskole. There are also "friskoler", which are not free in monetary terms, but fee-paying (though heavily subsidised by the state) private schools. Many of these have recently sprung up in rural areas, as parents react to the closure of small state schools following the sharp reduction in the number of local authorities a couple of years ago. This is a reinforced version of faelleskab, at the village level. But friskoler have also been set up in big cities. There it is more a feeling that state schools provide a lower quality education, in delapidated buildings, and with "too many" immigrant children, who don't speak Danish properly.

The latest row concerns Mette Frederiksen, the young, telegenic rising star of the opposition Social Democrats. Five years ago she sharply criticised parents for taking their children out of state schools and putting them into a private school; they had a personal responsibility to back the communal provision of education. Now she has herself done just that, putting her own child into a private school in the Copenhagen suburbs. Cries of hypocrisy have rained down upon her.

I have never thought that politicians should be pure as the driven snow when it comes to education. After all, it is the politician's beliefs, yet the education of the child; as a parent, the politican has a duty to do their best for the latter, whatever they may think of the system. Moreover, in this particular case there are at least three people involved in the decision; Ms Frederiksen, her daughter and the child's father. It is quite possible that she was outvoted.

Nevertheless, the resulting row is significant. The concept of faelleskab is the glue that has bound Danish society together for a century or more, and not just in schools. But it is breaking down; Ms. Frederiksen's change of heart is merely the latest example. Talented and successful Danes no longer stay at home and pay (very) high taxes, but move to London (Janus Friis) or Monaco (Caroline Wozniacki). And the popularity of "efterskoler", 1-year boarding schools that children choose at the age of 15 or 16, shows a desire for change. My wife, who teaches at one, says that many young people arrive wishing to throw off the communal labels they have acquired over long years and to reinvent themselves as something else. Individualism is all the rage.

As I said in my blog last week about Freakonomics, resolution of the current economic crisis will put strains on countries' societies. It is pertinent that - at least in Denmark - at just the moment society needs more solidarity, it appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

Walter Blotscher