Legislating Education: Finding the Right Model…But Not in Sweden!

Abstract

Law-making is always a difficult task: it involves forcing general models of behavior, which are normally supposed to be valid over time and space, upon a vast population of individuals and articulated organizations of human beings. This undertaking means that the activity of legislating implies forcing a general solution upon specific and often extremely differentiated individual situations; in the best-case scenario, this solution might be valid for a majority of individu als, but could definitely be troublesome for an extensive minority of the targeted population. If one looks in particular to the legislation on education, this “flaw” be comes even more tangible due to the delicate and specific nature of the field that the legislation is expected to regulate. First, formal education is the central component for modern society: at least in its advanced capitalistic form, the ap plicable motto is still “knowledge is power.” Second, despite its crucial role in society, legislating education is also difficult because the positions tend to diverge enormously in terms of how education and other fundamental components of contemporary society should be structured. By looking at the Swedish legislative example (and its failure), this paper illustrates the necessity of choosing the right model of legislative policy. The right model, as it will be argued in this paper, is one that moves the legisla tive law-making process closer to the direct target of the education, namely the students (and, to some extent, the teachers). More specifically, this reduction of distance between regulators and recipient should be done by opening the way for direct and increased involvement of the school administration in the creation of regulatory processes.