Page:CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090021-3.pdf/43

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090021-3

society. Secondary school and university students have thus been drawn largely from the better educated, upper income groups, whose financial independence was prerequisite to keeping the young people out of the labor force for several more years and whose congenial home cultural surroundings were often necessary in getting them through the gymnasium. A survey of university and university level technical students in 1949-50 showed that about 58% came from the highest social groups, which then comprised 6% of the population; 36% from families of farmers, businessmen, and minor officials comprising 37% of the population; and 6% from working class families, which made up 57% of the population.

It became increasingly apparent toward the end of the decade of the forties that the evolutionary process in the school system was insufficiently rapid to meet all the needs of a burgeoning modern industrial state and that the mounting demand for highly trained physicians, engineers, scientists, and technicians could be met only by making advanced schooling accessible to qualified children in the lower socioeconomic groups. In 1950 the Riksdag inaugurated a wide-range program of educational reform designed to equalize and extend the opportunity for schooling throughout Sweden. By 1964 the elementary and intermediate school systems were reorganized, and a further reform of secondary schools was begun. In instituting these reforms, Swedish educators looked partly to experience in the United States, where some of the boldest experiments in mass education had already been undertaken. Despite the rapidly expanding enrollments in upper secondary and higher education, however, representation of lower income groups has not broadened appreciably. In 1969/70 some 63% of university level students were from upper and upper middle class family background; 16% from the lower middle class; and only 8% from the working class, which still comprised well over half the total population.

This seeming lag in democratization so far as the working class is concerned must be balanced against the geometric expansion of full-time university enrollment from 17,000 in 1950 to roughly 38,000 in 1960 to 104,000 in 1969. Even allowing for the increase in the size of the university age group from about 450,000 in 1955 to about 600,000 in 1965, the increase in enrollment is more than geometric for the decade of the fifties and forms a nearly precise geometric progression for the sixties. The proportion of 19- to 24-year-olds enrolled in all forms of higher education (i.e., including technical institutes and military academies) increased from 2% in 1945 to 20% in the early 1970's. Thus, the balance sheet on increased accessibility to higher education seems impressive.

One of only a half dozen nations worldwide where the proportion of young people completing upper secondary school is also expanding geometrically, Sweden is accomplishing this rapid evolution with relatively fewer strains than any nation except neighboring Norway. The following tabulation lists the six nations having the highest percentage of young people completing upper secondary school, plus Spain, where the relatively small proportion is increasing rapidly:

The relatively peaceful manner in which rapid educational change is being implemented in Sweden stems in part from the national habit of establishing committees, scrupulously representative of all interested parties to a dispute, so as to resolve the disagreement and plan for the future. Such committees have been at work on the school system ever since the rapid democratization and modernization of secondary and higher education was undertaken in earnest a quarter of a century ago. Students were already represented on these committees in the early 1950's, well before student unrest elsewhere in Europe, notably in France (May 1968), brought such practice into vogue. Notwithstanding a considerable broadening of Swedish student representation and influence since 1968, there are signs that student unrest, formerly focused more on international issues, is coming to concern itself with university reform and even more participation in decision making. In late 1972, however, this agitation—even though conspicuous in the normally disciplined society—seemed manageable when compared with disruptions in West Germany and France.

Chief among the other factors contributing to the relatively peaceful evolution of secondary and higher education is the marked progress that has characterized it—the rapid transformation from an elite to a relatively mass system, enabling nearly one-third of the appropriate age group in 1973 to complete upper

35

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090021-3