A year ago – 2021 United States Capitol attack

It was a year ago that the congress was attacked. Today many blame the former president Trump and he might have been able to stop the violence sooner if he had not watched the attack shocked over that the country was so divided that his advice to peaceful protest the procedures inside the congress was interpreted as an order to attack the congress itself.

But while I condemn all kind of violence I worry about the result of the 1980’s politics which widen the gap between rich and poor, the people with opportunities and those without.

As as we see in Denmark, France and many other countries across Europe there are not equal opportunities for all. In Denmark people can get student grants but if we look at the numbers, children from the working class grow up becoming the poor workers who has to compete against labor from Asia, Africa and the eastern part of Europe. The system has even during the last few years protected the rich by introducing minimum grades before the children can attend gymnasium and university. It is not the money which guarantee access to the university, it is also knowledge how to study, teach stamina to the children and a question of housing. The university in Copenhagen is only for people living in Copenhagen. The housing costs make it impossible for people from the countryside to access the housing market. That is the reason Roskilde University Center was placed near the capital. The same goes for Aarhus and Aalborg. Odense seem to work actively to make sure that cheap housing is within reach but it a rare phenomenon.

Poor people in Copenhagen are seen as some the rich just want to go away. The “Harbor of Peace” was cleared because rich people moved in on the area which housed a former navy station. In “Sydhavnen” new rich people who have moved to the area are tired of seeing working class people drinking in public. Some are not even shaved and they smell as one of the new rich people told. Where should the go? To the southern islands Lolland and Falster where the entire society has fallen into despair and asphalt roads are converted to dirt roads to save money?

I think the lesson learning from the United States is to include and accept that some people cannot live to their full potential because they were born at the wrong place by the wrong family. It is not their fault that they only can afford public school and some of the elite boarding school called “efterskole” is setting a family some 10,000 Euros per student for a single school year, which means that it is out of reach for most people taking into account that most Danes pay more than 50 percent of their income in taxes.

In order to protect the poor part of our population where many are caught up in the job-training system where unemployed people are forced to work as “job-training” for their unemployment benefit often serving in their old job but now without the status as a real employee, Denmark need to look at imported and illegal labor. Gone is the protection by the so-called RUT database. Danish firms cannot look up if their competitor use cheap foreign labor and then they lose orders and jobs resulting in even more unemployment.

The Danish government also need to stop the plans to import more cheap labor from Asia and Africa. Our prime minister Mette Jacobsen spoke about increasing import of labor. A slap in the face of the poor, sick and unemployed. 100,000 Danes are able to take a job tomorrow but many employees have stopped accepting old academical titles as Merconom and Techonom which were the highest academical achievement you could get outside the university cities. Today the employers want people with bachelor titles to do clerk work and they do not care whether this bachelor titles is earned in Denmark or achieved through bribes as it is common in India or Africa.

We are building up against the very same disaster which is the real reason behind the 2021 United States Capitol attack: A population so divided that no ordinary citizen believe politicians! I hope that the parliament in Denmark never will experience the same level of violence as we saw at the capital and the solution is at hand as the parliaments all over Europe seem to accept that the future should hold the possibility to legally end one persons life.

Actually many of the protesters in front of the congress had experienced such a failure from the side their government that they should have been given this option long ago. Jobs gone to China, Mexico and other places which should have remained inside the United States. Even the Biden administration accepted this unfairness and continued the new trade agreement made during the Trump administration. Goods for the United States consumer should be made inside the United States just as goods made for our market should be produced in Denmark,

Right now there is no hope for the large part of the general population. We can only hope that the governments allow ordinary people another exit than storming a parliament so they do not have to suffer anymore in this life.

Sources:

• 2021 United States Capitol attack (Wikipedia)
• Registrering af udenlandske tjenesteydere (RUT)
• Assisted suicide (Wikipedia)

Foreign students own Denmark 94 million dollars in student loans

Denmark is now actively going after students from other countries who have borrowed money in Denmark while they were studying here. The total amount is now 623 million DKK which is roughly 94 million dollars.

For a number of years, this amount has increased. Before 2013 the amount was less than 100 million DKK but the open borders inside the European Union as well as students who posed as refugees were able to take out student loans based on some rules set by the European Union.

The damages caused by this outstanding amount have caused the government ordering the universities to cut down on their activities so they are not so attractive for students outside Denmark. Many young Danes saw their dreams crushed. The number of young Danes who sought the universities this summer dropped because not only were the activities lower. Also the general student grant has been lowered for some year and the payback rules have been thoughened which could result in bankruptcy and social demise, if jobs were not at hand when the students graduated.

An entire generation of Danes has been punished because foreigners took the money without paying them back. No place on earth now offer a worse future for young people trying to find a line of business they can pursue.

As told above, the government will try to get the money back but it is costly enterprise as other countries are not obligated to help Denmark.

There is a hope but it is reather bleak.

Sources: (Some in Danish)

• Staten bruger nyt våben: Kører retssager for at kradse udlændinges SU-gæld ind (Danmarks Radio – in Danish)
• University courses discontinued due to SU cuts reducing foreign student numbers (The Copenhagen Post)
• Business News in Brief: Are the days of the student grant numbered? (The Copenhagen Post)
• Færre søger Kvote 2 – men nye uddannelser er stadig populære (Sjællandske Nyheder – in Danish)

You do not have to go for your full potential

Recently there has been a scandal where a number of parents have been charged with over-coaching and bribing of school officials even using private firms specializing in bending the educational system over its boundaries.

There have always been educational consultants and their work has always been controversial. A lot of them gets kickbacks from wilderness program, residential treatment programs and prison-like boarding schools. The educational consultants the parents involved in this scandal used, took another approach. They faked papers, so the children looked like super-athletes. They got forehand notice of tests, so they could target the coaching, so the children passed exams easily.

The worst part is that the children properly could have lived good lives. Being a youtuber and influencer has little to do with which school you attend while you are building your business. The local university or even a daytime job at a burger-joint enjoying a McJob career going nowhere does not matter, if it is what makes you happy.
I say to my children “I do not care what you want to do in your adult life if you do not become a drug dealer or parking attendant.”

Still I find myself paying DKK 20,000 to a super-expert in a math. Program called Maple and in couching my child into the area of geometry and trigonometry. Am I then not preaching double standard?

No. Because it was not my decision to enter the school. It was the choice of my child. It was the recommendation from the teachers in the elementary school that my child could excel even he had 12 to 14 math. Teachers during his first 9 years of schooling because the Danish parliament decided to destroy the free public schooling in Denmark and motivate rich parents to pay for private school. In just one year, 70 percent of the teachers quit because being a teacher could no longer support a normal life. The teachers simply retired if they had the option or moved to other lines of business. My child suffered as result of the governments decision. There are areas where the teaching simply did not stick.

But once again. My child decided to attend the school – not me. My child was ready to do the work it took. But the skills lacked and while I make it certain that quitting school will not be a disappointment to me, I also bought a few hours of private teaching just to see if it would work having private lessons once per week. It did! We are back on the right track. It might not be the best high school exam, my child will earn, but it is a goal achieved and even if my child after passing high school will not attend further schooling and start a McJob career flipping burgers until retirement, I will not be disappointed.

I have another child looking into which university to attend. Whether my child will go down that path or not, is not for me to decide. I will accept whatever decision. I am a Dane born in the 1960’s. I have learned that hard work doesn’t necessary pay.

• The government will cut early retirement regardless of how hard you work.
• The government will punish you by removing your civil rights if you choose to work abroad so you never can return to Denmark.
• The government will destroy your children’s schooling despite how much taxes your hard work brings to their table.
• The government will force you to pay for the cure of your children’s if it a mental (and in Denmark shameful) illness despite how hard you work paying 50 percent or more of your income in taxes.

So, my children shall not see hard work as a thing, they should be proud of. They shall work hard if they like it, not because they should expect some kind of bonus or thanks for it.

In the end it is what they want, not what I want.

That is why I see parents as plain out stupid if they force their children into wilderness programs, special boarding schools, treatment centers etc. just because they as parents feel that their children do not aim to fulfill their full potential.

That is why I see parents as plain out stupid if they bribe people to let their children attend universities when all the child wants is to party at a local school instead.

None will put up a monument once you are gone for pushing your children to do more that they want. All you achieve instead is to push them away from you.

Remember that. You only get one chance as a parent to do it right.

Sources:

• 2019 college admissions bribery scandal (Wikipedia)
• One in 10 teachers at Danish public schools does not have teacher education (The Copenhagen Post)
• Experience: I paid to have my daughter kidnapped (The Guardian)

Denmark – a country failing the next generation

For some time the Danish government has asked the education sector to increase efficiency cutting 2 percent of their costs every year.

As result fewer Danes can afford education because lowering the number of students because all schools and universities has to make cuts means that the grades go up and more young Danes do not make the cut.

Then they have to aim to become social and health care assistant (SOSO assistant or SOSU hjælper) which in Denmark are considered the trashcan education you can get if you have failed other aspects in life. In the old days people doing this line of job could work in from the streets and do it without education but then they introduced the education so they could lower cost because part of the education is done as trainees to a lower pay saving the public sector a lot of money.

For reasons unknown is a requirement to allow foreign students from other countries inside Europe access to cheap student loans but it is illegal to force them to pay the loan back very unlike young Danish students who no longer loan money because the repayment period has been shortened so much so they are unable to pay it back in time putting them into risk of piling up huge lawyers bills and court attendances.

More than 16,500,000 Euros cannot be reclaimed from foreign students forcing the government to make general cuts in the entire student grant/loan education.

The second problem is housing. Denmark has taken in huge amounts of immigrants. Now students have to be housed in remote deserted retirement homes where they have little chance of using public transport to school.

In one example we got recently, the authorities in Egedal near Copenhagen has demanded that a straight-A student who even are especially selected to participate in the nationwide Academy for Talented youth (only 5 students per school are granted that) should move from a location near the town of Holbaek to a former retirement home called Porsebakken. It requires the use of 2 buses and 1 train trip or more than 2 hours of transport each way go to school not to mention that student job and the academy will be impossible.

One talent wasted I am sure but this case is far from alone. All over the country students experience this. Especially if they have been ward of the state if illness or death has hit their parents. Mostly you see them as homeless people within 5 years of reaching adulthood alternatively they end up in prison.

Denmark is losing the next generation. They will be less educated compared to their parents. Will Denmark be able to attrach investors when this happen? It is an area of great concern.

Sources:

Danish government to cut billions from education (The Copenhagen Post)

Universities, business surprised by Danish research cuts (Uni-avisen)

Government cuts will have hard impact on CBS (Copenhagen Business School)

New Danish research: Students who do not drink alcohol at all are more likely to drop out

The Danish Evaluation Institute makes tons of research to ensure that Denmark remains in the front in the modern world when it comes to our education system. One of the issue which worries everyone who is in charge of a school or an entire department of education is the drop-out rate.

Now recent research shows that students have a 2 percent higher risk of dropping out if they refrain from drinking alcohol. Actually just as if they were drinking too much. Then they also have a 2 percent higher risk of dropping out.

It seems that the reason is not whether it is healthy to not drink at all or drink too much. The problem seems to be centered around the ability of socializing.

If you choose not to drink at all, you choose to isolate yourself because socializing in Denmark is very much centered about enjoying a glass of wine or beer. When young Danes socialize on daily basis, it is not about binge-drinking. Binge-drinking exists but every normal person knows that a new day awaits tomorrow. That is why most gatherings only consist of drinking what equals two or three glasses of beer.

The question whether to encourage drinking among your teenage children is not easy to answer. None is asking parents to create a strategy where they push the children in order to to find their limits. However it is clear that a total ban on alcohol is just as damaging for the childrens chances in the education system as them becoming alcoholics.

Bans do not work and it is clear that the lowering number of young Danes who become exchange students is actually a positive thing. Exposing young Danes to cultures where drinking is not allowed will only harm their chances in our education system if the become cultural infect to a level where they feel that they cannot be a part of the student community.

Source (In Danish):
Drik ud eller drop ud: Studerende, der ikke drikker alkohol, dropper oftere ud (Politiken)