Soundings, September/October 2002

If you subsidize a product, service, or activity, you are likely to get more of it. On that principle, Enlightened despots once subsidized their great artists and musicians, and even America's Founding Fathers thought it might be permissible to subsidize education. What would rulers of the Enlightenment era, whether despots or democrats, think of a nation that subsidized malingerers?

According to a recent story in the New York Times (September 24, 2002), Swedes can take an unlimited number of "sick days" and receive 80 percent of their salary, either from their employer or (after two weeks) from the government. No doctor's excuse is needed until the eighth day, and, the story reports, such excuses are easily obtained with just a phone call. The result is that 10 percent of the country's work force is on sick leave at any given time.

Reporter Warren Hoge cited a business consultant, Mats Lindgren, as believing that Sweden's rising absenteeism reflects larger changes in Swedish society: "'Work as a measure of life has a much lower priority than it used to, so if work is no longer what gives you your energy, it's easier to take a day off,' he said. 'It's about feeling good rather than doing good.'"

But this lack of esteem for one's productiveness is apparently correlated with a pervasive altruism in Swedish society. Thus, the Times story reported that one study showed "62 percent of the employees interviewed said they had taken sick leave when they were not really sick and that they felt there was nothing wrong in doing so." And why should they feel guilty: If society owes one sustenance, why should one have to be sick in order to claim that debt?

Apparently, this feeling is shared by employers. The reporter asked Barbro Sjolander, whose 800-employee firm has a 10 percent sick-leave rate, whether she ever felt angry with the malingerers. "No," she replied, "we don't think that way in Sweden."

The following report on Urban League president Hugh Price must hearten anyone who read the New York Times's Pulitzer Prize-winning series "How Race Is Lived in America" (in June and July, 2000) and remembers its chilling depiction of an anti-intellectual, even anti-civilized, subculture among young blacks:

"Perhaps the most important thing black America can do, Price believes, is to reawaken the earnest desire for learning. Too many adults— he cites examples—make negative assumptions regarding the academic potential of black children. Too many black youngsters assume that academic excellence isn't a black thing. And too many black parents sit helplessly by as their children succumb to negative peer pressure.

"The counter, he said, is an 'achievement culture.'

"'I mean, if the pastors would get up in the pulpit and say 'we're going to make sure that every child in this church reads; we ain't having no nonreaders in this congregation,' you've got enough retirees who can read, and probably some retired schoolteachers, and so forth, so you could organize a real effort and then honor the children who excel academically.'" William Raspberry, Washington Post, September 23, 2002.

"Since 1975, the law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act has promised a 'free appropriate public education' to all children with disabilities. Since that time, local public schools have been required to accept all disabled students and provide them with an educational plan in compliance with various federal procedural requirements. In return, the act provides for some discretionary federal funding to assist school districts to establish programs and procedures to meet the special needs of students with disabilities." Marie Gryphon and David Salisbury, "Escaping IDEA: Freeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice," Cato Policy Analysis No. 444, July 10, 2002.

The results were predictable. Requiring "an educational plan in compliance with various federal procedural requirements" has created what Gryphon and Salisbury call "a legal and regulatory quagmire for special education that wastes resources, increases costs, and creates contention between parents and school officials."

Moreover, since the act provides "some discretionary federal funding to assist school districts," the number of students found to be disabled has naturally increased to meet the funding available. As the accompanying chart indicates, the number of students with disabilities for which objective criteria exist has remained relatively constant or even fallen. But the number of students in the ad hoc category "specific learning disabilities" has increased by 250 percent. As Assistant U.S. Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services Robert Pasternack has testified, many children are so classified simply because of the lack of effective reading instruction in the regular classroom.