Unlikely as it sounds, the United States, an economic powerhouse, could learn much from Denmark, a small, independent nation on the north flank of Europe, when it comes to training young people for jobs.
So proficient are the Danes at combining school with work that its minister for education, Bertel Haarder, spent a week in early June explaining the Danish system to American educators and politicians.Here was an emissary from a country with only 5.1 million people - a country that had just shocked its neighbors by voting against a European unification treaty - giving advice to a superpower that hasn't been able to get its act together and properly educate its children.
This unusual turn of events, the little guy tutoring the big guy, is not as strange as it seems. It's a direct result of the American infatuation with college credentials and a corresponding lack of interest in meaningful training and employment for students who would rather go to work while going to school.
The connection between work and school is so flimsy in this country that companies complain incessantly about the inability of job applicants to read, write and do basic math. Few high schools are turning out students with technical skills.
For some inexplicable reason, Americans have higher regard for the pedant, the college graduate with no visible skills, than for the crackerjack machinist or computer technician with a viable trade.
Not so in Denmark.
More than half of all Danish students are enrolled in vocational education and training, usually at age 15 or 16 after nine years of compulsory schooling, starting at age 6 or 7. These are essentially two-to-four-year apprentice programs, with close ties to business and industry. A student spends 60 percent of the time on the job, earning a generous wage, and 40 percent in school.
"You get a real job. You get an education," says Haarder. "And it's not a dead-end street. You can go on to higher education, and become an engineer, for example, if you pass a qualifying exam."
Only about one-third of Danish students attend academic high schools, and only 15 percent go on to college. That may be too small a percentage by American standards, but it eliminates the potential high school dropouts - the students who would rather be working than simply marking time in a classroom every day.
"You have the best universities in the world," says Haarder, "but that doesn't help the two-thirds who are tired of school."
No school system is perfect, and the Danish model is no exception. The unemployment rate in Denmark exceeds 10 percent, a reflection of the recession in Europe. Some students in Denmark fall between the cracks, just as they do in the United States.
But the Danes have something going for them that we don't - a recognition that school is related to work, and learning a trade is an achievement, not a social disgrace.