The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

by Michael Booth

But cold statistics don’t always cast Denmark in such a glowing light. In general terms, the United Nations Human Development Index—which assesses how developed a nation is based on such things as life expectancy, literacy, and gross national income per capita—places Denmark in sixteenth place, below countries like Ireland and South Korea and all the other Nordic countries save for Finland. More specifically, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the most widely accepted international ranking list for school standards, takes a particularly dim view of Denmark’s education system. Its most recent report, in 2009, placed Denmark in the bottom third of the top thirty countries in most of the key categories, below even Britain in the sciences, which is really saying something (in contrast to Finland, which is invariably at, or near, the top). “Who cares?” said Ove Kaj Pedersen when I put Denmark’s poor PISA performance to him. “PISA is measuring something that doesn’t really count in the Danish situation. If you take our social skills, the way of collaborating, empathy, the ability to work in teams, Denmark comes in number one.” Pedersen—who I think it’s fair to say might have a bit of an agenda, having been chairman of the board of education in Denmark for many years—pointed out that in modern Denmark, with its profusion of small or medium companies with their flat hierarchies, these social skills were far more important than high scores in “the three Rs.”