After observing the Swedish school system, Mr. Nordgren concludes that the educational priorities of the U.S. are misplaced and will fail to teach students the skills they will need as members of the global work force. WHILE ATTENDING a school board meeting in Sweden, I sat in on a seminar given by a local principal to a roomful of parents and teachers. She told us that whatever we remember about our schooling days is no longer important, explaining that we were schooled in the Industrial Age, which was much different from today's world. addition, she said that we had no idea of what is important in education today if our only frame of reference was our own schooling. Schools in her community, including her own school, she contended, are geared to enable children to succeed in the Global Village. Once this was said, the audience remained silent -- amazingly silent. As a former middle and high school administrator, I could not imagine telling a community resource team of parents and teachers that their own schooling experience was of no use in designing their children's education. American parents, especially the ones who frequent schools for these types of meetings, often believe that they are educational experts because they endured 13 years of schooling. Many teachers, unfortunately, despite years of curricular and instructional reform efforts, still revert to the way they were taught five, 10, or even 30 years ago. But the Swedish principal was correct. Our children do need to be educated for globalization: an economic, political, and cultural force that dominates the developed and developing worlds.1 Bureaucratic Schools and School Systems Large American school districts are essentially Taylorist bureaucracies that depend on autocratic leadership and adherence to rules and regulations set by politicians and administrators at the state and local levels. Schools have essentially the same structure, with their own policies dictated by the administration. addition, teachers dictate policies within their classrooms that require students to also adopt obedient sheep-like behaviors in order to be successful.2 The vast majority of business organizations today are not bureaucratic but rely instead on work teams, shared decision making, and a great deal of risk-taking in an effort to compete in the global market.3 The Swedes understand this, and their national curricula for both noncompulsory and compulsory education show that understanding.4 While the student standards for most U.S. states specifically list what a student must know on page after page, the Swedes ask their students to be what research suggests is important for living in a democracy: collaborative and responsible.5 These Swedish curricula resemble cultural value statements rather than what we Americans would consider curricula. Learning Early What Is Truly Important On a recent trip to Sweden, my hosts were an assistant principal and his wife, who is a middle school teacher. I asked her about the academic progress of their 7-year-old son, who was in his first year of compulsory education (noncompulsory education goes from age 16 through age 19, though 98% of those in that age group do attend school).6 Her answer was, Fine, I guess. She paused for a few seconds then went on, If there were any problems, his teacher would let us know. I was very confused and actually a bit stunned. Here she was a teacher with a husband who was an administrator, and she didn't know how her son was doing in school? She read my shocked and perplexed expression and said, In Sweden, we spend the first few years concerned about how well children get along, how well they work together. After some time, she said, You know, I guess it doesn't matter whether or not a child can read and write if he's going to end up in prison. How right she was. …