Second, they contested the claim that Swedish schools had become worse over the last few decades. International and national surveys calling attention to the decline in knowledge, they argued, had to be weighed against surveys that showed the opposite, which in their not quite crystal-clear logic would mean that (Minister for Education) Jan Björklund’s views on school issues were built on sand. In particular, they made it a point in the debate that Björklund himself had not trained as a teacher so he did not know what he was talking about.

This way of thinking seems strikingly familiar from a number of other d...