To the Editor:

 In his New York Times opinion piece, This is How Scandinavia Got Great, David Brooks makes a deceptive cultural comparison between the educational systems in Scandinavia and the United States, purposefully simplifying the factors involved in order to make a polemical point.

Brooks attributes Scandinavia’s success to a holistic education that impresses upon students a balanced sense of responsibility towards the needs of the individual and of society. He compares this to America’s educational system which he claims focuses on “the transmission of specialized skill sets,” and doesn’t instill a high level of social trust in students. His assertions about “social trust” are far too simple. According to Brooks, Nordic countries enjoy a high level of social trust, but, in the United States, it has been on the decline for decades. Are we to assume that the US system of education is the only thing in today’s society that leads to low social trust? Are we to ignore the powerful influence of continued systematic oppression? 

By creating a false dichotomy, Brooks implies that either one receives a holistic education and contributes to high social trust or one receives a skill-set-focused education which results in low social trust. Implying that a different approach to education is what leads to more empathy and social consciousness is not proving it so. He dishonestly manipulates the evidence to fit his ideological needs. Doing so is not uncharacteristic of Brooks, though it is especially striking to sing praises to holistic education while feigning ignorance to our most pressing contemporary issues.