Every couple of years I feel like I suddenly start reading articles about education in Finland in American newspapers. This makes me think there's some kind of Finland education policy junket that I want to be getting in on. On the merits, Finland seems to have approximately nothing to teach American educators except that education outcomes would be different if every aspect of American society were completely different from how they are in the real world.
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Finnish Education
03 Mar 2008 02:13 pm
Comments (17)
I think you are really missing the boat on this one. The Finnish approach is predicated on a common sense that would be applicable here if we we weren't so obsessed with the constantly dispproven theories of the Harvard Business School. While US educational reform is based on accountability or rather fear of punishment, Finland gets high student performance by engaging students around things that interest them. Instead of forcing kids to do their work they develop work kids want to do. Not rocket science but diametrically opposed to our system that values compliance more than thinking.
I agree. Can't we just go back to discussing how inadequate our education system is compared to Japan, Singapore, Germany (well, at least the Gymnasium), Taiwan, and South Korea?
The Finnish experience clearly demonstrates that America's children need to spend more time hanging out in saunas while eating fermented herring.
I would also like to add that, from my own experience, putting the honors kids in the same class as the "remedial" kids is always a recipe for disaster. My own unscientific and anecdotal evidence showed that the remedial kids' abilities never raised, but the honors kids' abilities dropped (because they were not being challenged, and did not want to get picked on by the remedial kids).
Also, why don't we do a study on South Korea, Hong Kong, or Taiwan who had scores that were comparable to Finland by doing the exact opposite of what Finland does?
The Finnish experience demonstrates that a homogeneously Northern European population of students will outperform a diverse population dragged down by under-performing groups such as blacks and Latinos.
Of course, Minnesota always comes out near the top of the NAEP school test results in America, too.
Actually, we can learn a lot about school success from Finland -- specifically, Finland's severe restrictions on immigration. Unlike the other Nordic countries, Finland's population is only about 2% immigrant. A highly talented and homogeneous population is the key to Finland's enormous success over the last century in moving from dirt poor lumberjacks to cell-phone kings.
Steve wrote:
> Actually, we can learn a lot about school
> success from Finland -- specifically, Finland's
> severe restrictions on immigration. Unlike the
> other Nordic countries, Finland's population is
> only about 2% immigrant.
Hmmm...as a Finn, I do not find your claims very persuasive. The Swedes have been equally successful and their population is ~12% immigrant! And it's not exactly a new development either; immmigration levels from Southern Europe and the other Nordic countries have been high since the 1960s.
MARCU$
MARCU$,
You sure Sweden's been successful with that? Because, well, it doesn't look like things are going so smoothly.
If anybody is interested in learning more about Finland, which was one of the more heartwarming success stories of the 20th Century:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070319_diversity.htm
Well, this at least serves to show what a crock of shit early childhood education is.
I guess I don't really understand what you mean. Finland's great triumphs in education are the result of paying their teachers more, and recruiting their teachers from amongst the top college graduates. I don't really see why the U.S. couldn't replicate that strategy. There's nothing about American society that says this is not possible. In fact, before women started to gain wider career opportunities, a lot of the best female minds went into teaching. My father was the great beneficiary of this. He went to high school in rural South Dakota, but his teacher was a phi beta kappa grad from the University of Nebraska, and he was provided with an education the equal of most prep school students (at least that's what his professors at Stanford thought).
Mr. Sailer,
Your article in praise of Finland is disturbing. You praise the courage of the Finnish soldiers in the Russo-Finnish war without mentioning the fact that they were allied with the _Nazis._
I would suspect that a good part of what makes Scandinavian countries relatively successful is not race but culture. The Finns, Swedes and Norwegians traditionally lived in harsh, cold environments where it was necessary to pull together in order to survive. This led them to develop a culture of mutual trust, sharing, and cooperation which has served as a good foundation for the welfare state.
Re Hector's comment: In the first Russo-Finnish War (1939-40), it was the Russians, who attacked Finland, who were allied with the Nazis, that being the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. After a courageous resistance, the Finns finally accepted an armistice that cost them 10% of their territory. When Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, the Finns foolishly, if understandably, tried to get the lost territory back. Interestingly, the US and Finland never declared war on each other, though each was at war with the other's allies. In 1944 Finland agreed to another armistice, ceding back the territory lost in 1940. By that time, northern Finland -- the only part where German forces were -- had been devasted by the retreating Wehrmacht. In short, to say that Finland was "allied" with Germany is as big an oversimplification as to say that educational methods that work in Finland would clearly be the salvation of education in the very different conditions of the US.
Re Hector's comment: In the first Russo-Finnish War (1939-40), it was the Russians, who attacked Finland, who were allied with the Nazis, that being the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. After a courageous resistance, the Finns finally accepted an armistice that cost them 10% of their territory. When Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, the Finns foolishly, if understandably, tried to get the lost territory back. Interestingly, the US and Finland never declared war on each other, though each was at war with the other's allies. In 1944 Finland agreed to another armistice, ceding back the territory lost in 1940. By that time, northern Finland -- the only part where German forces were -- had been devasted by the retreating Wehrmacht. In short, to say that Finland was "allied" with Germany is as big an oversimplification as to say that educational methods that work in Finland would clearly be the salvation of education in the very different conditions of the US.
Switzerland is more diverse, with a large foreign population and a better comparison point.
You don't want to be a 12 year old in Switzerland, tho. That's when admission tests for its tiered middle school educational system hit.
Comments closed March 17, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I agree. Nothing to see here, move along. Too bad.
Posted by cmholm | March 3, 2008 10:21 PM