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Except you read all the comments in that article and the people from Finland all say they do have homework. While not as linkbaity perhaps it should be retitled, "Finland has an excellent education system."
I also doubt that the average US 5th grader has 50 minutes of homework every day.
This might also explain the mystery of why Finland scores so much higher than Sweden and Norway. There are much higher levels of third world immigration in the latter countries. The school system is not the only difference.
[1] http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is...
http://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/2012-in-rev...
http://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/most-popula...
I am not sure what to make of this: 1. Sure high school graduation rates are higher in Finland than in the U.S., can you actually compare those across the board? Is what a high schooler studies in Finland the same as what they study in the U.S.? Maybe there are other societal issues why people drop out in the U.S. compared to Finland which I understand has a homogenous largely white population. 2. So there is no home…
3. My mother has a master degree in math, she is a high school teacher. Her understanding of maths due to her degree sets her apart from the normal teachers with a educational math degree, or any other degree which was not math orientated. You can see in her yearly results she is a good math teacher. I understand this does not hold true for all people. But something that you missed in the infographic is that teachers is held in high regard, something that is lacking in my country of origin and I believe a lot of other countries.
4. I can not answer your question. But yes its proven over and over again smaller classes gives better results.
Something that happened at my High school was your were sorted into classes by your marks and that really helped the kids to compete in the higher mark classes, but it also demoralised the kids in the lower mark classes. I know my mothers high school tries to follow the same kind of strategy but for technical reasons its not that possible and thus not so obvious.
Interesting about the Master's Degree. In the U.S. teacher education seems unrelated to performance, including Master's Degrees. Which isn't how it should be. It makes me wonder if one of our great flaws here is in how we teach teachers.
When you adjust American PISA scores for demographics, you see that Americans of all ethnic backgrounds do better than the countries of their ancestors[1]. The mystery of why American schools are so bad disappears when you control for demographics. This might also explain the mystery of why Finland scores so much higher than Sweden and Norway. There are much higher levels of third world immigration in the latter coun…
According to the article, 7% of Finnish children don't graduate high school, compared to 25% of US children. 22% of US children live in poverty. 4% of Finnish children live in poverty.[1] Strange. Furthermore, it's my personal policy that anyone who creates an infographic with a bar graph that starts at 520 and goes up to 570 should be ignored. Either they are trying to intentionally skew interpretation of the data b…
Yes, Finland is a great country to live in. Also Sweden, Norway and Denmark. But people start loosing interest the moment you mention taxation. This things don't come cheap and in the US is hard to sell the idea of "high taxes = better quality of life".
What I don't get is how people in the US pay 25% income tax and don't get outraged for getting almost nothing back. Heck, we just put our daughter in public school, and even though it's a public school we have to pay $360 a month for full Kindergarten, otherwise she can only attend 2 hours a day. Besides that, the school has to promote fundraisers to cover their costs, because apparently the only thing the state pays for is teachers' salaries. At least 911 is free.
To me it feels like all taxes I pay in the US are mostly just for funding wars :( Even in a shitty country like Brazil you get free education (up to grad school - and state universities are the best in the country), free healthcare and a state pension when you retire. Sure, it all sucks one way or another [1], not because there's not enough money but because politicians down there are extremely corrupt - fix the corruption and you get a tremendous quality of life with a 27,5% income tax.
[1] Public healthcare varies from place to place - where I lived (Porto Alegre, RS) it was ok, but in poorer places they don't have a lot of necessary equipment and are understaffed. Although state universities have a lot of research funding and the best professors, the facilities are quite poor. And the state pension is very low, but that could be fixed by fixing the high level of corruption we have first.
I am not sure what to make of this: 1. Sure high school graduation rates are higher in Finland than in the U.S., can you actually compare those across the board? Is what a high schooler studies in Finland the same as what they study in the U.S.? Maybe there are other societal issues why people drop out in the U.S. compared to Finland which I understand has a homogenous largely white population. 2. So there is no home…
1. Since Finland students only get one standardized test, it's very difficult to determine. I have no idea why that's listed as a positive thing in the graphic; you can't improve what you don't measure! 2. According to the article, Finland's average PISA scores are higher than Hong Kong or Japan. 3 & 4. Since the degrees are subsidized by the sate, there are a lot more people getting them. This helps recruit enough t…
There are so many factors to education that the result of any standardized test is questionable. Everyone thinks and problem solves differently and what the tests do is encourage teachers to teach students to all think in the same way in order to get the best result on the test. They teach to the test in order to make their own statistics look good so they won't be punished.
Except you read all the comments in that article and the people from Finland all say they do have homework. While not as linkbaity perhaps it should be retitled, "Finland has an excellent education system."
School sucks in Finland too, it just might suck a bit less than in some countries. - A finn
I study in upper class secondary school and my peers seem to have no idea that they could educate themselves here and get high salary job aboard. Instead, they rather play video games all day and get drunk during weekend without committing any homework. This of course doesn't apply to everybody, but those who do make me feel like we do not deserve our education.