Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t). • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#11

Post by pacala » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 5:50 AM UTC

"I was asked about current trends in U.S. education, and Finnish educators were astonished by the idea that our governments intend to evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores; that made no sense to them. They were also surprised that we turn children over to “teachers” who have only a few weeks of training and no masters’ degree. They did not understand the idea of “merit pay.” They are paid more if they do more work for the community, but they can’t understand why teachers should get a bonus to compete with one another for test scores. Since they don’t have comparative test scores for their students, our practices don’t make sense to them. Nor do they understand the benefits of competition among teachers who ought to be collaborating."

This will not last. The anglo corporatist cancer with its insanely frequent "performance reviews" and bogus metrics will eat them alive. Long live exacerbated competitiveness and backstabbing your peers. Long live natural selection and the annual culling of the herd.

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#12

Post by redthrowaway » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 5:55 AM UTC

gmichnikov wrote: post #5

Perhaps "they did not understand the idea of 'merit pay'" because many of the teachers in Finland are of a different breed than many of the people who end up teaching in the US: "McKinsey's work with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests this is an important gap in the U.S. debate, because the world's top performing school systems--Singapore, Finland, South Korea--make a different choice. They recruit, de…

>Taking this into account, it's silly to argue that since they have tenure, too, tenure isn't the problem here. They already have the right people teaching. We need to fire many of the people who are currently teaching.

If you want to fire a big chunk of your teachers, that's fine. You just need to ensure the people you are replacing them with are better, and you do that by having higher requirements, paying them more, and giving them a better environment to work in. That means smaller classes, more autonomy, not relying on standardized tests for compensation, and a whole host of other things the US fails at.

Let's say you had a big tech company with thousands of mediocre programmers. You want to fire them and hire better ones, but before you do that you have to ask why you had so many lousy programmers in the first place. Why did good programmers decide not to work for your company, and how will you both attract them and convince them to stay? The US seems to think it can get highly qualified teachers by providing working environments akin to code monkey cubicle farms, and they're simply wrong.

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#13

Post by tuukkah » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 5:56 AM UTC

kiba wrote: post #9

gmichnikov wrote: post #5

Perhaps "they did not understand the idea of 'merit pay'" because many of the teachers in Finland are of a different breed than many of the people who end up teaching in the US: "McKinsey's work with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests this is an important gap in the U.S. debate, because the world's top performing school systems--Singapore, Finland, South Korea--make a different choice. They recruit, de…

I would think that people in Singapore and South Korea considers education very important and thus students in these countries try very hard to get really good grade.

Whereas in Finland students don't appreciate their top-of-the-notch, free education. According to research, they feel negative about the school and the teachers, they are unmotivated, they underperform and they have mental health problems. Makes their test results doubly impressive, I would say, and shows that there's still room for a lot of improvement in the world of education.

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#14

Post by temphn » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 5:56 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #10

temphn wrote: post #8

Finland's schools are great because they are full of Finns, in the same way that schools with many Finns in the US do very well. Hong Kong and Singapore's schools are great because they are full of Chinese, in the same way that schools with many Chinese in the US do very well, even in poor neighborhoods: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/16/local/me-lincoln16 To begin with, the eight students agreed on a few gener…

This article does consider that though: They insist that Finland cannot serve as a model because it lacks racial diversity; but they fall silent when one points out that Finland has the same demographics as Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway, yet gets superior results. I am troubled by this “lacks diversity” argument, because it implies that African-American and Hispanic children cannot benefit by having highly…

"Superior" is only one bit of information, in that it only says "x is greater than y"...but not by how much, and with no measure of statistical significance.

Finland's technological and industrial output clusters with Sweden, Denmark, and Norway to a far greater extent than it does with countries outside Northern Europe.

In the same way, when you look at the TIMSS, intra-European variance exists and is nontrivial, but European and East Asian nations do tend to cluster together quite a bit:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf

See Table 3 on page 19. Top 5 countries in grade 8 in math: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan. The very top European countries are towards the lower end of the East Asian distribution in math, and are only close in 4th grade (before puberty onset).

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#15

Post by olliesaunders » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 5:58 AM UTC

pacala wrote: post #11

"I was asked about current trends in U.S. education, and Finnish educators were astonished by the idea that our governments intend to evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores; that made no sense to them. They were also surprised that we turn children over to “teachers” who have only a few weeks of training and no masters’ degree. They did not understand the idea of “merit pay.” They are paid more if they do m…

> ...will eat them alive

Why will it?

> Long live natural selection and the annual culling of the herd.

How does that occur in the Finish model?

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#16

Post by bilbo0s » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 5:58 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #10

temphn wrote: post #8

Finland's schools are great because they are full of Finns, in the same way that schools with many Finns in the US do very well. Hong Kong and Singapore's schools are great because they are full of Chinese, in the same way that schools with many Chinese in the US do very well, even in poor neighborhoods: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/16/local/me-lincoln16 To begin with, the eight students agreed on a few gener…

This article does consider that though: They insist that Finland cannot serve as a model because it lacks racial diversity; but they fall silent when one points out that Finland has the same demographics as Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway, yet gets superior results. I am troubled by this “lacks diversity” argument, because it implies that African-American and Hispanic children cannot benefit by having highly…

Wow.

I looked it up. You're right, Finland does much better internationally than most of the other Scandinavian nations. I would not have expected that result.

One of the reasons I like HN is because sometimes, reading through comments, I see things that just blow my perceptions out of the water. I enjoy going back and reformulating my arguments.

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#17

Post by jseliger » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 6:00 AM UTC

gmichnikov wrote: post #5

Perhaps "they did not understand the idea of 'merit pay'" because many of the teachers in Finland are of a different breed than many of the people who end up teaching in the US: "McKinsey's work with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests this is an important gap in the U.S. debate, because the world's top performing school systems--Singapore, Finland, South Korea--make a different choice. They recruit, de…

Great post. I actually assembled a compendium of articles about the teacher / school situation: http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get . It's virtually impossible to read the New Yorker piece on New York City's "Rubber Rooms" or the L.A. Weekly on the "Dance of the Lemons" without realizing how perverse educational incentives in the U.S. really are.

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#18

Post by olliesaunders » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 6:00 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #8

Finland's schools are great because they are full of Finns, in the same way that schools with many Finns in the US do very well. Hong Kong and Singapore's schools are great because they are full of Chinese, in the same way that schools with many Chinese in the US do very well, even in poor neighborhoods: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/16/local/me-lincoln16 To begin with, the eight students agreed on a few gener…

Don’t downvote this guy. I don’t agree with him but it is an interesting point that should be addressed. It could be true. Science should advise.

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#19

Post by tuukkah » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 6:11 AM UTC

pacala wrote: post #11

"I was asked about current trends in U.S. education, and Finnish educators were astonished by the idea that our governments intend to evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores; that made no sense to them. They were also surprised that we turn children over to “teachers” who have only a few weeks of training and no masters’ degree. They did not understand the idea of “merit pay.” They are paid more if they do m…

Exactly, bogus metrics is one of the core issues here. Measuring the wrong things is worse than not measuring anything.

Importantly, the case of Finland shows that metrics are not required for reaching great results. As the article points out, the proven Finnish alternative is motivated, professional teachers and trust in them.

Re: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

#20

Post by lukeschlather » Sun, Oct 16, 2011, 6:12 AM UTC

forkandwait wrote: post #3

Here is my worthless .02c: One sure way to know you have failed at managing a process is when you measure employee performance by their adherence to rules rather than their record on delivering results . NCLB is all about rules... ... as are most US institutions, public and private.... It isn't that rules and standardized processes don't have their place, but (1) if rules have to be enforced regularly, you have total…

There are a lot of people bouncing around ideas about how we can magically improve the U.S. school system, but I think fundamentally the problem is that we expect unreasonable results. We want to be able to pay $5000/pupil/year for a quality of education that properly costs at least $10,000 if not $15,000.