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

washingtonpost.com

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

#21

Post by BlackJack »

" I am troubled by this “lacks diversity” argument, because it implies that African-American and Hispanic children cannot benefit by having highly experienced teachers, small classes, and a curriculum rich in the arts and activities."

I don't agree with this. The "lacks diversity" argument doesn't imply that minorities can't benefit from experienced teachers - it means that teachers have more trouble with a heterogeneous population compared to a homogeneous one, which is reasonable if you consider the diversity of backgrounds in a classroom and how they impact the mental models that children have.

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

#22

Post by pacala »

olliesaunders wrote: post #15
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?

Mindshare in the global age. Finland is a 5M country. The world is 1000 times larger. They can't go against the tide of globalization. They may have the better product, it doesn't matter. The global mindshare battle is already won by anglo capitalism.

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

#23

Post by arsatiki »

Whee, Finland is at the top of an international ranking. How groovy! It makes my white-and-blue heart beat with pride.

Except it doesn't, really. The purpose of a school, any school, in any country, is to prepare the students for the road ahead. "We do not learn for the school, but for life."

So while it is fascinating to study the performance of teenagers in a small selection of topics, the test does not tell whether they will grow up as happy and/or fulfilled adults. If the PISA tests measured presentation skills or perhaps essay writing, I'd bet USA would just leave Finland in the dust.

However, some parts of the article just fill me with dread. Child-poverty rate of 22%? That's disgraceful. Merit pay? I just can't wrap my head around that.

Also, sounds like you've gone bonkers with the standardized testing. The common complaint here is that the last year (or year and a half) of high school is too focused on the matriculation examination. I can only imagine what happens if you're tested once a year or every two years or so. You'd get nothing of substance into the young minds, only tricks and tips for the next test.

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

#24

Post by tuukkah »

olliesaunders wrote: post #15
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?

Bogus metrics will distract the self-evaluation of the teachers. Further, being paid bonuses or being fired based on bogus metrics makes you afraid of mistakes as opposed to feeling trusted in experimenting with improvements and makes you try to optimise for those metrics as opposed to thinking how to best perform your work.

Natural selection and annual culling of the herd does not happen in Finnish schools - I think the OP was saying this of other systems. Selection does happen when you take the entrance exam for teacher training though.

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

#25

Post by tuukkah »

lukeschlather wrote: post #20
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.

Somehow the Finnish school system costs less per pupil per year than the U.S. one. I don't see why a suggestion to concentrate on more important things is responded to by demanding more money.

Money can improve some things, some things can be improved without money.

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

#26

Post by jaredmck »

Androsynth wrote: post #7
makecheck wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaining a master's degree doesn't automatically make you a better teacher. I'd much rather be assured that a teacher has other basic abilities (e.g. good communication skills, patience, fairness, organization skills, and even some creativity).

no, but its a good way to gate on intelligence

In the US, getting a master's in education probably says more negative than positive things about your intelligence - there are a ton of degree farms handing out paper.

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

#27

Post by wisty »

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…

Also, Finns speak a Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language, which is said to be really easy to learn. It's phonetic, and technical words tend to be built out of simple Finnish words, not a weird mash of Latin, Greek, and other words. This makes it easy to do sciences, as you don't have to teach as much wacky vocabulary. (Note, I don't speak Finish, this is just what I've read).

I've also heard that Lithuanians (who also speak a Finno-Urgric language) do relatively well in school, while Swedish Finns (who are richer than Finnish Finns) who go to Swedish-language schools do worse.

Of course, in Education, there's never just one factor.

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

#28

Post by arsatiki »

wisty wrote: post #27
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…

Also, Finns speak a Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language, which is said to be really easy to learn. It's phonetic, and technical words tend to be built out of simple Finnish words, not a weird mash of Latin, Greek, and other words. This makes it easy to do sciences, as you don't have to teach as much wacky vocabulary. (Note, I don't speak Finish, this is just what I've read). I've also heard that Lithuanians (who also spe…

Lithuanian is not a Finno-Ugric language, but a Baltic one. Perhaps you are thinking of Estonian?

Personally I think using the metric system is more important for learning science than the instruction language. When you get down to it, the "simple Finnish words" are just as alien to everyday life as the Latino-Greek words. A word like "jännite" does not confer any more insight than "voltage". In advanced topics Finnish also uses loan words for things like electrons, momentum, grammatical cases and so on.

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

#29

Post by gamble »

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 think it's hard to overemphasize how much of an effect the respect accorded to teachers in Finland draws in the most motivated and skilled. Teachers in the US are all but regarded with contempt, and in many cases deserve it. Teaching hasn't been an aspirational profession since the women's rights movement made it possible for intelligent women to aspire to more than nursing or teaching.

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

#30

Post by mushishi »

As a Finn, I restrain myself comparing us to others but I just want to say that most schools here are not well suited for non-superficial learning.

I would hope the future brings a system that is driven by the need of individual pupil and by her potential and interests rather than giving equivalent, non-inspiring curriculum for all. Also, learning should have more meaningfulness in it; something along the lines of what Papert talks in his Mindstorms book http://www.papert.org/

What I have observed is that people are not much interested in learning in schools; those with passion get bored and creativity is not encouraged, at all.

In my opinion, it's a horrible state what we are in but I don't think many will do anything about it. And in universities, it's even worse. Studying e.g. Computer Science is much of theory without not enough practical learning, as departments lack proper funding (e.g. assistants for helping with assignments). People learn basic concepts barely, and are not excited by them. It's just something to get through so that they get the diploma which is too highly appreciated by companies' HR.

Also, the content what is taught, is not what should be. The whole culture is short-sighted, and people who get out of universities are not well-equipped but are suited for trivial web-development of current age, i.e. what the industry is in need of.

This makes me sad as learning and teaching should be fun, and could be much more effective. I see some hope with interactive, visual tools that let people learn by themselves but I am not so sure the people responsible for these kind of things really are multitalented and experienced enough to do the proper thing.

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