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

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

#41

Post by dalke »

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…

Most say it's hard to learn. Putting that aside, I know Finnish contains many borrowed words. Take church, which in Finnish is "kirkko", Swedish is kyrka, and in Scottish English, kirk. This form almost certainly comes from the Norse "kirkja".

For a more technical term, consider "democracy", which is "demokratia". The Greek roots are obvious.

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

#42

Post by shareme »

Something out of whack..

Let me explain...about 24 years ago mid beginning 1980s the testing and tests for pre-engineering was the same level as most HS students face now for non-engineering....

I can remember taking additional tests on top of my HS standards tests to see if I could get qualified to enter engineering college classes..yes this was the USA..

my scores was 98 percentile range..

It would seem the author is comparing apples and oranges to display their political trappings rather than a factual article on what can be compared and contrasted.

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

#43

Post by henrikschroder »

temphn wrote: post #14
kalleboo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

Finland does so much better than Sweden that Swedish newspapers semi-regularly feature the same article as the parent of this discussion, i.e. "our schools are crap, Finland is right next to us, they're awesome, how do they do it, why can't we?".

Of course, nothing ever happens.

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

#45

Post by schme »

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…

The language isn't easy to learn, but easy to write and read once you've learned to talk with it. This is the distinction usually made regarding the language differences. Also most of the professional vocabulary is lent from other languages. I prefer to speak English when talking about programming or tech in general. Then again this starts to take affect, at the earliest, in high school.

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

#46

Post by joelthelion »

Every time I read an article about why XYZ's schools are so great, I cannot help but think, wouldn't it simply be because XYZ's children are great?

At least I think that's a factor we fail to control for. Designing a good school for well brought-up children is far easier than designing it for children who grew up in a hostile environment watching TV all day long.

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

#47

Post by frooxie »

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…

According to Wikipedia, the percentage of ethnic Finns in Finland is 97.5%, while the percentage of ethnic Swedes in Sweden is "probably much lower than 85%". Now, some of these are Finns living in Sweden and vice versa, which complicates the picture, but it seems like Finland has very different demographics from Sweden.

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

#48

Post by angus77 »

eplanit wrote: post #40
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…

> It is more likely to be culture or (more controversially) genetics. Perhaps not genetics, but (also controversially) perhaps 'diversity' is over-rated. Many of the least diverse countries enjoy such positive results. The U.S. slips further and further as it gets more diverse.

Canada's got at least the diversity the US has, and yet regularly ranks quite high in worldwide educational standards.

Edit: added the following link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-ed...

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

#49

Post by henrikschroder »

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…

The only part of education where the language matters is when it comes to spelling, and the key factor there is the distance between the spoken language and the written language. In Finnish, these are close, i.e. words are spelled "as they sound", the rules are simple and consistent and there are few special cases, and as a result Finnish children have a much easier time learning how to spell compared to Danish or English children.

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

#50

Post by thyrsus »

tuukkah wrote: post #25
lukeschlather wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect an abundance of social infrastructure (4% of children living in poverty vs 15%, per the article) acts as an unaccounted for subsidy for education - and for much else as well.
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