Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#61

Post by lautis » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 10:12 PM UTC

jlmendezbonini wrote: post #53

cadr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering, has the wealth distribution changed in that time?

A bit, not that much according to these numbers: Finland: Mid-2000s 2000 Mid-1990s 1990 Mid-1980s Mid-1970s 0.269 0.261 0.228 n/a 0.207 0.235 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a... For a more comprehensive data set see: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/data-access/key-figures/inequal... If you happen to have access to an even more comprehensive data set, please share. I'm mainly interest on the Gini…

More comprehensive data about income distribution in Finland over time:

http://www.stat.fi/til/tjt/2009/tjt_2009_2011-05-20_tau_002_...

Statistics Finland provide data about income distribution, but not much about wealth.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#62

Post by pavlov » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 10:16 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #54

roc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really is something to be said for the way the Finnish system has made teaching an attractive and respected profession. In the US, the decades of weak pay, support and heavy criticism almost seem like a high point compared to the demonization of more recent years.

It's a chicken-and-egg problem, as if you spend some time on an undergraduate campus in the US, you'll notice that majority of those majoring in Education have deemed other, more profitable, majors as too hard.

Finland has free college education. Mainly for that reason, the future profitability of a specific discipline doesn't appear to be a major factor in how young Finns choose their majors (as evidenced by the enduring huge popularity of objectively unprofitable disciplines such as media and design).

It seems to me that those that become teachers in Finland have chosen the career fairly early on. It's a vocational thing. Money doesn't influence the decision, but of course there is the financial baseline that teaching is a stable job that offers an extraordinarily long summer vacation (something like 11 weeks, fully paid).

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#63

Post by Stork » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 10:23 PM UTC

stan_rogers wrote: post #59

nandemo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good Lord, just because someone is pointing out that a certain problem might be in a way related to immigration, it doesn't mean that someone is racist. Can you really not see that "more immigrant kids in Finland" might lead to "more kids who have learning problems at school"? Simply because immigrants to Finland typically don't speak Finnish, are poorer than the average Finnish citizen, etc. This is far cry from say…

Finland has a policy of providing (wherever possible) early-stage immigrant education in the child's first language. Bilingualism, and an eventual transition to study in Suomi (or Swedish -- which seems to be a level alternative officially) are encouraged, of course, but the object of the game seems to be to get the young minds working as well as possible as early as possible, even if that means teaching reading and…

But Finland doesn't have any immigrants, that's why they seem to be doing so well.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#64

Post by Duff » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 10:42 PM UTC

diogenescynic wrote: post #57

Duff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Worse" translates to "urban" or "rural" schools. Think about what that means. (Hint: It's not a money issue)

>"Worse" translates to "urban" or "rural" schools. Think about what that means. (Hint: It's not a money issue) Duff, please spell it out for us? What are you implying the problem is?

Poor governance, which is allowed to persist due to lower involvement by parents.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#65

Post by wisty » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

Another article (http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/, submitted - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918684) suggests Finish-Ugric languages give Finnish and Estonian schools an edge in PISA results (and education in general).

The writing is regular, and vocabulary very simple - think "tear sacs" instead of whatever Latin / Greek / German / French derived term you use in English.

I like their right-wing teaching system, which seems to follow the stuff that's got some empirical backing (DI, mastery learning, no retention, etc), but there are other factors.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#66

Post by Vargas » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 10:58 PM UTC

nosse wrote: post #49

skrebbel wrote: post #13

I can't wait for Finns to pop in here to tell us about the dark sides of this success. There must be some. For one, there's a tax rate that would make most Americans, and even most Europeans, choke on their latte. I'm not sure that's bad, but this article seems to neglect to mention that nothing comes for free. This isn't just "doing it smarter", it's also investing a massive chunk of money. Additionally, I honestly…

a Finn popping up here. I study at Aalto university, my mom is a teacher and I have thought this stuff a lot. Dark side of success... What success? Given six million people, who all are smart as hell when 15 year olds, you could assume that there would be at least one university in Finland that would be in the group of 30 best universities in the world. Well, our best is Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto at rank 151. S…

Couldn't agree more! English bizantine writing system is a major drag. Sadly a spelling reform doesn't seem possible at the moment.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#67

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 11:07 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #8

shaggyfrog wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just happen to have watched the documentary mentioned in the article (Waiting For Superman) a couple of nights ago. It found that children from the middle class are just as effected. The issue boils down to the pervasiveness of bad teachers in the system, and an inability to get rid of those teachers and reward/promote good teachers.

W4S has a pretty big agenda, though, and it's main point comes off as "it's the unions' fault!" They fail to mention unionization rates in Finnish schools, though.

Even if you had unionization rates, American unions probably work different than Finnish unions.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#68

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 11:11 PM UTC

pasiaj wrote: post #36

hugh3 wrote: post #20

These sorts of articles always smack of cargo cultism. First we say "Holy crap, country X is doing better than the US in standardized test Y !". Then we pick out all the ways in which country X is different from the US. Then we throw out the ones which we don't like and assume it must be the other ones which are responsible. Therefore, if we hold childrens' hands more then they'll do better in tests and if build a bi…

You are spot on about the cargo cultism. Ever since the first great PISA-scores, we've been getting hoards of visitors from all over the world, trying to understand what makes our system good. The problem is, even our own politicians aren't really able to comprehend the reasons. Most politicians aren't able to look at the Finnish system in a way that would question their own political views, so all the statements con…

Perhaps it would be more instructive to look at how countries improved (or failed to improve) their PISA score than at how good countries do it?

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#69

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 11:16 PM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #60

billswift wrote: post #33

Because they are full of Finns. http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/12/pisa_scores_sho...

Wow, if those numbers are true then it sure falls into the "uncomfortable truths" category: ''' * Asian Americans outscored every Asian country, and lost out only to the city of Shanghai, China’s financial capital. * White Americans students outperformed the national average in every one of the 37 historically white countries tested, except Finland (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, an immigration restrictionist…

Interesting. Though America also probably spends much more on their Foo-Americans than they spend in Foo-istan, so you'd expect a higher showing.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#70

Post by charlieflowers » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 11:29 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #62

prostoalex wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a chicken-and-egg problem, as if you spend some time on an undergraduate campus in the US, you'll notice that majority of those majoring in Education have deemed other, more profitable, majors as too hard.

Finland has free college education. Mainly for that reason, the future profitability of a specific discipline doesn't appear to be a major factor in how young Finns choose their majors (as evidenced by the enduring huge popularity of objectively unprofitable disciplines such as media and design). It seems to me that those that become teachers in Finland have chosen the career fairly early on. It's a vocational thing.…

"Finland has free college education."

Wow -- that alone could cause a number of the effects we're talking about. Anyone who wants to go to college can, versus in the US, there are a number of children who know (or pessimistically assume) that college is just not in the cards for them.

Not saying we should adopt that single tenet. Just that it has surprisingly strong ripples throughout the whole system that should not be underestimated.