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

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#91

Post by gerrys0 » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 11:00 PM UTC

a3camero wrote: post #40

gerrys0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the key takeaway for me from the article (and also supports my own beliefs). If teachers in the US started earning like doctors and lawyers ($100K-$200K), then many of our education problems would go away. Why? You'd start retaining good teachers, and attracting new, good teachers. Then these folks would continue to solve education problems. You'd be amazed at what highly paid, motivated professionals can acc…

$100k-200k would probably bankrupt just about every US school system. Why do you think bad teachers would work their way out of the system due to competition? Ontario pays teachers generously and as a result has a glut of teachers (widespread unemployment amongst new teachers, people going abroad, certainly many of these people would be good teachers). There's no "competition" because the challenge is to get on the s…

Re: competition. When I mean work their way out, I mean retirement. Ineffective teachers will retire, and with higher pay, the increased number of applicants for teaching positions will raise the bar for new teachers. In the article, it said like 6000 applicants applied for 600 spots. That's the kind of ratios we need in the US.

Not to go pop commentary on you, but Malcom Gladwell once wrote a piece on this very thing. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_...;

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#92

Post by teyc » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 11:43 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #87

teyc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically mentions how immigrants are helped in Finland.

Yes, but there aren't enough of them to affect the statistics. Here's the ethnic breakdown of Finland as of 2006: Finn 93.4% Swede 5.6% Russian 0.5% Estonian 0.3% Roma (Gypsy) 0.1% Sami 0.1% (2006) Finns and Swedes make up 99% of the population. The first group that historically has trouble in school, the Roma, makes up a whopping 0.1% of the population. If schools can work anywhere, it's Finland.

Thank you.

Re: Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

#93

Post by GFischer » Fri, Aug 26, 2011, 2:27 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…

The PISA scores seem to be a big deal everywhere.

There was a big outrage in the press since in my country (Uruguay) we were at the bottom of the pack, after the governing party had made a lot of propaganda about they were doing things right this time around, doubled education spending and all that - they point out that Finland spends 6% of its PBI on education. Uruguay only recently reached that amount.

I expect that my country's politicians were amongst those that visited Finland (which, along with New Zealand, is one of our favourite references as a small and prosperous country), and that your assesment about their being unwilling to question their political views is probably right.

Here's a blog (in Spanish) that writes about what Uruguayans think the Finnish did right:

http://rigofa2011.blogdiario.com/1292241206/

"One of the highlights is that schools offer more than education. They are centers that provide food, medical and dental care, psychological care, among other services. And last but not least, they are free. "

"Asked the key to success, Tunturi did not hesitate to answer: "The educator is highly appreciated by society. Young people see it as a profession with a future. "Statistics show that 10% of the top high school students choose this route. Grünberg said this is a feature shared by other high quality educational systems, including South Korea, where teaching attracts 5% of the top high school graduates. "In other countries would be brain surgeons or lawyers, but they are teachers or teachers in Finland," said the rector."