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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).

#91

Post by tuukkah »

This article is right to the point but the discussion easily clings on some misconceptions that are hard to let go.

Here's some of the facts:

* No, the system in Finland doesn't cost much more. Depending on how you measure, it can actually be said to be cheaper: the US spends more of its GDP in education.

* No, the teachers in Finland are not paid a big salary to motivate them. They earn more or less the average salary of workers with a university degree.

* No, it's not just about Finland being more culturally and ethnically homogeneous, or just about child poverty being more rare. There are many other countries like this and they don't automatically get good results in education.

* No, the Finnish children are not highly motivated to go to school, to learn and to achieve. Actually, Finland gets its results despite worse than average motivation, attitude towards school etc.

* No, it's not about the Finnish language being "easier" to learn: Being "easy" is subjective and it takes the Finnish children the normal time to learn to speak.

* No, it's not about the written Finnish being highly phonemic and thus easy to learn to read and write. Many other languages (such as Spanish, Swedish) are highly phonemic as well. The time saved in not having to learn the spelling of each word in the Finnish dictionary separately is spent on the efforts to learn the completely different vocabulary and highly different phonetics and grammar of English as a second language.

* No, it's not just about Finnish being a highly agglutinative language where you can guess e.g. from the word for voltage that it has something to do with some kind of tension. Or maybe it is, I don't have good evidence about this... But there are other agglutinative languages, learning e.g. maths problem solving is little about guessing what words mean, the linguistics mainline theory doesn't support languages having a big effect on how people think.

* No, it's not about the Finnish women having nothing else to do than concentrate on teaching. Finland ranks highly in gender equality and e.g. technology industry.

* No, you don't have to come up with metrics and subject teachers to evaluations to get a good system or to improve on one. Finland doesn't have such evaluations. You can do scientific research on the issue without letting office politics in on the individual numbers.

What plausible explanations remain? Clearly you need to consider many issues when designing or improving an educational system and there's no silver bullet, but perhaps you want to read the original article again to get some good ideas from an expert in the field :-)

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

#92

Post by tokenadult »

A good reality check on several of the assertions made in the article, or in the comments here, about Finland is to look at another country high in international educational rankings, namely Singapore. I have known people from Singapore (mostly students at my state's flagship university) since the mid-1970s. Always, they have been amazingly smart people. I have been curious about how schooling is done in Singapore since well before the first time that Singapore was included in an international education study.

Chapter 1: "International Student Achievement in Mathematics" from the TIMSS 2007 study of mathematics achievement in many different countries includes, in Exhibit 1.1 (pages 34 and 35)

http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf

a chart of mathematics achievement levels in various countries. Although the United States is above the international average score among the countries surveyed, as we would expect from the level of economic development in the United States, the United States is well below the top country listed, which is Singapore. An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore. I have lived for years in one of the other countries that regularly outperforms the United States in those studies, Taiwan, and will also comment on the Taiwan educational experience as a reality check on the comments on Finland in this thread.

I am amazed that persons from Singapore in my generation (born in the late 1950s) grew up in a country that was extremely poor (it's hard to remember that about Singapore, but until the 1970s Singapore was definitely part of the Third World) and were educated in a foreign language (the language of schooling in Singapore has long been English, but the home languages of most Singaporeans are south Chinese languages like my wife's native Hokkien or Austronesian languages like Malay or Indian languages like Tamil) and yet received very thorough instruction in mathematics. Singapore is very diverse linguistically--the MAJORITY of the population in my generation spoke NONE of the four official languages (Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Tamil, or English) in standard form at home, and certainly not the main language of school instruction, English, but Singapore has become part of the "outer circle" of use of English internationally and now maintains a high degree of multilingualism. I hope that all of us here in the United States can do at least that well both in language learning and in mathematics learning in the current generation.

The article "The Singaporean Mathematics Curriculum: Connections to TIMSS"

http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf

by a Singaporean author explains some of the background to the Singapore math materials and how they approach topics that are foundational for later mathematics study. The key aspect of Singapore's success is a MUCH better curriculum in primary school mathematics than is used in the United States. Homeschoolers in the United States, including quite a few parents of top-scoring students on the American Mathematics Competitions tests, have become aware of the Singapore curriculum materials,

http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/1...

and those are generally helpful for American families who are looking for something better than the poorly organized, often mathematically incorrect materials used in United States schools.

Professor Hung-hsi Wu of the University of California--Berkeley has written about what needs to be reformed in United States mathematics education.

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_4.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NCTM2010.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NoticesAMS2011.pdf

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CommonCoreIV.pdf

Other mathematicians who have written interesting articles about mathematics education reform in the United States include Richard Askey,

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/amed1.pdf

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf

Roger E. Howe,

http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf

Patricia Kenschaft,

http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

and

James Milgram.

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/milgram-msri.pdf

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html

All those mathematicians think that the United States could do much better than it does in teaching elementary mathematics in the public school system. I think so too after living in Taiwan twice in my adult life (January 1982 through February 1985, and December 1998 through July 2001). I have seen (and used) the textbooks from Singapore and from Taiwan. They are much more clear in their presentation and much more conceptually accurate than the typical United States textbooks. Moreover, elementary mathematics teachers tend to specialize in teaching mathematics while other elementary teachers teach other subjects, at much younger ages than when United States pupils typically encounter specialist teachers. The United States model of elementary education is to have teachers who are jacks of all trades and masters of none, and who do equally poorly (by reasonable international standards) in teaching reading, mathematics, science, and all other elementary subjects.

The United States could do a lot better and reach the level of Finland by staffing reforms

http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads...

and by using best practices

http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Class...

in provision of elementary education.

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

#93

Post by da-bacon »

mbyrne wrote: post #54
Osiris wrote: post #2

This article contrasts well with the failure of No Child Left Behind in the U.S. That program has failed to deliver any statistically significant impact on the skills and knowledge of students. What is has done is pushed teachers towards teaching the test rather than teaching critical thinking. Standardized tests are multiple-choice questions and don't leave room for critical thinking, or help demonstration how a chi…

If you say No Child Left Behind pushed teachers to teach to a test (easy) rather than teaching critical thinking, etc. (hard) and then you say No Child Left Behind failed to deliver any statistically significant impact on test scores, aren't you just saying teachers can't even teach the easy stuff? How do you think they can teach the hard stuff if they can't even move the needle on the easy things (in this scenario o…

What makes you think teaching to a test is easy? If the sole motivation of teaching is to increase a students score on a narrowly defined set of metrics, how motivated do you think students are going to be? I'm curious because in my experience the hardest learning I've done is when it's been aimed at achieving some hurdle for a narrow externally defined subject.

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

#94

Post by jseliger »

redthrowaway wrote: post #12
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 mor…

you do that by having higher requirements

Actually, the problem is that we can't predict what makes good teachers. Studies have consistently shown—see my post below for more—that Master's degrees, for instance, don't predict success. Malcolm Gladwell writes about this issue here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_... .

That means smaller classes, more autonomy, not relying on standardized tests for compensation, and a whole host of other things the US fails at.

The first doesn't measurably improve outcome either. The second sounds good. The third is a bit of red herring: I don't know any serious reformer who says that performance should be measured entirely based on testing or that testing is perfect. It isn't. But if you don't have some standardized measure, you can't even make comparisons.

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

#95

Post by ams6110 »

bediger wrote: post #85
nhebb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why the US has a Department of Education but it doesn't produce a national curriculum. It's mission isn't directly tied to teaching itself [1]. Looking at the rise of sites like the Khan Academy and other services, it seems clear to me that content creation and delivery of core subjects could be centralized, and tutoring, homework, testing, and assessment could be localized. I know that would thr…

Well, look at the figures for percentage of people who believe something really whacky: creationism. Something like 40% ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-sti... ). It's going to be hard to have a national curriculum without either watering down subjects like biology or US history to the point that they're totally useless, just rote memorization of falsehoods.

Really, simply believing in creationism does not conflict with most science, even biological science, and certainly not with US history. Of the 40% who believe in creationism (accepting your claim, though the source I'd certainly not consider unbiased), most have mainstream religious beliefs about the origin of the universe, earth, and life, but do not dismiss most of what science has learned in fields like medicine, biochemistry, genetics, etc.

For example, I myself have certain "creationist" beliefs but also accept the scientific evidence that evolution/natural selection happens, and I don't see any conflict there.

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

#96

Post by Eeko »

ams6110 wrote: post #95
bediger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, look at the figures for percentage of people who believe something really whacky: creationism. Something like 40% ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-sti... ). It's going to be hard to have a national curriculum without either watering down subjects like biology or US history to the point that they're totally useless, just rote memorization of falsehoods.

Really, simply believing in creationism does not conflict with most science, even biological science, and certainly not with US history. Of the 40% who believe in creationism (accepting your claim, though the source I'd certainly not consider unbiased), most have mainstream religious beliefs about the origin of the universe, earth, and life, but do not dismiss most of what science has learned in fields like medicine,…

Within the article the definition of creationism in the context is clearly defined in the first paragraph:

"A new Gallup poll, released Dec. 17, reveals that 40 percent of Americans still believe that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years."

There is another 40% thinking like you claim, but there still is that 40% who are about as anti-scientific as you can get.

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

#97

Post by mushishi »

arkx wrote: post #52
mushishi wrote: post #30

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 wh…

You seem to mainly address universities, which were out of scope for this article. OECD PISA is measuring 15-year-old students. There is a huge difference in the level of teaching at compulsory schools and universities in Finland. "People are not much interested in learning in schools" is a gross overstatement and generalization. There are those who are very motivated, those who are not motivated at all and the major…

My main concern is for the young as that has a lot of influence how each develops in later age, and how they feel about school.

Universities was just afterthought; I wanted to say that it does not get better even when the students have selected the subject (I gave CS as example as that is what I know of).

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

#98

Post by dalke »

tokenadult wrote: post #86
dalke wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This form almost certainly comes from the Norse "kirkja". It actually comes all the way from a Greek word that means "the Lord's," short for a term for churches that means "the assembly of the Lord" or "the house of the Lord." http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=church http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Church#Etymology (Basis of knowledge: student of Biblical Greek, native speaker of English, sporadic stude…

Certainly. But here I mean that the flow probably came through the Norse. The Scotts definitely got their term from the Norse. Since "Christianity gained a foothold in Finland during the 11th century. It was strengthened with growing Swedish influence in the 12th century and the Finnish "crusade" of Birger Jarl in the 13th century." [Wikipedia] and since the Swedes were often trading and plundering along the Finnish coast, then I strongly suspect that the current Finnish word came from the Swedish one, which comes from the same Germanic root as in English.

The only etymology I could find is: kirkko [from Germanic. Compare Estonian kirik, Karelian kirikkö, Lapland girku, Swedish kyrka] : church

A quick scan of http://www.freeweb.hu/etymological/finnish.htm shows many words of Germanic origin. I like how "kihlat" (dowry) compares to the Swedish "gisslan" (hostage).

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

#99

Post by Eeko »

arkx wrote: post #52
mushishi wrote: post #30

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 wh…

You seem to mainly address universities, which were out of scope for this article. OECD PISA is measuring 15-year-old students. There is a huge difference in the level of teaching at compulsory schools and universities in Finland. "People are not much interested in learning in schools" is a gross overstatement and generalization. There are those who are very motivated, those who are not motivated at all and the major…

"You seem to mainly address universities, which were out of scope for this article. OECD PISA is measuring 15-year-old students. There is a huge difference in the level of teaching at compulsory schools and universities in Finland."

Actually the opposite. The university system follows pretty much the same paradigm of equality and fair quality. There really is no shitty universities (at least within the institutions which claim the label...) nor spectacular ones. You get average quality. The university rankings tend to have an apex-fallacy (we are only interested on the ones at top), whereas the primary-education studies focus on national averages.

E.g. US has some spectacular private primary education facilities and some amazing higher education. But the quality varies highly across institutions. Finland has a very few private schools and even the best ones do not really perform significantly better the worst ones. The same is apparent in higher education. You get about the same degree from any university willing to give the education.

And whereas I used to think like you guys on catering for the individuals and the talented: I'm no longer quite sure on how it should be done. I've seen a fair share of different systems and products of those systems - some of which claim to address the problem of the gifted better than others. Yeah, you could do better to give greater challenges for the gifted. But there are so much other good and useful stuff people-who-get-bored-in-math-class could be doing. If you got the capacity, usually you end up using it, despite on how you are instructed to behave. You could be doing vector-calculus on the first grade: or you could be assisting your friends with the standard calculus. You could qualify for deeper math in high-school, but you could also spend your extra-time with arts, philosophy, student activities or just living your life if you don't have to worry about your school performance.

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

#100

Post by Gravityloss »

frooxie wrote: post #47
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…

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.

I read a paper by a Swedish researcher about this. Even if you compare schools with a similar proportion of immigrant descendants, Finnish schools tend to do well compared to Sweden.

I think the biggest difference overall was a lower amount of underachievers in Finland.

I don't know if the Finnish school system is that super great. Maybe you get some knowledge of this and that, and gain a work ethic, but one could teach the kids so much more about life than that would help them a lot later on.

Also I've heard that talented / energetic people have more opportunities to go extra far elsewhere (I've heard positive stuff from California), while here it's more egalitarian, at least at normal schools.

Our kids start school the year they turn seven and the school days are shorter than elsewhere.

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