Education in Finland

Cue a chorus of excuse-making as to why it wouldn't work elsewhere.

Don't need to, the article already made the argument for me:

Doesn't matter much what system America takes on when all most parents want are babysitters.

What's a "school league table"?

I'll agree many do expect babysitters, but is that because it was their own experience in school with teachers who were just going through the motions? There's also little understanding in this country that parents are the primary teachers, and that what a kid learns in the first three years is the most vital. Do parents in Finland plop their kids in front of the TV at birth instead of interacting with them? Maybe some do, but not in nearly the proportions they do in this country.

"Teaching to the test" is an attempt to enforce uniformity, not to educate.

As far as Finland is concerned, there's their silly commitment to actually promoting social justice instead of enshrining it in verbiage and then doing its damnedest to preserve a class system, which is The American Way.

What happens to children before they start school sets them up for success or failure long before they get to school. If in addition to that the school is part of a crumbling infrastructure staffed by indifferent and/or incompetent teachers, why is it a surprise that the education system - which, in the U.S. isn't even a "system" - doesn't work?

That's done by district in the U.S., and since there are over 13,000 districts, there's no comparison between districts, so they're mostly feel-good stats to impress parents.

There's a lot of fucking words in that article, so I appreciate that you bolded a bunch of them. They seem to say Finnish kids spend a lot of time running around naked and singing "Kumbaya" while Finnish teachers get paid a bunch for what sounds to be a part time job. I didn't see anything about the Finnish literacy rate, how the Finns stack up on things like Nobel prizes, what kind of leading edge math, medicine, or innovations are coming out of Finland. You know, the stuff you want an education system to accomplish.

A thought on conformity, how homogeneous is Finland's culture. Not supporting teaching to the test, but our diversity and population might offer some insight into why we teach to the lowest common denominator.

Booya! Exactly

And this, folks, is a classic example of the GIGO factor in public education in America...

Agree. The whole testing thing is corrupt as can be (at least in my state).
Your kid passed all their courses? Then move along, what's the point of even further standardized test hurdles? Well here's the point:
Twice now Atlanta has been caught helping kids cheat and otherwise manipulating the scores and results to look better statistice-wise. And the statistics are still manipulated and distorted to suit whatever political agenda is popular that year/month anyway. NONE OF IT is on the level!

This might help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland#Ethnic_minorities_.26_languages

Pretty diverse for a population half the size of NYC.

With birth rates down the past century from over 4.0 to something like 1.8, this tiny little country most likely will be gone in another handful of generations; so big deal, next century all 15 extant Finns will be really really smart. [anyone else thinks it's nifty to adopt lifestyles of a dying people that's accomplished pretty much nothing on the planet?]

Most of the teachers my kids have had very specifically do not teach for the test. Their classes consistently out perform the standard.

Then the really smart kids will be bored.

Or the teacher might assign the really smart kids to tutor the slower kids. Gives them a sense of responsibility, promotes leadership, keeps them from being bored. If they don't want to do that, give them supplementary material above grade level and let them go off in a corner by themselves and read.

I fucking hated that in school. Group me with the SpEds, and I'm doing all the thinking and just telling everyone where to write their names. Group me with other halfway-smart kids, and nobody in the group really needs the group. How 'bout everyone just do their own fucking work and be placed in separate classes according to their aptitudes.

"But then some kids might feel..."

FUCK Junior's delicate goddamn feelings. All you're doing is poisoning his mind against reality with this "inclusive regardless of merit" bullshit.

So here's some college-level material for you, Lil Albert. Now go sit somewhere and read quietly for a change instead of playing :lookatme: all the time.

not every smart kid is playing :lookatme:.....just sayin'. sorry for the rant, but that attitude is extremely frustrating to deal with in a teacher when you're just a kid. I can remember teachers rolling their eyes at me when i'd submit an assignment in 5 or 10 minutes that was supposed to take a half hour or however long was planned for that activity. even as a third grader, I knew that the look was meant to say "oh, you think you're so smart, don't you?" when in reality, I was just done with the assignment. what you propose is exactly what they did with me. put me in a corner and gave me higher-level reading material, then eventually bumped me up a grade. I got bored and dropped out of school ASAP.

Been there, done that, except I realized what my career choices would be if I dropped out, so I stayed and finished. I was also fortunate to have a couple of teachers who could make exceptions for bright kids, even in Catholic schools with classes of 60 or more.

My post was not addressed at bright kids in general, but specifically at Albert's usual "Me, me, ME!" now augmented by his claim that he was the smartest kid in his class and therefore under no obligation to help anyone else. IOW, SSDD.

Way to half-ass it. Ours are 100 percent completely useless!

I got that kind of flak, all of the time, from a language arts teacher in high school. No one ever offered to bump me up a grade, though. That would have been nice. Instead, I was paired with kids who didn't have the drive to finish their assignments (they didn't give a shit). Guess who did the work (the correct answer is 'me')? Guess who got an 'A' (the correct answer is 'the group')?

It's an attempt to try and display quality, which - whilst laudable - tends to lead to tickbox teaching. The reason quality is important is that the larger the system, the more easy it is to disguise low or mediocre quality and the larger the number of bad teachers having an undue effect. Tables at least allow some comparisons of quality, although they're a double-edged sword as they also place undue pressure on schools.

Finland also has a small system due it being a low and sparse population, their schools will have an awful lot less pupils, teachers, material requirements and overall budget (although possibly a bigger budget per pupil) than we do. To do the same here would require massive decentralization, something Whitehall would pull out all stops to undermine.

Although previous attempts at providing local authority control haven't been wildly successful - when Thatcher devolved power to councils in the 70's under Circular 10/70, the result was an ideological assault on Grammar Schools by Labour councils. Nevertheless, I'd like to see attempted at least.

There's also the old social differences, I wonder how many Finnish kids decide to sod off for the day? And if applying Finnish methods would change that?

So yes, the Finnish way sounds good with excellent results, but:

1) given the differences in size between the UK and Finnish education system, you couldn't just drop the template on us; and

2) how much of the results are due to the system itself, how much is down to the smaller population allowing for a better teacher/pupil relationship and how much is down to the Finns treating their kids differently?

What's that about correlation and causation again?

Also, how many more Nobels does Trinity College have over Finland?

It's Important!