High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.
Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world’s C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they’re way ahead in math, science and reading — on track to keeping Finns among the world’s most productive workers.
The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland’s students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland’s combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD’s test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.
More:
The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master’s degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.
Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. “In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs,” says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.
innish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw the differences firsthand. She spent a year at Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict rules didn’t translate into tougher lessons or dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would ask students whether they did their homework. They would reply: ” ‘Nah. So what’d you do last night?'” she recalls. History tests were often multiple choice. The rare essay question, she says, allowed very little space in which to write. In-class projects were largely “glue this to the poster for an hour,” she says. Her Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.
Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign students are told to ask for extra work if they find classes too easy. He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.
While Finland’s educational system works for many Finns, I don’t think it can be generalized that if we homogenize classes that we will have equal success. They have a largely homogenous population (and a socialist government). In addition, I have heard that there are Finns who are concerned about where the future inventors and other leading minds will come from as the very top students are not part of their focus. Also, when student Fanny says she does not mind teaching her peers and waiting for them to catch up, I am wondering, compared with here, if she is being held back as much or expected to “differentiate” to peers who are at as disparate levels. Interestingly, they seem to have blatant tracking in high school.
I think this paragraph from the article sums it up:
Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. With a largely homogeneous population, teachers have few students who don’t speak Finnish. In the U.S., about 8% of students are learning English, according to the Education Department. There are fewer disparities in education and income levels among Finns. Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% — or 10% at vocational schools — compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.
By marching out the oft-repeated excuse paragraph, Bonnie does the job which every one in the educational establishment performs — lays the whole blame for US education failures on the victims — not that some blame is inappropriate.
So, the excuse paragraph simply is repeated with the acceptable code: “Heterogenous”, “poor” and “minority” are just code words for “not us”.
Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam):
if you say something often enough, people will begin to believe it.
There is another couple of paragraphs which might also sum the article up.
“The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master’s degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.
Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. “In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs,” says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.
One explanation for the Finns’ success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.”
If one accepts the suggestion of the above paragraphs that it is the quality of the teachers (which is strictly a function of the institutions which educate the teachers), the quality of the curriculum, and the quality of the American character, then substantial and difficult changes are required.
Those changes really *are* too difficult! And, I think, we all know that. So, we protect our psyches, and trot out the old tripe. We’re well trained to point to “them”.
And the promised solutions must always require substantial sums of money, be non-measurable, and be forever 10 years from now or impossible. So we choose unchangeable characteristics as the reasons so we do not have to make changes: most poor will remain poor during the education years; minorities will always be minorities; and heterogeneity will remain until resegregation (by race and money) is reinstituted.
“Whew! Then I don’t have to do anything, because it’s not my fault.”
We seem to have this massive unchangeable tightly-coupled system that cannot be improved.
I like this quote, and quite impossible in this day and age:
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
– Anne Frank