What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

[TalkingDog]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland."

This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.

The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an increasing trend in the U.S. Yet no one in the room commented on Sahlberg's statement. I found this surprising. Sahlberg himself did not.

snip

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

/snip


Too much good stuff: No standardized test, every child is given the same opportunity to learn.... read this article.

[dkf]

1. Also pretty homogenous I imagine.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. Maybe if the American education system were as good,

we'd have a more homogenous, less stratified society, too.

[3waygeek]

3. Which is precisely why we don't have such a system

The powers that be want a stratified society, as long as they're on top -- the lower classes will fight each other instead of their real enemy.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. And only 5 million of them.

[JackRiddler]

13. Which makes it as large as almost any school system in the United States.

Why is this an obstacle to understanding what Finland does right:

Small class size.

Respect for teachers in society.

School starts at age 7. Grades are not awarded until middle school. Homework is minimal the first few years. No standardized testing until high school.

In other words, humane and cooperative conditions rather than a rat race that starts at age 4.

Any school system can do this. Size is not an impediment!

[Starry Messenger]

8. Yeah, they're supported with equal social safety nets by the governement.

That's what you meant right?

[JackRiddler]

9. The "homogeneity" of Finland is mostly irrelevant to its educational success.

Finland is "small," but it's on the same scale as most large US school systems. Same population as Kentucky, so why can't Kentucky copy Finland?

The key elements are eminently reproducible. Finland has twice as many teachers per student as New York City. They are paid well. They have secure jobs and a strong union. Being a teacher is an attractive and respected career. If you could bring those conditions here, the greater diversity here would not be a problem.

Furthermore they don't start drilling their children from infancy. No "head start," no early tracking. School starts at age seven! Foreign languages are taught from the beginning. Grades aren't given until, I believe, the sixth grade. Standardized tests aren't given until high school, and yet Finnish students in the 12th grade score among the highest in international comparisons. They don't teach the test, they educate the person, and then the older person has no problems with the test.

The real problem here is not the heterogeneity of the population, but the stubborness of the mainstream culture. It's very hard for Americans, both PTB and most others, to accept that a humane and cooperative and loving approach is superior to the constant competition and stress and authoritarian harangues of our rat race.

[Kellerfeller]

10. With all due respect

Their pay is about half of the average American teacher.

Are you proposing we cut teacher pay in half?

http://www.worldsalaries.org/teacher.shtml

[JackRiddler]

11. They're paid well for Finland...

in a country where there is a strong social welfare system, health care and pensions, and lower rents. They have a strong teachers' union. It is a respected career with job security. They are not under attack, like here. They are not blamed for problems they did not cause. They are not under unreasonable pressures to perform to arbitrary evaluation. There are almost twice as many teachers per student as in New York. Class size is accordingly smaller.

The numbers shown on that chart do not come out to "half of the average American teacher"! 2654 euros is not half of 5266 dollars, however this chart shows no breakdowns by years of service and obviously doesn't cover differences in cost of living.

From NYT, Dec. 12:

The starting salary for school teachers in Finland, 96 percent of whom are unionized, was about $29,000 in 2008, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, compared with about $36,000 in the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/from-finland-an-intriguing-school-reform-model.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Please read this article about the curious Finlandophilia in the US (curious because it is often pushed by the school "reform" movement that selectively emphasizes which aspects of Finland's system are good).

.

[Kellerfeller]

15. My point was

that their model is so different that is would be near impossible to implement here.

As others have mentioned, there are cultural issues where they value education. Here, the high achievers are mocked and many parents expect the schools to be responsible for everything (useful) their kid learns while at the same time tying their hands when it comes to holding the kids responsible for their behavior or their academic work.

But the pay issue highlights it even more. They are "well paid" even though they make less than American teachers. That is because Americans have standard of living that includes a lot of material things that cultures like Finland just don't cherish or expect.

We simply can't afford to pay teachers what would be considered "well-paid" in America. And even if we did, it wouldn't help much simply because the parents would relinquish any remaining responsibility and the attitude toward academic success wouldn't quickly change.

Heck, we couldn't even get the frickin' metric system in this country.

I would love to see teachers being well paid and the teaching profession be able to just select the cream-of-the crop. Unfortunately it would require a major shift in thinking in this country and I don't see it happening.

I admittedly contribute to the problem. I've taught on the collegiate level and won teaching awards. However, I am no longer teaching because it simply doesn't pay enough for the lifestyle I would like. Once my kids are all through college and out of the house, I may consider teaching high school.

[JackRiddler]

16. On the matter of well-paid...

Security is a form of pay. I'm not sure the biggest difference in the meaning of pay levels is in the greater American appetite for consumption (of Nokia phones, perhaps?).

If you're not worried about your rent, health care, college tuitions, pensions, job security, essential costs like food, or what happens if you are disabled or have to care for a sick family member, if you know having a child or an accident won't promptly bankrupt you, then the lower disposable income at the end of the month seems like plenty. It's all yours. In the US, the higher disposable income may be an illusion, promptly eaten up by your rent and insurance costs.

But anyway, that's a general difference between the societies that goes beyond education.

The biggest point about the success of Finnish schools seems to me to be that they have almost twice as many teachers per capita and accordingly smaller class sizes. A cream-of-the-crop teacher, as you call her, who is stuck with 35 students (and their parents) is going to fail with many more of them than two average teachers who only have to handle 18 each (and their parents).

This is a universal. I don't believe it's hindered by cultural differences, or must be.

Now I know the problem here with the anti-intellectualism (high achievers mocked). But if that's really such an obstacle we may as well give up from the start.

Several other points I believe are also translatable: such as putting the child at the center, and not the performance of the child (at least until much later). Finland starting school at 7 and abjuring homework and grades and testing until much later is part of that. It's saying, let them grow up under loving, unstressful conditions that promote learning for its own sake, and when they're bigger they'll be able to handle the tests better than kids who have grown up under pressure of punishment and taught that only performance matters.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Good post

And there is far less poverty in Finland than in many countries, meaning a more level playing field to start with.

The UK, too, is preoccupied with emulating higher-achieving countries, but tends to be preoccupied with finding specific aspects of the curriculum, rather than looking at achievement in a wider context. Better *funding* of state education might be a good place to start (for example, Finland does not allow classes of over 20, even at secondary school level).

Moreover, the UK tends at least at present to look at improvement in terms of getting children to do things at a *younger age* than previously. Finnish children don't even start formal instruction till 7 and they end up doing very well!

[izquierdista]

6. They leveled it themselves

But there was poverty in Finland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_famine_of_1866%E2%80%931868

So in the last 150 years, they have managed to take care of famine and poverty, while for half of those years, they had to also fend off Soviet claims on their territory.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

7. K&R (n/t)

[frazzled]

12. I like Finns

Esa-Pekka Salonen (saw him conduct a concert just last week!), Aalvar Alto, Eero Sarinen, Linus Torvalds, Aki Kaurismäki. That's about all the Finns I know, but I like them. I like Marimekko!

Mr. Frazzled was in Finland (Helsinki) this past year, during the elections, and noted the right-wing, nationalist parties (who won a record number of seats). People are worried about Finland's turn to the right.

Despite liking a few Finns I have heard of, and getting some good chocolates that Mr. Frazzled brought back to me, I am unqualified to speak about Finland or its educational system.

[ParkieDem]

14. So how do we change culture?

Where I live, a huge chunk of the progressive and liberal parents I know send their kids to high-dollar private schools. And how do we get teachers to be "respected" again? I agree they need to be paid more, but will that work in and of itself?

I would love to emulate the Finnish model - but how can it be done here?