Why Other Countries Teach Better.

[elleng]

Why Students Do Better Overseas

Finland has for years been in the highest global ranks in literacy and mathematical skills. The reason dates to the postwar period, when Finns first began to consider creating comprehensive schools that would provide a quality, high-level education for poor and wealthy alike. These schools stand out in several ways, providing daily hot meals; health and dental services; psychological counseling; and an array of services for families and children in need. None of the services are means tested. Moreover, all high school students must take one of the most rigorous required curriculums in the world, including physics, chemistry, biology, philosophy, music and at least two foreign languages.

But the most important effort has been in the training of teachers, where the country leads most of the world, including the United States, thanks to a national decision made in 1979. The country decided to move preparation out of teachers’ colleges and into the universities, where it became more rigorous. By professionalizing the teacher corps and raising its value in society, the Finns have made teaching the country’s most popular occupation for the young. These programs recruit from the top quarter of the graduating high school class, demonstrating that such training has a prestige lacking in the United States. In 2010, for example, 6,600 applicants competed for 660 available primary school preparation slots in the eight Finnish universities that educate teachers

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/why-students-do-better-overseas.html?hp&rref=opinion

[Aristus]

1. That will never happen in this country,

unless we can get people to give up their notion of education as a profit/loss proposition. The notion that if a student or a school as a whole is underperforming, we need to "cut our losses" and defund the school.

God, we live in an ass-backward society sometimes...

[yurbud]

2. you can make the training as rigorous as you want--if you treat teachers like crap and micromanage

them, you're going to have a hard time filling teaching jobs.

The current corporate-driven education reform movement has so effectively demonized and demoralized teachers that enrollment in education majors in California has dropped by half.