Finland, as I’ve written previously, completely revamped its education system. It did so for both obvious and more subtle reasons. First, its international test scores sucked. Second, Finnish leaders were anxious to create a more vibrant, competitive private sector, one it hoped would be spurred by increased educational performance. They succeeded, spectacularly so (source: Wikipedia).
But you won’t hear much about the Finnish reform movement. It is so un-American in both concept and execution. Moreover, even the author of Finnish Lessons, who himself played a prominent role in the revamping, realizes that educational reform of the Finnish kind cannot occur in a vacuum. He quotes from an external audit conducted by the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development:
…it is hard to imagine how Finland’s educational success could be achieved or maintained without reference to the nation’s broader and commonly accepted system of distinctive social values that more individualistic and inequitable societies may find difficult to accept.*
The United States, as these pages have documented on numerous occasions, is an intensely “individualistic and inequitable” society. We have given new meaning to unfairness and inequality. So, it does not surprise me in the least that we cannot comprehend, let alone even acknowledge, that there is a different and far better way to reform our public schools.
In America, we do things insanely backwards, always focusing on after-the-fact approaches while expecting different outcomes with each wave of educational reform. No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are two egregious examples, both of which attempt to change an entrenched system via “accountability.” It works in broad outlines like this:
Mary wants to be a teacher. She attends college, with an emphasis on education, of course. She graduates, receiving her teaching certificate. A school district hires her. Go forth and teach, she’s told, probably ill-equipped to do so without months if not years of constant struggle with disturbing child behavior and frustrating institutional pressures. Many of her colleagues will give up the grueling process. And no matter how well Mary believes she’s doing in the classroom, increasingly she will be judged by how well her students perform on standardized tests.
All teachers in America are under threat by those who presume to know best how to improve academic learning, though they may be furthest removed from the educational enterprise, what I call the crucial interface between teacher and pupil. New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg offers us the latest initiative, one designed to weed out under-performing teachers. Here’s the headline from this morning’s New York Times:
Many New York City Teachers Denied Tenure in Policy Shift
The accompanying article begins:
Nearly half of New York City teachers reaching the end of their probations were denied tenure this year, the Education Department said on Friday, marking the culmination of years of efforts toward Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s goal to end “tenure as we know it.”
To many of us, such measures, however draconian, seem reasonable. After all, very few of us are guaranteed employment security. We may think ourselves fortunate to land a job and even more so if we retain it over time. Why should teachers enjoy the same privilege as Supreme Court judges?
Yet, this is certainly not the Finnish way. Nor will Bloomberg’s harsh strategy improve academic performance. And the reason is as simple as it may appear impossible: successful reform is all about preparing teachers before they enter the classroom and not afterwards. But that’s not all.
What is the purpose of education? That should be first and foremost in any effort to change the system. Here is Sahlberg’s suggested answer:
Create a community of learners that provides the conditions that allow all young people to discover their talent.
Huh? No accountability? No high stakes testing? No rewards and punishment? No consequences for underperformance? Nope. Finland has none of the above.
To understand why requires a completely different mindset. The Finns have established a selection and training process that yields that only the best and the brightest teach their children. Once successful candidates enter the classroom they are judged professional, with all the prestige and respect accorded doctors and lawyers and architects, if not more so.
But as I mentioned above, the Finnish educational system exists within a broader context, one that is clearly and intensely social democratic. The Finns believe in equality and willingly tax themselves for generous public services. Again, so un-American. Oh, and I should add that nearly one hundred percent of Finnish teachers belong to a labor union, one that is part of the solution and not the problem.
Sahlberg:
The Finnish Way of educational change should be encouraging to those who have found the path of competition, choice, test-based accountability, and performance-based pay to be a dead end. The future of Finnish education described above can moreover offer an alternative means to customized learning. For the Finns, personalization is not about having students work independently at computer terminals. The Finnish Way is to tailor the needs of each child with flexible arrangements and different learning paths. Technology is not a substitute but merely a tool to complement interaction with teachers and fellow students.
As a countervailing force against the global educational-reform movement driving school systems around the world, the Finnish Way reveals that creative curricula, autonomous teachers, courageous leadership and high performance go together. The Finnish Way furthermore makes plain that collaboration, not conflict, with teacher unions leads to better results. The evidence is clear and so should be the road ahead. [pg. 144 of Finnish Lessons]
Ironically, the modern Finnish education system draws its intellectual foundations from an American philosopher, John Dewey. Fancy that. Sahlberg invited a U.S. professor, Seymour Sarason to visit Finnish schools and universities. This was a few years ago. At the end of his of his observations and interviews, Sarason told Sahlberg:
Why did you bring me here? Your school system to me looks very close to what John Dewey had in mind and what I’ve been writing about teaching and schools for the last three decades.
Arne Duncan, Mayor Bloomberg, G.W. Bush, Barack Obama, and a host of governors and other politicians offer nothing of value when it comes to reforming our schools. The solution, it seems, is on our library shelves under Dewey.
___________
* Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland, by Pasi Sahlberg (p. 132)
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Excellent post! I’ve always wondered why schools from my region (South East Asia) tend to follow the American paradigm when there’s actually the Finnish model as a better alternative. Wrote about it also in my blog, http://failoftwocities.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/education-against-competition/
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Great post!!!
Thank you for this Interesting article. Education is often not about learning any more. Learning for me is about being passionate, excited and very interested about something, And most importantly the free will to choose what one wants to learn. It is also possible for teachers/trainers to make class content interesting but only if they themselves find the content/subject interesting and are motivated. I’ve been a teacher and then a trainer for many years. I could quite easily bring all the motivational stuff into my training courses as a trainer, but as a teacher it was much harder. Too many rules and regulations about what you can or can’t do…..
Maybe I should move to Finnland…
I find that I have been thinking about this topic for quite some time as both of my brothers are teachers. One teaches in the states where his pension is gutted and pay is cut and he is blamed when his students do poorly (though this is rare as he is recognized statewide as a great teacher) and the other teaches in Thailand which despite being fairly xenophobic, when people find out he is a teacher they buy him drinks and welcome into their homes for dinner. Our culture no longer reveres its educators and our children no longer feel respect and awe towards the institution of learning.
“And no matter how well Mary believes she’s doing in the classroom, increasingly she will be judged by how well her students perform on standardized tests.” A number of decades ago, that was even the way teachers’ salaries were rationed: according to the performance of students on the tests they took. The better the performance, the better the pay. Great article.
A blog post truly worthy of being Freshly Pressed!!!
How is this data gathered? Because I know that America tests the entire population. (or pretty close) Does Finland test their entire population? I have a sneaking suspicion that we are comparing our entire population to the best and brightest of the world.
Thank you for such an interesting and powerful post. I’ve been telling my students for years about education in Finland, especially the investment into its educators. Kudos to your post! The creative component is indeed the catalyst toward the educational transformation this country (America) deserves. As virtually the entire nation has been adopting the national Common Core Standards, they have been designed to allow for “deeper thinking” within the curriculum. Sounds perfect, until teachers are coldly reminded that they will still be held responsible for the same old non-creative standardized testing. It is the biggest contradiction that spans from coast to coast. Teachers know this and thus, are unwilling to step too far into the creative pool because at the end of the day, they will either lose their salary or not have their contract renewed — or worse. Ultimately, the problems in our society, be they racial or in any other crevice, are societal, and very, very mental. The U.S. is consumed with finger pointing, primarily because to look too closely in the mirror at each person’s errors and human frailties, is far too uncomfortable.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Yes, Finland is a great example of how to educate children and there is a wide gap between Finland and America’s cultures. However, in the US, every public school teacher should walk out and demand respect and the truth about the achievements in Education in this country before returning to the classroom.
Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s inner circle in the Nazi Party, once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will come to believe it.”
The big lie I’m talking about is what I keep reading and hearing about the public schools in America being broken.
You see, it all depends on how the facts are presented. The critics of public education have a loud voice and use language that shows the glass half empty instead of about 90% full, which is more accurate. Once all the facts about high-school graduation rates, the perception changes dramatically.
To achieve this, one must start more than a century back and chart the progress.
I’ll start with 1900 when the total number of high school graduates in the US numbered 16,000 of 815,000 seventeen-year olds.
In 1920, 311,000 graduated from high school or 16.8% of the total which was 1,855,000
In 1940, 1,221,000 or 50,8% of 2,403,000 graduated.
In 1960, 1,858,000 or 69.5% of 2,672,00 graduated.
In 1980, 3,043,000 or 71.4% of 4,262,00 graduated.
Source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf
After 1970, high school graduation rates level off and fluctuated but stayed pretty close.
in 2009, 75.5% of high school students that started as freshman graduated.
In addition, In 2009, some 89.8 percent of 18- through 24-year-olds not enrolled in high school had received a high school diploma or alternative credential
How does this compare with other countries?
In 2008, the U.S. high school graduation rate was lower than the rates of ten countries: The United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Finland and Denmark.
Source: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/03/how-u-s-graduation-rates-compare-with-the-rest-of-the-world/
However, there are 193 countries represented in the UN, putting the United States High School graduation rate in the top 5.69% of all the nations that are members of the UN. That means 94.31% of the Earth’s countries have lower high school graduation rates.
When do we see these types of comparison from the media or critics of public education? Never
The next question is, “What is the political and economic agenda of these critics and a media that seems controlled by the critics?”
dd your thoughts here… (optional)
Reblogged this on Impybat's Emporium and commented:
Amen to all of this.
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The Finland high mark was mentioned in Smithsonian. The ideas are far reaching, http://healingsciencetoday.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/getting-back-up-on-our-feet/
Thanks for keeping it before thought.
I think Canada is proof, at least, whatever other things may or may not be true of the educational system there, that the people who’ve been responding from a white supremacist view to this blog are entirely in the wrong. Whatever may be the true problem with the American situation, that is, it has nothing to do with the number of non-whites in our educational system, nothing to do with the so-called “dragging down” of white people, etc. Canada has just as diverse a population as the United States does, and outperforms us on the scores in every category. So Finland’s success likewise has nothing to do with having a “monoracial” national community. Many things may be true: it may be more challenging to teach well when you are also coping with a language translation problem. That may be true. But what is not true is any characterization of non-whites as less intelligent. Not only is intelligence a race or ethnic-group free issue (i.e., people are more or less intelligent due to a series of intangibles), but education and intelligence are two different things as well. Many people have what could be called a sort of native or natural intelligence, and yet they may be unable to afford a good education to develop their intelligence skills further. I am not a sort of person who likes to fight over many issues, but while I’m not trying to challenge anyone simply for the sake of the challenge, I didn’t feel that I could continue to enjoy this excellent blog without making my own opinion clearer.
this oddly reminds me of the big speech in the first episode of the newsroom. obviously not entirely the same but the whole americans do things backwards theme is still there. thanks for sharing. also..woo canada!
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China did better than America on PISA, and they are much poorer than both the US and Finland and their approach to teaching is close to the exact opposite of Finland’s.
The lesson here is that there’s only so much you can do to improve test performance if the brains and IQ’s are lacking.
wonderful to see these ideas make ‘Freshly Pressed’; congratulations. Just right, it IS a relief to know that there IS a successful alternative to going up the hill backwards, where education heads. The same ‘overgrowth’-reform is picking up speed now in the UK – makes me old and irrelevant way before my time or my chance …
As a teacher, I find the issue troubling. Education funding decreases as a part of the budget, yet we are expected to use state of the art technology (which not all teachers have) to be engaging, and class sizes keep creeping up, and we take many days each year not to instruct but to test. There is much to learn from Finland, but perhaps a closer parallel is our neighbors to the north. Canada’s test scores on the same chart are right behind Finland’s. I I wonder if skeptics could relate to them a bit more…. Nice writing.
IQ isn’t the issue, White Genocide is the issue.
ASIA FOR THE ASIANS, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, WHITE COUNTRIES FOR EVERYBODY!
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
I like the post. But I really think US should have done better in science and math {two favorite subjects}
I don’t know if USA could copie the Finn Way but i sure it would love to climb to the top position. Rather than copy the Finn Way it should copy the Finn’s purpose of the education:
“Create a community of learners that provides the conditions that allow all young people to discover their talent.”
i not sure of that having an Ipad makes someone smarter but that’s exactly how a teachers’s magazine like Edutopia incessantly promote. But i probably don’t know enough but i’d like to admit that it is healthy to see Americans specking out.
Nevertheless, (and out of the point) American aren’t alone. My originally country – Dominican Republic- have a huge educational mess and things might get even worse as the US’s ambassador in the country just announced they wiliness to help us to build a system to resembled the American Way…. (no pun intended)
The key is in stimulating the creative side of students.
That’s all you have to do. It sounds so magical that I am giddy. Stimulate a 85 IQ average minority brain and they will all become Harvard MBAs, or better yet Harvard M.Ed.s just like some Finn can. Not likely, not even as possible as it currently is. If Mitt Romney would grow a set, in response to the request for his tax returns from Obama who says “It’w what the people want and expect”, he would say “Fine you AA ——, right after your and Michelle’s educational records are released.”
OF course, you fail to mention that the Finns are also a highly monoracial, Scandic Culture, with above average IQ’s, whereas the ‘multicultural morass’ that is AmeriKa, is decidedly, third world- especially in the inner city. It will be interesting to compare ONLY the Somalis and other East African scores in Finland, and see if they drop precipitously, just as American test scores have dropped, once the monoracial White American system was sabotaged, starting in the late 1960′s. But that would mean owning up to defective IQ’s in the non-White population, something no American academic has had the balls to do up till now.
Thanks for your wonderful blog. I agree that we could well do with a lesson from Finland about being more culturally responsible, and perhaps paying a litttle more in taxes in order to get the best teachers and educational system. It’s certainly a goal worth striving for (and after all, we have a basic primer in John Dewey’s book).
No need for “performance measures” and other attempts at accountability when you start with intelligent teachers who are properly educated and trained. What a concept.
Thank you for this.
P.S. With regard to re-educating this nation? We have to start re-educating our local governments, then our state representatives, senators & governors, and finally our federally elected government officials. We’re all to blame if we don’t do anything to make change. Obama is only one man, but educators and activists for better education number in the millions. There are more ways to communicate than ever before—even when this WP article was written. It’s time to start contributing to the benefit of humanity not distracting from it. Thank you for reading.
Here’s great article that includes the educational opportunities in Finland, which by the way, is not a socialist state as many Americans believe.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080502015.html
I also have to share the last paragraph of this article to make that point that “in reality”, America & Finland are not that far apart philosophically, but if you’re talking about religion or culture, we are indeed NOT very much alike:
“One fundamental Finnish value sounds a lot like an American principle — “to provide equal opportunities in life for everyone,” as Pekka Himanen, a 31-year-old intellectual wunderkind in Helsinki, put it. Himanen, a product of Finnish schools who got his PhD in philosophy at 21, argues that Finland now does this much better than the United States, where he lived for several years while associated with the University of California in Berkeley.”
Imagine—getting a PhD in Philosophy at age 21—wouldn’t that be great reason for change? Let’s get that Dewey book dusted off and start re-educating this nation!
+1
Canada, which does quite well on the lists you’ve posted also has strong teacher unions, doesn’t offer a lot of “choice” and doesn’t have performance based pay. The only thing we really have is the “test based accountability” which was introduced, by and large, about 10 years ago. I doubt Canada’s relative performance is related solely to the lack of “choice”, teachers unions and performance based pay; however, strong teacher unions, etc. clearly aren’t the cause of all of an educational system’s problems if many school systems excel with them.
Excellent post! It’s wonderful when someone actually puts research into their blog. Teaching is a very noble and important profession and it is sad to see that in the US it is definitely not treated as such.
Well captured. The key is in stimulating the creative side of students. As a student I enjoyed school the most, when my creative side was challenged. Standardized tests just show the bright how to pass, and that’s totally different from receiving an education.
Sir, your thoughts are certainly revolutionary in this country that is so afraid of diverting from the status quo in terms of educational reform. I love John Dewey and his ideas, and I want to learn a lot more about the Finnish system. Great article
You make a great argument.
I love this post! Go John Dewey and constructivist learning theory! I teach in Canada and we have a more student centered philosophy than the US but we could certainly learn from the Finns.
Excellent post! You are right about America too, we just can’t get outside our stupid box long enough to see what actually works. Crime and Punishment does not.
Excellent article. I am definitely interested in education and specifically education in the United States. I feel we are losing the battle and efforts to regain leadership positions are failing also. The public schools in our area are very sad with drop-out rates very troublesome. Very troublesome. I am a mechanical engineer and see high school graduates entering universities that cannot compete. Even with remedial classes, they get so far behind they become frustrated and eventually change majors or drop our altogether. Something definitely needs to be done. It seems to me our congressmen are too busy getting reelected to care much about this issue. I will definitely become a daily visitor to your site. Great work.