
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - dirtyaura
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/#.Tv4NA-e7HkY.mailto
======
ender7
It's important to remember that the Finns implemented their new system for
_moral_ , rather than competitive reasons. Their resulting academic
performance was a pleasant side-effect. This is a critical distinction that
even this article seems to gloss over.

I went to the best private high school in my state. Before that, I attended an
elementary school whose tuition cost more than many people pay for a college
education. My parents were by no means rich, but were willing to spend a
significant portion of their yearly income on the education of their only
child.

I have also worked in schools of the other kind. The ones with metal
detectors. The ones where the administration's main preoccupation is not which
college their students will get into, but whether their students will graduate
high school at all.

Arguments that competition between schools and school systems is necessary in
order to maintain academic quality do not impress me. The quality of a child's
education should not be determined by how much money a parent is willing to or
is capable of paying. I am quite willing to let children to be buffeted by the
inequalities of capitalism in every other aspect of their lives (except,
perhaps, healthcare), but our current system is not only ineffective and
inefficient, it is _immoral_.

~~~
wnewman
You write, in comparing "our" (presumably US) system to the Finns that our
system is not only ineffective and inefficient, it is _immoral_.

Are you saying that non-internationalist socialism is inherently moral while
individual property rights and exchange are not? That morally speaking
someone's education should not be determined by who their parents are, but
should be determined by the nation to which their parents are subject? Would
you like to give a hint why?

The notion that individual economic rights are void while national economic
rights are valid is delicious for people whose most valuable asset is their
inherited citizenship or their power in nationalist institutions, so over the
last century or so enormous effort has been expended in trying to justify this
notion. However, the state of the art in such moral justifications does not
impress me. Is there a particular justification that you are not embarrassed
to be associated with?

The old internationalist socialism was screwed up in various vital ways, but
at least I can understand how an idealist could be attracted to it. In this
particular policy question, I can see how an idealist would attracted to the
idea of opening an educational program to everyone in the world. But you seem
to see clear moral superiority in a system which is open only to those who
inherited Finnish citizenship.

As socialist ideas spread in practical politics, internationalist ideas were
almost completely abandoned. (See e.g. how large transfer payments within
nations are compared to how large foreign aid is, or how interested people are
in Gini coefficients within nations compared to globally.) This doesn't stop
modern noninternationalist socialists from regularly appealing to the old
internationalist rhetoric for justification, but that's dishonest. (It's also
circumstantial evidence for how weak the moral arguments for noninternalist
socialism are, or more precisely, how the ones which aren't hopelessly weak
tend to be strong enough to "justify" various of the horrors of the twentieth
century, or various older nastiness like heriditary aristocracy or slavery.
Classical liberalism and universalist socialism differ in whether "positive
rights" and equality of outcome are better than ordinary negative rights and
equality under the law, but justifications for both tend to appeal to a
general idea of equal rights of all humans. To justify noninternationalist
socialism of the usual heritable citizenship sort, you have to break that and
find a way to justify hereditary privilege.)

Note also that essentially all those moral arguments for national economic
rights are subject to various classic moral questions against how to get
individual economic rights quite right. E.g., it is a classic difficult
question how to assign individual property rights initially in a morally
satisfying way. This question doesn't get any easier when it comes to
assigning property rights to individual noninternalist socialist nations in a
morally satisfying way. (And to it is added the new question of how individual
people are to be assigned to such nations in a morally satisfying way.)

There are defensible _practical_ justifications for the conclusion that
individual people shouldn't have individual economic rights but that
individual nations should, in particular the observation that strongly
collectivist nations punched above their weight in some of the wars of the
20th century. (There are also arguments based on the supposed inefficiency of
a free market, but those have fared so poorly in reality that most people no
longer advance them, at least without couching them in calculated vagueness or
doublespeak.) But you seem to be appealing not to some empirical practical
justification, but to some abstract moral justification, and I am unable to
guess which you might have in mind.

~~~
ender7
My use of the word "immoral" was meant to be within the context of a single
society, not with the world at large. My argument is that current US society
has created a de-facto class system where a significant percentage of the
population is forced to go to schools that are so bad that they're barely
better than not going to school at all. Here, "forced" means that one's
parents either can't afford to send you to a good private school or move to a
location with good public schools, or is unwilling to do so.

Students at these schools are, through no fault of their own, largely
disenfranchised from participating in society in anything but a menial manner.
The ideal image of the guy who didn't even go to high school but went on to
found a corporate empire is fading - the people who are founding the empires
nowadays tend to have had at least a little college schooling, much less a
high school diploma.

Meanwhile, the positions of wealth and respect in our society are reserved for
the relatively small portion of society who get a good education (exception:
professional athletes & music stars). I classify this system as _immoral_ , as
it involves one part of a society preying upon another part, and then using
its advantage to ensure continued advantage in the future. I would not shed a
single tear if such groups lost the economic right to continue doing so.

More practically, however, it's hard to spend any amount of time in an average
public high school (yes, there are some very good ones, but I'm talking about
the average here) and not come to the conclusion that something is very, very
wrong with the education system in this country. The sad fact is that a really
bad school can seriously damage the rest of a child's life. Some few might
escape the damage and go on to do great things, but most will carry the mark
until they die, working in a series of soulless shitty jobs that they neither
enjoy nor respect.

~~~
michaelcampbell
"forced" and "unwilling to do so" seem at odds to me.

[edit] I don't get the downvote, but this discussion is getting so emotional
for so many, I guess I should have expected it. My point is, I agree with his
point, up until he starts redefining words to mean completely opposite what
they normally mean. Forced being used to describe "too poor to move" - fine,
but being used to describe "don't want to", that's just tailoring language to
fit your preconceived notion.

------
DanielBMarkham
Assuming there's something here, which is a bit of a stretch for me, let's ask
the obvious question: where else has this been tried? Did it work? Better
still, how do we know we're being equal enough?

This is not Marxist by any means, but I have to use Marxism as an example. The
problem with Marxism is that whenever it doesn't work, people say it wasn't
tried enough. In the examples where it does work, there's always some special
attribute or thing that causes it to, like a very small sample size. Yes it
works in some cases and at some scale, but it never really works in a
practical way. It's just a cluster of feelings about fairness in search of an
practical application. This is, by definition, a "loose analogy". Finland has
schools. So do we. Finland does all these things to make their schools better.
So should we?

I love Finland, and I admire the Fins I've worked with. But I think we can
play this game of "If we were only like Europe" only so much without actually
having to apply some critical thinking skills. We are not like Europe -- as
much as we'd like to be. I've been reading articles that claim we can improve
various parts of society if we were only like some European country my entire
life. If I didn't know better, I'd think a lot of academics spend time in
Europe and become Europhiles the rest of their lives, much to the rest of our
detriment. Seems like no matter how hard we try at these things, we can never
be like European country X. There's probably a good reason for that. My best
guess is that this has something to do with culture, but I'm not sure. If you
want a country of Fins, perhaps you should consider moving to Finland?

So yes, maybe there's something here, but I have no idea what it is. Does the
author suggest outlawing private schools? Perhaps indoctrinating our national
culture with pithy slogans like "accountability is what's left when you take
responsibility away"? Tighter control over immigration so the culture is more
cohesive? Greater oil revenues? Decrease our population to 1/70th of its
current size? More alcohol consumption? What is there that's here that we can
take away and use today aside from a general admiration of how nice Finland
is?

~~~
arkx
Is public school teacher a desireable profession in the US? Is it anywhere
near the level of prestige associated with lawyers or doctors? How is the pay?
This is one of they key differences that's repeated in nearly every one of the
numerous articles I've read about the Finnish school system, and it's the one
single thing US really could do a lot about.

~~~
afterburner
US teachers get crap pay.

~~~
learc83
That is a myth. You may believe they should be paid more, but when you account
for the amount of hours the work and benefits their total compensation is very
competitive with private sector jobs that require similar levels of education.

~~~
afterburner
"Account for"? The pay reflects the requirements. I never claimed crap pay was
a cause. But it is clear it demonstrates that the American system does not
prioritize quality in teaching positions.

~~~
learc83
>"Account for"?

Yes teachers work around 190 days per year and in my area (metro Atlanta),
they start off at $40k+ and around $50k with a Masters degree.

They are guaranteed raises so that they can easily get up to $60k (in today's
money--more if they have graduate degree) by the time they retire, and after
30 years they can retire with 60% pay (most of them can retire in their very
early 50s instead of 60+ like the rest of us). They get more time off than
nearly any other profession.

Based on salary alone the average teacher makes 57% more than the overall
state average salary, and when you add in their benefits package it goes up
even higher.

With cost of living in my area that is definitely not "crap" pay.

~~~
afterburner
You misunderstood my quote marks. I don't care if you account for hours
worked, the net pay in the end doesn't seem to attract the quality you need in
teachers, nor give them the respect they deserve. Also, your numbers seem
suspect. The median pay for teachers is around $40,000 in the US. _Median_ ,
not starting.

<http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary>

------
yummyfajitas
The article claims Finland focuses on equality, and that immigration hasn't
had much effect on aggregate education outcomes yet.

 _Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to
become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the
remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys
across the same period._

This is only because there are still very few immigrants in Finland. In
actuality, immigrants to Finland score about 50 points lower on Pisa than
Finnish natives (about double the gap in the US).

(For comparison, the gap between Americans of European descent and non-
immigrant Finns in Pisa scores is 22 pts, and the gap between European
Americans and Greeks (the lowest performing European nation) is 46 pts. )

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

~~~
fdschoeneman
Excellent observation. The Pisa study data shows one conclusion about
education in America: Different racial groups perform at different levels. We
are succeeding with some minority groups and failing with others. Whites in
America test higher than Finns in Finland. Where we are failing is in
educating our African American kids. The entire article relies on people not
reading the data from the Pisa study, and for those who have read the data to
ignore what it shows, from some misplaced desire not to seem racist.

~~~
droithomme
A really interesting finding in studies of homeschooled kids is that blacks
and whites do pretty much the same, whereas in school blacks do much worse.
This is also completely decorrelated from whether the parent teachers have any
background in education, how much they spend, or even whether they have
college degrees. I see this as evidence that outcomes are not because of
intrinsic genetic factors but because of systematic bias within institutional
education. Bias is unlikely to be intentional, but it likely does exist and
has significant influence on results.

~~~
Game_Ender
That follows the studies in cited in Freakanomics showing it's the parental
involvement which is the real factor. If the parent cares about education the
child is much more likely to end up well educated.

------
icarus_drowning
Regardless of whether you think it is moral to abolish private educational
institutions, there's good reason to look at other aspects of the Finnish
education model rather than this one single point.

Finland does not use multiple choice exams and has literacy standards that are
clear and simple. Contrast this to the U.S. model, where literacy standards
are a byzantine mess, and are often completely disconnected from a student's
inability to _read_ and _write_.

Mike Schmoker has addressed this in his excellent book _Focus_ , where he
writes:

"[Finnish] success, according to observers, is a result of how much time
students spend actually reading during the school day. They found one Finnish
student who, upon returning from a year in U.S. schools, had to repeat an
entire grade. This is because in the United States, instead of reading and
writing, she and her fellow students spent their time preparing for multiple-
choice tests or working on "projects" where students were instructed to do
things like "glue this to this poster for an hour"..."

I teach in a charter school. We have mandated standards requiring us to assign
students X numbers of hours of reading/writing per semester. Students who
leave our school and then re-enroll in later years are often entire _grades_
behind, and have often not been assigned _any writing or reading of any kind_
during their time in the "mainstream" public school district.

I suppose my argument isn't so much that private schools are/aren't a good and
moral thing, but rather that there are many far less controversial methods of
improving the U.S. school system than abolishing private education.

------
pg
The article mentions another difference between the Finland and the US that is
equally extreme and probably more directly related to results:

"teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools
in the country"

~~~
brc
That is exactly what I thought when I read the article. Nobody seems to be
mentioning the high status for teachers, high pay and selective intake.

Given that the teachers interact with the students more than anything else,
and most people would agree that better teachers produce better students, the
chances of this making material impacts on the educational outcomes seems
quite obvious to me at least. After all, we're just talking about a variation
on the old 'pay peanuts get monkeys' meme.

I'm sure if the average teaching salary doubled, the positions would be more
sought after by young graduates. And if the positions were more sought after,
there would be more competition and thus less problems with teacher
performance.

~~~
GFischer
I remember it being mentioned the last time Finland's success was discussed:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2917303>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1249852>

(in an interview I linked):

"Asked the key to success, (Finnish ambassador) Seppo Tunturi did not hesitate
to answer: "The educator is highly appreciated by society. Young people see it
as a profession with a future. "Statistics show that 10% of the top high
school students choose this route. (Uruguayan university rector) Grünberg said
this is a feature shared by other high quality educational systems, including
South Korea, where teaching attracts 5% of the top high school graduates. "In
other countries they would be brain surgeons or lawyers, but they are teachers
or teachers in Finland," said the rector."

"In addition, training is very demanding. It takes a college degree (4 years)
and an Masters in education (2 years). In 2010, more than 6,600 applicants
competed for 660 seats to prepare as primary school teachers."

<http://rigofa2011.blogdiario.com/1292241206/> (in Spanish)

------
Jun8
One interesting thing about student performance in the US is that on the
average it's not that bad early on (e.g. in grade school) but then takes a
sharp dive. It is amazing to me what such comparison articles do not take into
account: the toxic, sports-based culture in American highschools.

As a foreigner, when I encountered how sports culture derives high school and,
in continuation, college student mindset. In high school, athletes and
cheerleaders pretty much rule. Every high school in all countries have
popular, good looking kids but the the esteem these kids have in the US, I
think, is unheard of in other places.

~~~
tdfx
I don't really think it's limited to high school and college. The average Joe
Sixpack American is likely more concerned with his nearest professional
football team's performance than any other singular element of his life. I was
born and raised in the northeast US, played sports in high school and college,
but still have not come to terms with how obsessed most people seem to be with
sports (both their kids' sports and professional sports). I did receive social
benefits from sports for quite some time, but I was never able to understand
it.

------
hugh4life
"The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values
equality more than excellence. "

This is absolute complete nonsense... America does worse than Finland because
America is racially diverse... and Finalnd is the most "bigoted" of all the
Scandinavian countries. America's education system is just fine... actually it
is excellant.

Just look at the 2009 PISA scores. American Whites do better than all other
"white countries" except for Finland. America Asians do better than all other
Asian countries except for the elite part of China(Shanghai). American blacks
do better than all other black countries. American Hispanics do better than
all other Hispanic countries.

[http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize...](http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize/images/James_Fulford/121910_ss001c.png)

~~~
brown9-2
Is this your idea of excellence? Every individual race in America scoring
better than the "original" countries they came from dozens or hundreds of
years ago?

What about the disparity of scores between the races, or income levels, within
America? Is this of no concern?

------
tokenadult
I'll have to check the published literature for what it says about reading
instruction in Finnish. Finland has a minority of native speakers of Swedish
(not a closely cognate language). Finnish (Suomi) and Swedish are co-official
as national languages in Finland.

[http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-
etiquette/f...](http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-
etiquette/finland-country-profile.html)

Finnish, by far the majority language, has an alphabetic writing system that
is recently reformed enough that it has very consistent sound-symbol
correspondences.

<http://www.omniglot.com/writing/finnish.htm>

The late John DeFrancis

[http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions-
Co...](http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions-
Comparisons/dp/0824812077)

and current researcher and author Stanislas Dehaene

[http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-
Read/dp/0143...](http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-
Read/dp/0143118056/)

develop historical and international comparisons, backed up by brain imaging
in Dehaene's book, to make the argument that initial reading instruction
should at its best focus students' attention to sound-symbol correspondences
in the written language taught in primary reading instruction.

But initial reading instruction in the United States specifically and in
English-speaking countries in general is only half-heartedly done that way,

<http://learninfreedom.org/readseri.html>

<http://www.mackinac.org/5365>

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024599/>

and when school pupils in English-speaking countries struggle to learn to read
independently, they are also likely to struggle to learn other subjects
thoroughly.

The best current information I have suggests that initial reading instruction
in Finland, whether in Finnish or in Swedish, is better done than much reading
instruction in the English-speaking world, and that advantage may account for
much of the national advantage Finland enjoys (and partially explain why
immigrant families who use Finnish as a second language are the bottom group
found in national-level sample testing of Finland for international surveys).

~~~
notahacker
I agree that there's probably some credibility to arguments that English
students underperform because of difficulties in learning to read an unusually
inconsistent written language.

That said, Finns themselves tend to learn speak and read English rather well
as a second language by the time they leave school; a practical necessity for
international business or travel but not very easy considering the lack of
cognates shared between the languages. And despite its consistent orthography
Finnish has enough other sources of complexity to be rated as a fiendishly
difficult language to pick up as a second language.

On the subject of phonics, it sounds like UK primary education is due to head
in the opposite direction to US with compulsory phonics instruction for
youngsters, including the hugely controversial recommendation for standardised
tests on the ability to pronounce made-up words. I doubt we'll be overtaking
Finland any time soon though.

~~~
martinkallstrom
Not only do everyone learn English as a second language, most students also
study a third language like German, Spanish or French for five or six years.
Which is not to say that everybody becomes a fluent speaker in that language,
but it is the norm to make an effort.

------
27182818284
Whenever a successful act is presented to Americans they tend to throw out the
same generic defense we used to see on technology forums all the time: "That's
good for them, but that won't scale for us!"

------
RandallBrown
Are other countries really doing that much better than the United States? It
seems like most of the worlds top Universities are in the US and filled with
students mostly from, the US.

Sure, they may score better on the tests for comparing students across the
world, but it seems like the same people saying this are the same ones
complaining about standardized testing in the US.

~~~
BerislavLopac
They are top universities in only two aspects: they provide connections and --
particularly some, like Harvard and Stanford -- the ecosystem for making
success later in life. In terms of pure education, most US universities are
far below many others elsewhere.

~~~
spamizbad
> In terms of pure education, most US universities are far below many others
> elsewhere.

Is there any empirical evidence supporting this assertion?

If you look at Business School rankings, for example, US Universities are 5 of
the top 10. Source: [http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-
ran...](http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-
rankings-2011)

Quacquarelli Symonds University Rankings also have US Universities rated quite
high [http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-
uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-
rankings)

7 of the top 10 for CS are US: [http://www.topuniversities.com/university-
rankings/world-uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-
rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/engineering/computer-
science)

6 of the top 10 for Medicine: [http://www.topuniversities.com/university-
rankings/world-uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-
rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/life-
sciences/medicine)

6 of the top 10 for Philosophy: [http://www.topuniversities.com/university-
rankings/world-uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-
rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/arts-
humanities/philosophy)

~~~
qdog
Oh get out of here with your facts, everyone "knows" how bad the US education
system is.

Part of the deal is the US is not at all like most other countries, I've
mentioned we provide public schooling for all children, which some countries
don't. The US is also very large and diverse. Texas, for instance, is
generally quite low on the public educations scores for public schools
overall, but some of the best schools in the entire US, regardless of public
or private, are public schools in Texas! You just have to live in the right
school district, which almost always mean you live in the right family with a
lot of money.

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/2011/americas...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/2011/americas-
best-high-schools.html)

I'm not sure about the #1 and #2 schools, but further down, Highland Park in
Dallas and Westwood and Westlake in Austin are all public schools.

I think it is almost impossible to have a good talk about education on HN,
because we are essentially part of the 1% as far as abilities go, and most of
us probably got along fine in school with any effort (or even no effort). So
the bias tends to be against education. However, I've now had a son who is
dyslexic, and the lack of good options even for people with money is
dissapointing. The US school system is still very good for the top of the
class, it's the bottom that gets let down. At any school system of any size
that I've encountered (and I haven't been to very poor inner-city school),
opportunities for the smart kids are always there. It's the rest of the kids
that are going to struggle, and those that can't find the motivation.

------
floppydisk
Out of curiosity, did the PISA study compare the level of parental involvement
in a child's education between the countries? This NYT,
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-
ho...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-about-
better-parents.html) , article has a link to PISA conclusions about parental
involvement from a 2009 study and shows that children with involved parents
tend to do better academically.

While we're dealing with complex cultural systems with thousands of moving
parts, reforming the education system to improve parental involvement might
yield significant gains. As it stands now, the system offers little to no
incentive for parents to actively get involved with their kid's education. You
place the kid(s) on the bus at 7 in the morning and don't see 'em again until
3-4pm or later if they do after school activities. No incentive to get
involved at the school during the day or afterwards. As a personal anecdote,
I've met several people who view public education as nothing more than day
care, kids in at 7, free time until 4pm or later with no involvement outside
of "mandatory" meetings.

------
jks
One thing that many commentators seem to ignore is what exactly the PISA tests
measure. For example, the PISA math problems
(<http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/38/51/33707192.pdf>) are very specifically
meant to assess how well students can solve pretty easy problems that could
occur in their lives and where basic math literacy is needed, and the PISA
exam is given to a random sample of all students. Contrast this with the
International Mathematical Olympiad (results at <http://www.imo-
official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=FIN>) which measures how well the very
best students do on very hard problems.

It should not be surprising that an education system emphasizing social
equality instead of individual excellence performs well when you measure how
well the average student does on an easy problem. It just shows that Finland's
and PISA's values align well with each other.

------
MaxGabriel
I can't find it, but there was a great post on HN awhile back about how
Finland doesn't really know _what_ makes its schools so successful. Thus,
articles like this pull some facet out of the hat as the key differentiator.

There was a good comment, suggesting that instead of modeling who has the
highest test scores, instead model who is most successful at climbing the
ranks of PISA. That's probably a better way of figuring out what contributes
to success, because there are fewer independent variables.

------
tokenadult
Previous submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3405988>

------
yason
Here's more to cross unknown factors out: a very interesting article on how
the Finnish language itself affects schooling and has significance in PISA
results.

Finland and Estonia share similar lingual roots and they both rank relatively
great, even if Estonia is a lot poorer country than Finland. Yet, the Swedish
speaking people in Finland fare relatively worse than Finnish speaking people,
even if the schooling system is exactly the same.

<http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/>

------
ggwicz
\- No standardized tests (except one) \- Individualized grading by teachers \-
Less homework and days of school \- More emphasis on creative play \- etc.

No, I don't think "equality" is the main thing we Anericans are overlooking.
_We're overlooking freedom._ Trust in people and children to be curious and
learn, and let them be free enough to do it. So many of the big bureaucracies
put in place here in the US to "help" education just legislate the shit out of
schools and regulate everything. Yikes.

~~~
ggwicz
And before I here anything about "Anerican" I'm using my phone so I can't go
back and adjust the typo...

~~~
dasil003
I didn't even notice until you mentioned it. That said, what kind of phone are
you using? If you were using a decent American phone rather than a crappy
Finnish phone I bet you would be able to ;)

------
dcrom
What Americans are really ignoring is the idea that maybe someone can "hack"
education for the better.

Numbers and anecdotes aside, we all know in our guts a few things that are
beneficial to education: studying more, decreased distractions, (parental)
encouragement, high standards for technical subjects, and nurturing of
creativity. Every parent wants these things for their children.

The system in Finland has some of these things, but who cares why they have
them? You could copy some aspect of Finland and hope you get Finland's
results. You could copy some aspect of China and hope you get China's results.

We are trying to have the government build a model to explain WHY China's
students study more or to explain WHY Finnish students have less distractions
in the classroom. Are you confident about the government's ability to model
this? I'm not sure I'd trust the world's best statisticians to figure it out.

The main point is that while everyone thinks they're an expert on how to get
the above mentioned qualities into a school, simply finding a school that has
them and then sending your child to it is a REALLY, REALLY easy way to get
your child a good education. However, under the current system, _you are
discouraged from sending your child to said school_.

Suppose your friend used a government chalkboard for a relational database.
He's really upset about its performance. He hears about Oracle's fast
databases, so he adds an index etc to his chalkboard, since queries with an
index are faster. Maybe his chalkboard will catch up, and maybe it won't.
MySQL is down the street offering what he really wants (a cheap, fast
database) but he doesn't want to use it. He's worried that using MySQL will
cause a decline in the quality of the chalkboards and leave all his neighbors
with a piece of cardboard instead. He would rather spend his time mimicking
Oracle until his chalkboard gets fast, and trying to figure out WHY Oracle is
fast.

Shouldn't he just let the innovative minds behind MySQL sell (or give away)
what they've built, and just know that their product has all of the features
he wants? If it doesn't have what he wants, then he can use his chalkboard.

Are we all really afraid of that? An educational process is technology too,
even if it's not software. This community is in love with software that solves
problems, but is very cautious of schools that can solve problems.

------
valgaze
Sal from Khan Academy said it best: "I would make the US Education system more
American (promoting creativity, ownership of learning, and independence) and
less Prussian (moving together in an assembly line)."

------
hack_edu
Has anyone here had any experience hiring or working with grads of Finnish
schools? How about Master's/PhD level grads?

I'm curious how an employer or co-worker would view the quality of their
school's end product.

~~~
bergie
I employ a few Finns, but also lack the comparison to other cultures to be
able to tell. An interesting factor is that most Finnish men have also been
through military service sometime after high school.

~~~
Ironballs
Yes. Military service is compulsory in Finland. About 80% of males undergo
military service. The rest is either exempt for various reasons (medical) or
opt for a "civil" service in which one is essentially employed somewhere for
12 months with pay coming from the government.

As 80% is quite a high number, most is indeed correct here. Thus you will find
that regardless of one's education or background, it is safe to assume he also
has military training. (Myself, a Finn, I have a Master of Science in
mathematics and also a 2nd lieutenant in the Finnish Air Force.)

------
davekinkead
There is actually a very strong structural argument for why public goods such
as education and health, should be distributed equally:

If those in power have to use the same system as those they hold power over,
then they have a strong incentive and self interest to ensure that those
public goods are of a high standard.

This is not to say that public goods must be delivered by the state, but
rather there should no difference in opportunity of access (such as the
Finnish private schools that don't charge tuition).

------
jiggy2011
I think that in the UK our school system's failure to set a standard of
consistently adequate reading and writing skills for school leavers is a
partial cause of many of our problems.

I would estimate that close to 50% of our population are functionally
illiterate , by that I mean they are unable to put something into written (or
typed) words that can be easily parsed by the human brain with a non ambiguous
meaning. Look at the comments section of any British tabloid website for
evidence of this.

This then causes employers to make a university degree a pre-requisite for
many jobs that may not actually require one. If somebody has been able to pass
a degree course which requires essay writing then they are probably able to
send a professional email without looking like an idiot.

This then causes the government to create targets like "50% of Britains should
attend university" which of course feeds a spiral of debt that may not have
needed to exist if the standard of secondary education was high enough.

Personally I learned to read and write mainly by reading fiction books and
computer manuals followed by writing text based games (added bonus of learning
BASIC and C).

I think many things are best learned not by directly focusing on them but by
creating paths of learning that subconsciously teach "supporting" skills.

------
skylan_q
How about "because it's full of Finns"?

------
swaits
The author ignores the power and idiocy of public unions in public education.
Anyone interested in this topic should really watch the movie "Waiting for
Superman".

~~~
Cadsby
All teachers in Finland are unionized.

~~~
swaits
Have you seen "Waiting for Superman"? Is what you saw in that documentary the
same in Finland?

------
gamechangr
Oh the Irony.....

You lost me on the quote above the picture:

"The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values
equality more than excellence."

~~~
TomOfTTB
I could see how that line would tempt people to check-out of the article (and
I can't blame you). But I think there's a reality to it we should pay
attention to.

In a previous HN thread regarding this topic I asked why countries like
Finland haven't overtaken the U.S. as far as success. Given their education
system has been touted as dramatically better than ours for at least 20 years.

One of the replies I got was that these countries generate more well-rounded
individuals and that's why these countries tend to do better on happiness
surveys and such. And maybe that's true.

Maybe it's time to accept the reality that not all people want the same thing.
That Americans have been taught to strive for excellence and that inevitably
leaves others behind. While Finland values equality over all and is willing to
sacrifice a certain amount of societal wealth so as to not have kids who think
they need to work day and night to succeed.

~~~
droithomme
Finland's entire population is 5.36 million, close to the population of
Minnesota and a bit more than half of Los Angeles county's population of 9.86
million.

Finland does have a lot of inventions and technology they export.

For example, the majority of web servers in existence in the world, underlying
the entire world economy run an operating system originally created by a Finn.

Nokia was also a major player and innovator in cell phone and one of the first
truly widespread portable information managers.

Minnesota has 3M corporation of course.

Comparing Finland to the US is not a reasonable comparison. Comparing Finland
to Minnesota might be justifiable though.

~~~
TomOfTTB
You discredit your point with your examples. It doesn't take a huge population
to create most of the world's success. The U.S. population is dwarfed by that
of China yet very few people would argue China is more innovative than the
U.S.

Don't get me wrong, Linus Trovalds and Nokia are great examples. But they
aren't enough to make Finland a bed of innovation.

~~~
Eeko
> The U.S. population is dwarfed by that of China yet very few people would
> argue China is more innovative than the U.S.

Not yet.

Apparently the province of Shanghai has already surpassed the Finnish
educational success with their 23 million inhabitants. I have no doubt the
Chinese are not trying to replicate that system as much as they can.

Though I would still prefer the Finnish system with 5-6h school days for my
children, there is no reason to believe bigger systems would not be scalable
for improvement.

And as far as I know, the US system used to be way more competitive back in
the day. And we also have to think whether the educational depression is a
state or a trend... (<http://youtu.be/NXIR9ve0JU0>)

> Don't get me wrong, Linus Trovalds and Nokia are great examples. But they
> aren't enough to make Finland a bed of innovation.

Not yet.

The entire country pretty much started industrializing a generation ago. A few
big corporations in forestry and some high-tech is what brought us from the
stone-age. But such establishments tend to shackle a fair amount of brain in
such a small economy.

Given the record, I'm fairly optimistic of what will happen with all the brain
freeing up from Nokia. It was a valued company hiring around as much people
only in Finland (pop. 5m) than companies like Google hold globally. (pop. 7b)

~~~
bergie
_The entire country pretty much started industrializing a generation ago._

Not to mention that the bilateral trade with Soviet Union (that employed much
of the country until late 80s) didn't really promote innovation.

------
jongraehl
Maybe there's too much homework, too many hours in class, and not enough
physical movement / play in U.S. education. And it's probably true that
teachers at some especially bad schools have given up entirely.

However, I got tired of reading U.S. educational-silver-bullet fantasy writing
a long time ago.

------
jshou
Regarding the quote on Finnish not having a word for "accountability":
<http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3678>

~~~
Dylan16807
Some of the comments on there make a good argument for the idea. Interesting.

------
RyanMcGreal
This is my quote of the day:

> Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been
> subtracted.

------
aiscott
Personally, I think this one sentence from the article has a lot to do with
why US schools are less than good: [In Finland] "If a teacher is bad, it is
the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it."

In the US, if a teacher is bad and the school is public, not much can be done.
They certainly won't be fired.

Private schools, on the other hand, have more freedom in this regard.

I think the article made a lot of good points regarding creative play and
avoidance of heavy standardized testing.

~~~
nosse
It's really difficult to fire a teacher in Finland too. Practically impossible
if the teacher in question doesn't do violence to kids or come to work drunk.

~~~
rapala
It is not easy to lay off a public servant in Finland, but I think it is
mainly so because of the procedure required. Several written warnings need be
given that state the reason in plain text. Too often it just takes too much
balls from the principal to write down "n. n. does not perform his/hers duties
as a teacher in the required way because: ...". And a public servant can be
fired because of inappropriate behavior in his/hers free time.

