
Why my children were lucky to get accepted to a Finnish school in Qatar - sampo
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/why-my-children-were-lucky-to-get-accepted-to-a-finnish-school-in-qatar/article20284411/?page=all
======
rayiner
> In the past decade, it has channelled some of its staggering wealth into
> realizing its outsized ambitions: the World Cup in 2022

Very ambitious:
[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117818/qatar-2022-world-c...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117818/qatar-2022-world-
cup-pace-kill-4000-migrant-workers-says-espn) ("The documentary estimates
that, at the current rate, more than 4,000 migrant workers will die by the
time Qatar puts on the 2022 World Cup.")

~~~
jjoonathan
I wonder how slaves figure into the denominator of their "world’s highest per-
capita income". Is the country rich enough to count them as 1 person each?
3/5ths of a person? Do they omit them entirely?

Obviously they are evil irrespective of statistical games, but I want to know
if they are evil _and successful_ (in that they _could_ have prosperity for
everyone if they wanted) or if the success is a lie too.

~~~
centizen
Quatar does not consider their slaves to be a part of the population of Quatar
- they are essentially migrant workers who have had their passports
confiscated.

------
gambiting
Maybe I am giving in to what I read on the internet too much,but I wouldn't
want to work in Qatar no matter how much they paid me. And the last thing I
would want to be doing is bringing my daughters there. I feel the same way
about Saudi Arabia.

~~~
freehunter
Agreed. Even if it's one of the richest economies or the most developed Middle
Eastern country, they're still Wahhabi, they still ban alcohol for Muslims
(but allow it for tourists, because money), gay men can be imprisoned for five
years and/or flogged, religions other than Islam are discouraged, there's no
freedom of speech, slavery is legal and accepted, and women tourists have to
be reminded that shorts, leggings, short skirts, and tight clothing is not
acceptable to wear in public.

Sounds like a great place to raise your daughters. Even a great education
system can't overcome the oppression they will likely see in the streets on a
daily basis.

~~~
sliverstorm
_they still ban alcohol for Muslims (but allow it for tourists, because
money)_

I don't see what's wrong with this one. If Muslims don't drink alcohol, yet
don't try to stop other people from drinking it- well, that's how it _should_
be IMO.

~~~
tomp
The way I understand it, Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol, even if
they want to - i.e. the government stops _certain_ other people (the Muslims)
from drinking it, but not _other_ other people *tourists).

~~~
sliverstorm
Oh, interesting. Now, I wonder, is that ethically wrong? I mean, if you chose
to identify as Muslim, is someone holding you to the Muslim belief system
wrong?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I mean, if you chose to identify as Muslim, is someone holding you to the
> Muslim belief system wrong?

If I choose to identify as a Christian, is someone else forcibly holding me
accountable to _their_ interpretation of proper Christian behavior wrong?
Consider, for instance, if that interpretation includes a prohibition
(violations of which are punishable by death) on ever renouncing Christianity?
[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam#Qatar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam#Qatar)

------
nawitus
>In Finland, students aren’t subjected to standardized tests

This is incorrect, but seems to be repeated in most of these articles about
the Finnish education system.

>nor is it possible to fail a grade.

I don't know about the current state of affairs, but at least it was possible
to "fail a grade", even if it was really rare.

>In Finland, teaching is a highly prestigious profession, equivalent to
medicine or law.

I'd say that is exaggerated.

>The school days are shorter and students are almost never given homework.

I'd say homework is more frequent than that.

~~~
pasiaj
For me there was only 2 or 3 sets of standardized tests during 12 years of
school.

'No failing grades' isn't really considered a valuable aspect of the system.
It's more like a side effect.

Finnish teachers are paid better (relative to other jobs) compared to US. They
also have a ridiculous long summer vacation. There is no shortage of highly
qualified teachers. But doctors they are not.

~~~
igrekel
Is it really a vacation, I know in my part of Canada it isn't : they don't
work but they aren't paid either.

~~~
sampo
In Finland the school teachers teach from mid-August to end of May. They are
paid 12 months. How much they spend time on preparations, administration,
whatnot, during the summer months is their own business.

Also the Xmas holiday is about 2 weeks, and then in Finland we a this "skiing
holiday", 1 week in February.

------
walterbell
From the article:

 _" The final paradox of Finnish education only dawned on me when I received
the girls’ school calendars. At first, it looked a little thin. School began
at 7:30 every morning and ended at 1 p.m. No lesson appeared to last longer
than 45 minutes, after which 15 minutes was given for a break. The Finns
appeared to have several names for this down time. Besides “break” there was
“lunch,” “long break,” “breakies,” “mini break,” “extracurricular activities”
and (my personal favourite) “Golden time.”

The theory is that children learn just as much during unstructured play as
they do inside a formal classroom setting – arguably more. The Finnish system
flies in the face of the logic that poor student performance can be somehow
cured by increasing class time. In Finland, students don’t begin school until
the age of 7. The school days are shorter and students are almost never given
homework."_

~~~
jobu
These breaks seem incredibly important to me. My kids come home from school
exhausted and stressed out.

My kids have 4 minutes to get between classes, which are sometimes on a
different floor and several hundred yards apart. This means they have to carry
their books all day long because they don't have time for lockers, and barely
have time to visit a restroom. The teachers only give 3 bathroom passes a
quarter, so if your kid has a nervous bladder and takes a bit of time to pee
you have to get a doctor's note. For lunch they only have 20 minutes total -
which includes standing in line for their food, eating lunch, and then more
time standing in line to dump their trays. If they're late to the following
class then they get a tardy slip and detention after school on Friday.

The current schedule for schools in the US has more in common with prisons
than any real workplace environment.

~~~
walterbell
Yikes, is this policy set by school districts or states? Is any input accepted
from parents?

~~~
jobu
Seems to be pretty consistent for public schools, but the current school
district is the worst so far. The last one (in another state) was 5 minutes
between classes instead of 4 minutes, and 30 minutes for lunch instead of 20.

Parent input does have some effect - the lunch time at the previous school had
been 20 minutes as well, but parents complained because the kids needed more
time to eat the new healthier lunches. (It takes longer to chew fresh produce
than canned.)

The school's argument against longer breaks between classes has been that more
time leads to more drama and problems in the hallways, and there isn't enough
staff to monitor all of them.

~~~
walterbell
> It takes longer to chew fresh produce than canned

That's a 50% improvement in time for unscripted mindful awareness, thanks to
the physics of chewing fresh produce.

Parents need a centralized site where "winning arguments" are aggregated, to
improve the liquidity of decentralized debate with bureacracy.

------
spain
>students are almost never given homework.

I've always wondered where this misconception comes from.

\-- A Finn

------
CapitalistCartr
I finished US high school on a Friday, left for the US Air Force on Monday. We
learned more in Basic Training than any year of public school. Maybe more than
some two year periods. The difference was planning, training of our drill
instructors, and, most of all, expectations. The result was astounding.

~~~
myko
As someone who has been through basic training (Army, not AF) and public HS
within the US I have to say you must have gone to a really, really bad school
system. I don't see how a 2 month course where the main focus is on mental
toughness is the equivalent amount of learning as a year of HS coursework.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
The main focus wasn't on toughness. We spent about 8 hours per day in
classrooms learning. There was a fair bit of the mental toughness stuff, but
not the main focus. There's a reason the Army calls the AF the "Chairforce".

------
Ras_
Herein lies a major reason why early Finnish academic results are so uniform:

"“To be honest, we are not interested in a child’s academic skills at all.
From our perspective that would be silly,” she said. The motor skills tests,
by contrast, “show us a lot and help us diagnose any learning disabilities,”
she explained. If a learning deficit was detected, it didn’t count against the
child or banish her to a different classroom."

The article describes advanced methods of diagnosing learning decifits. Early
interventions pay off big time. When a kid is found to have some sort of a
problem, he/she will receive extra help within the normal classroom (e.g.
teacher's aide). That prevents the social circles from breaking up and usually
the better students learn even more by helping others. Few extra months of
early help to make troubled students into average performers is reflected well
in the PISA results. It has also societal effects (equality/equity). Best
students might not benefit nearly as much from extra attention than worst, but
in the western sphere gifted students are the main focus of attention. Finnish
school system makes everyone average, for better or worse. But is not a bad
thing when your average is still world class.

------
NickStefan
It's all about selection bias. This particular person went to a foreign school
that probably selected for a certain type of student just by being there.

Here in the US, I actually worked as a teacher before changing careers. Most
of the students were good, could learn and wanted to learn. The lack of any
real authority to discipline the 5% problem kids or the resources to deal with
the xyz% ADD kids is what brings the whole class down. You end up teaching to
the bottom and simply assigning busy work to the rest.

So I'm not surprised that a small school with certain location bias might be
lucky enough to escape a full normal distribution of an American classroom.

------
jacalata
Why on earth does the school have to start at 7.30 in the morning,
_especially_ if they aren't intended to have organised activities all
afternoon?

~~~
HarryHirsch
The answer is easy - so that the schoolday is over by 1 PM and the children
can indulge in activities _not_ organized by the school in the afternoon. One
might go to the public library, play sports in a sports club, or - God
prevent! - socialize with friends.

This is important. The mindset is that it isn't the school that is running the
students' lives, it is the students and the students' families. Unlike in
America, life for school-age children does not revolve around the school.

~~~
thinkpad20
That seems like it would make it difficult to be a working parent, unless they
provide for after-school programs. For a household with no stay-at-home
parent, a long school day isn't just about education; it's about not having to
sacrifice a career for you child's education.

~~~
jacalata
That's the "school as daycare" model, requiring all children to be in
"daycare" all day to meet the needs of some parents. They should be separate
(compulsory school times, surrounded by available and convenient daycare at
the same location).

~~~
thinkpad20
Regardless of what you call it, parents who don't have the luxury (or desire)
to stay at home all day need a way to take care of their children. That's a
pressing real-world problem for millions of parents, not just "some". And it
makes perfect sense to entrust the schools with that responsibility (in part,
if not in whole): they do it anyway, for some amount of the day, and they have
great resources for children (sports teams and equipment, books, musical
instruments, knowledgeable teachers, etc).

~~~
jacalata
So you're arguing that daycare should be compulsory, even for kids who don't
need it.

~~~
thinkpad20
No; I'm arguing that access to daycare should be available to those who need
it. And parenthetically stating that that is not a bad thing :)

~~~
jacalata
ok - so I think we actually agree mostly. The system I grew up in had daycare
available at the school, starting around 8am and going to 6pm. School itself
only went from 9am to 3.30pm - so kids who had supervision available at home,
or friends houses, etc, only had to be there at those hours. It sounds like
you'd agree that system would meet parents needs without putting excessive
restrictions on families that didn't need the care?

------
wehadfun
So would her husband also be under the kafala system?

------
azurelogic
I couldn't even finish reading this article because it was waaaaay too uppity
and full of first world problems. Please spare us the angst of some rich mom
who can't bear the thought of her little ankle biters not being in the most
elite school possible.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The parent was concerned that schools shouldn't crush her kids. That's a
concern of parents everywhere.

~~~
mwfunk
It sounds more like she was concerned that the schools wouldn't crush her
kids.

------
lotsofmangos
It seems that this school is still being built. I wonder if they will have
finished construction and if the workers are getting paid.

 _Despite of all the efforts from Supreme Education Council and our school
administration we haven 't been able to prepare our school to the point where
I would feel comfortable as a principal to invite your children to begin their
school year on Sun 7.9.2014. The safety of children in our school is of
paramount importance and unfortunately we are not able guarantee that because
of ongoing construction work and missing ministry level documentation for
school insurance. We will postpone the beginning of school till Tue 9.9.2014.
Our staff is still available for you at school and you are more than welcome
to meet them. Looking forward to starting a safe school year with you. I am
truly sorry for this inconvenience._

 _Mr Juha Repo, Principal, Qatar-Finland International School_

[http://qatarfinlandschool.com/](http://qatarfinlandschool.com/)

