
Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t). - ABR
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ravitch-why-finlands-schools-are-great-by-doing-what-we-dont/2011/10/12/gIQAmTyLgL_blog.html?wprss=answer-sheet
======
gmichnikov
Perhaps "they did not understand the idea of 'merit pay'" because many of the
teachers in Finland are of a different breed than many of the people who end
up teaching in the US:

"McKinsey's work with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests this
is an important gap in the U.S. debate, because the world's top performing
school systems--Singapore, Finland, South Korea--make a different choice. They
recruit, develop and retain what this report will call 'top third+' students
as one of their central education strategies, and they've acheived
extraordinary results. These systems recruit 100% of their teacher corops from
the top third of the academic cohort, and then screen for other important
qualities as well. In the U.S., by contrast, 23% of new teachers come from the
top third, and just 14% in high poverty schools, which find it especially
difficult to attract and retain talented teachers. It is remarkably large
difference in approach, and in results." [1]

Taking this into account, it's silly to argue that since they have tenure,
too, tenure isn't the problem here. They already have the right people
teaching. We need to fire many of the people who are currently teaching.

Also, the U.S. spends a higher percent of GDP on education, so blaming
spending seems odd. [2]

Finally, I'm really sick of the way Diane Ravitch constantly slams Teach For
America. The U.S. needs better people teaching. TFA makes some of those people
think about teaching. It's getting teaching in the same ballpark of prestige
as consulting, banking, law school, medical school, etc for students coming
out of top colleges. Nothing else comes close to doing that on the same scale.
Even if it is true that TFA teachers aren't noticeably better in years 1-2
than a typical experienced teacher (and I don't believe that is the case),
it's still a great program.

[1]
[http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...](http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/Closing_the_talent_gap.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...](http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/Closing_talent_gap_appendix.pdf)

~~~
redthrowaway
>Taking this into account, it's silly to argue that since they have tenure,
too, tenure isn't the problem here. They already have the right people
teaching. We need to fire many of the people who are currently teaching.

If you want to fire a big chunk of your teachers, that's fine. You just need
to ensure the people you are replacing them with are better, and you do that
by having higher requirements, paying them more, and giving them a better
environment to work in. That means smaller classes, more autonomy, not relying
on standardized tests for compensation, and a whole host of other things the
US fails at.

Let's say you had a big tech company with thousands of mediocre programmers.
You want to fire them and hire better ones, but before you do that you have to
ask why you had so many lousy programmers in the first place. Why did good
programmers decide not to work for your company, and how will you both attract
them and convince them to stay? The US seems to think it can get highly
qualified teachers by providing working environments akin to code monkey
cubicle farms, and they're simply wrong.

~~~
jseliger
_you do that by having higher requirements_

Actually, the problem is that we can't predict what makes good teachers.
Studies have consistently shown—see my post below for more—that Master's
degrees, for instance, don't predict success. Malcolm Gladwell writes about
this issue here:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell)
.

 _That means smaller classes, more autonomy, not relying on standardized tests
for compensation, and a whole host of other things the US fails at._

The first doesn't measurably improve outcome either. The second sounds good.
The third is a bit of red herring: I don't know any serious reformer who says
that performance should be measured entirely based on testing or that testing
is perfect. It isn't. But if you don't have _some_ standardized measure, you
can't even make comparisons.

------
temphn
Finland's schools are great because they are full of Finns, in the same way
that schools with many Finns in the US do very well.

Hong Kong and Singapore's schools are great because they are full of Chinese,
in the same way that schools with many Chinese in the US do very well, even in
poor neighborhoods:

    
    
      http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/16/local/me-lincoln16
    
      To begin with, the eight students agreed on a few 
      generalities: Latino and Asian students came mostly from 
      poor and working-class families.
    
      According to a study of census data, 84% of the Asian and 
      Latino families in the neighborhoods around Lincoln High 
      have median annual household incomes below $50,000. And 
      yet the Science Bowl team is 90% Asian, as is the Academic 
      Decathlon team.
    

It is thus not likely to be the schools. It is more likely to be culture or
(more controversially) genetics. But most articles don't even consider such
explanations, preferring to keep looking under the streetlight for that
quarter.

~~~
wisty
Also, Finns speak a Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language, which is said to be
really easy to learn. It's phonetic, and technical words tend to be built out
of simple Finnish words, not a weird mash of Latin, Greek, and other words.
This makes it easy to do sciences, as you don't have to teach as much wacky
vocabulary. (Note, I don't speak Finish, this is just what I've read).

I've also heard that Lithuanians (who also speak a Finno-Urgric language) do
relatively well in school, while Swedish Finns (who are richer than Finnish
Finns) who go to Swedish-language schools do worse.

Of course, in Education, there's never just one factor.

~~~
henrikschroder
The only part of education where the language matters is when it comes to
spelling, and the key factor there is the distance between the spoken language
and the written language. In Finnish, these are close, i.e. words are spelled
"as they sound", the rules are simple and consistent and there are few special
cases, and as a result Finnish children have a much easier time learning how
to spell compared to Danish or English children.

~~~
dorian-graph
You don't consider language important in conveying ideas, thinking, etc?

~~~
henrikschroder
What are you talking about?

~~~
joesb
> The only part of education where the language matters is when it comes to
> spelling

What about differences between languages in their ability to convey ideas.

~~~
henrikschroder
We're talking about elementary school education here, I find it extremely
difficult to believe that some languages are "better" than others at conveying
the ideas at this level of education.

------
arsatiki
Whee, Finland is at the top of an international ranking. How groovy! It makes
my white-and-blue heart beat with pride.

Except it doesn't, really. The purpose of a school, any school, in any
country, is to prepare the students for the road ahead. "We do not learn for
the school, but for life."

So while it is fascinating to study the performance of teenagers in a small
selection of topics, the test does not tell whether they will grow up as happy
and/or fulfilled adults. If the PISA tests measured presentation skills or
perhaps essay writing, I'd bet USA would just leave Finland in the dust.

However, some parts of the article just fill me with dread. Child-poverty rate
of 22%? That's disgraceful. Merit pay? I just can't wrap my head around that.

Also, sounds like you've gone bonkers with the standardized testing. The
common complaint here is that the last year (or year and a half) of high
school is too focused on the matriculation examination. I can only imagine
what happens if you're tested once a year or every two years or so. You'd get
nothing of substance into the young minds, only tricks and tips for the next
test.

~~~
pdelgallego
>> So while it is fascinating to study the performance of teenagers in a small
selection of topics, the test does not tell whether they will grow up as happy
and/or fulfilled adults

According to some studies [1] the 20 happiest nations in the World are:

    
    
      1. Denmark 
      2. Switzerland 
      3. Austria 
      4. Iceland 
      5. The Bahamas 
      6. Finland 
      7. Sweden 
      8. Bhutan 
      9. Brunei 
      10. Canada 
      11. Ireland 
      12. Luxembourg 
      13. Costa Rica 
      14. Malta 
      15. The Netherlands 
      16. Antigua and Barbuda 
      17. Malaysia 
      18. New Zealand 
      19. Norway 
      20. The Seychelles
    

[1]
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.htm)

------
Abundnce10
I taught English in the public school system in South Korea last year. There
were a few stark differences that I couldn't help but notice and I feel they
shed light on our failing education system here in America. They have a
curriculum that is set forth on a national level. This accomplishes two
important things: One, teachers can now collaborate and share resources on
topics that all teachers around the country are preparing for (I did this with
my fellow Native English Teachers and ended up saving a lot of time not having
to reinvent the wheel for every lesson). Secondly, it helps eliminate the
unnecessary spending that accompanies the insanely large amount of school
districts that we have scattered around our country. Washington State alone
has almost 300 school districts! The board members of these schools districts
are in charge of determining the curriculum for their specific locality, mean
while others are doing the same exact thing in the next town over.
Furthermore, the majority of those board members have a Masters or PhD and
require a hefty salary - which could be going towards funding intelligent,
passionate teachers. I'd love to be a teacher but you won't see me entering a
public school classroom anytime soon.

If we can eliminate the redundancy of our school district issue and provide
the framework for a nationalized curriculum, we could pay teachers more
(thereby attracting a higher talent pool), lower class sizes, increase
spending on classroom necessities (pens, pencils, paper, books, COMPUTERS!),
and allow teachers the opportunity to share resources on predetermined,
upcoming lessons. Tackling these issues will put us on the right track towards
getting our school system out of this steady decline we've been on for the
last couple of decades.

~~~
nhebb
I've always wondered why the US has a Department of Education but it doesn't
produce a national curriculum. It's mission isn't directly tied to teaching
itself [1]. Looking at the rise of sites like the Khan Academy and other
services, it seems clear to me that content creation and delivery of core
subjects could be centralized, and tutoring, homework, testing, and assessment
could be localized. I know that would threaten some politically powerful
interest groups (teacher unions and publishers), but I think it's a logical
progression if we want to provide students across the country the same
learning materials.

[1] <http://www2.ed.gov/about/what-we-do.html>

~~~
bediger
Well, look at the figures for percentage of people who believe something
really whacky: creationism. Something like 40%
([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-
sti...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-still-
bel_n_799078.html)).

It's going to be hard to have a national curriculum without either watering
down subjects like biology or US history to the point that they're totally
useless, just rote memorization of falsehoods.

~~~
ams6110
Really, simply believing in creationism does not conflict with most science,
even biological science, and certainly not with US history. Of the 40% who
believe in creationism (accepting your claim, though the source I'd certainly
not consider unbiased), most have mainstream religious beliefs about the
origin of the universe, earth, and life, but do not dismiss most of what
science has learned in fields like medicine, biochemistry, genetics, etc.

For example, I myself have certain "creationist" beliefs but also accept the
scientific evidence that evolution/natural selection happens, and I don't see
any conflict there.

~~~
Eeko
Within the article the definition of creationism in the context is clearly
defined in the first paragraph:

 _"A new Gallup poll, released Dec. 17, reveals that 40 percent of Americans
still believe that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years."_

There is _another_ 40% thinking like you claim, but there still is that 40%
who are about as anti-scientific as you can get.

------
mushishi
As a Finn, I restrain myself comparing us to others but I just want to say
that most schools here are not well suited for non-superficial learning.

I would hope the future brings a system that is driven by the need of
individual pupil and by her potential and interests rather than giving
equivalent, non-inspiring curriculum for all. Also, learning should have more
meaningfulness in it; something along the lines of what Papert talks in his
Mindstorms book <http://www.papert.org/>

What I have observed is that people are not much interested in learning in
schools; those with passion get bored and creativity is not encouraged, at
all.

In my opinion, it's a horrible state what we are in but I don't think many
will do anything about it. And in universities, it's even worse. Studying e.g.
Computer Science is much of theory without not enough practical learning, as
departments lack proper funding (e.g. assistants for helping with
assignments). People learn basic concepts barely, and are not excited by them.
It's just something to get through so that they get the diploma which is too
highly appreciated by companies' HR.

Also, the content what is taught, is not what should be. The whole culture is
short-sighted, and people who get out of universities are not well-equipped
but are suited for trivial web-development of current age, i.e. what the
industry is in need of.

This makes me sad as learning and teaching should be fun, and could be much
more effective. I see some hope with interactive, visual tools that let people
learn by themselves but I am not so sure the people responsible for these kind
of things really are multitalented and experienced enough to do the proper
thing.

~~~
arkx
You seem to mainly address universities, which were out of scope for this
article. OECD PISA is measuring 15-year-old students. There is a huge
difference in the level of teaching at compulsory schools and universities in
Finland.

"People are not much interested in learning in schools" is a gross
overstatement and generalization. There are those who are very motivated,
those who are not motivated at all and the majority who fall somewhere in
between. I saw firsthand how even the least motivated students were engaged by
one really good biology teacher. Everyone was interested when the teacher did
his job well. On the other hand, with terrible teachers even the best students
tended to zone out. I imagine this is the same everywhere in the world.

As for the needs of individual pupils, I couldn't agree more. When I first
entered school I already knew how to read and add numbers together. I was not
allowed to progress at my own pace, and subsequently got really, really bored
twiddling my thumbs during those first few years.

I think this catering to the lowest common denominator and lack of individual
care is something that the Finnish school system really suffers from. Sadly
with all these articles out many observers seem to think the Finnish school
system is infallible, and they're only aiming at replicating the success of
Finnish schools instead of thinking how to do even better.

~~~
Eeko
_"You seem to mainly address universities, which were out of scope for this
article. OECD PISA is measuring 15-year-old students. There is a huge
difference in the level of teaching at compulsory schools and universities in
Finland."_

Actually the opposite. The university system follows pretty much the same
paradigm of equality and fair quality. There really is no shitty universities
(at least within the institutions which claim the label...) nor spectacular
ones. You get average quality. The university rankings tend to have an apex-
fallacy (we are only interested on the ones at top), whereas the primary-
education studies focus on national averages.

E.g. US has some spectacular private primary education facilities and some
amazing higher education. But the quality varies highly across institutions.
Finland has a very few private schools and even the best ones do not really
perform significantly better the worst ones. The same is apparent in higher
education. You get about the same degree from any university willing to give
the education.

And whereas I used to think like you guys on catering for the individuals and
the talented: I'm no longer quite sure on how it should be done. I've seen a
fair share of different systems and products of those systems - some of which
claim to address the problem of the gifted better than others. Yeah, you could
do better to give greater challenges for the gifted. But there are so much
other good and useful stuff people-who-get-bored-in-math-class could be doing.
If you got the capacity, usually you end up using it, despite on how you are
instructed to behave. You could be doing vector-calculus on the first grade:
or you could be assisting your friends with the standard calculus. You could
qualify for deeper math in high-school, but you could also spend your extra-
time with arts, philosophy, student activities or just living your life if you
don't have to worry about your school performance.

~~~
arkx
Hey, I remember you from HUT circa 2006.

I was comparing the level of primary and upper secondary school teaching with
university teaching, not different universities. Seems like university
rankings have little to do with that.

For what it's worth, I maintain that the quality of teaching drops by a whole
lot in universities, if only because there are way fever universities around
in Finland. My personal experience (some of which you share) is that in some
common subjects (like maths) the group size in lectures more than quadrupled
in the first year—way too many students for the lecturer to spare any
individual attention, apart from answering some questions that came up in the
class. Even the word changes from teacher to lecturer, reflecting quite well
on the changed focus.

This duty of individual attention falls on TAs in smaller student groups, who
usually have no pedagogical studies behind them and often resist taking any
share of responsibility in how their students perform. The lack of attention
to students is known and acknowledged, even marketed as 'academic freedom' and
'having to take responsibility for one's own studies'. While it's imporant to
learn how to do that, the quality of teaching should not suffer as markedly as
it does. Some struggling students banded together to overcome the steeply
increased difficulty curve and others dropped out from the courses, often
after the very first few weeks.

Speaking of catering to individuals, it would not take much to improve the
life of an advanced upper secondary school student by a whole lot. Let the
advanced students advance to freshman level concepts. Instead we faced the
"it's not in the teaching plan" paralysis. It feels stupid to do three years
of upper secondary level physics without touching vectors or calculus. Or
bring out the matrices and linear algebra in maths (instead of showing a small
glimpse in one elective course during the third year). Allow and even
recommend some more advanced books on the topic. It must be better than
playing Tetris on your Ti-83 calculator all day. Many currently bored students
would regain some of the lost morale and momentum this way.

~~~
Eeko
All true.

That is to say, that the average standards around the world are not that great
either. Higher education could be better, but it is far from worst of what
I've seen.

------
forkandwait
Here is my worthless .02c:

One sure way to know you have failed at managing a process is when you measure
employee performance by their adherence to _rules_ rather than their record on
delivering _results_.

NCLB is all about rules...

... as are most US institutions, public and private....

It isn't that rules and standardized processes don't have their place, but (1)
if rules have to be enforced regularly, you have totally f'ed your incentive
structure and (2) if you build "standardized processes" the right way,
employees "naturally" follow (and contribute to) them because they are the
best way to deliver results (see above), not because some hardass is enforcing
them.

So, we should reward teachers who have good results, collectively and
continuously make their best processes into standards, and punish the teachers
with bad results (by which I mean fire them, and eliminate tenure, at least in
the extreme).

Not so easy to do, but I think we need to get away from more and more rules,
while never rewarding individual results.

~~~
lukeschlather
There are a lot of people bouncing around ideas about how we can magically
improve the U.S. school system, but I think fundamentally the problem is that
we expect unreasonable results. We want to be able to pay $5000/pupil/year for
a quality of education that properly costs at least $10,000 if not $15,000.

~~~
tuukkah
Somehow the Finnish school system costs less per pupil per year than the U.S.
one. I don't see why a suggestion to concentrate on more important things is
responded to by demanding more money.

Money can improve some things, some things can be improved without money.

~~~
thyrsus
I suspect an abundance of social infrastructure (4% of children living in
poverty vs 15%, per the article) acts as an unaccounted for subsidy for
education - and for much else as well.

~~~
Gravityloss
Living poor but having dignity seems to be impossible in the US?

------
chrismealy
From TNR:

 _Today, teaching is such a desirable profession that only one in ten
applicants to the country’s eight master’s programs in education is accepted.
In the United States, on the other hand, college graduates may become teachers
without earning a master’s. What’s more, Finnish teachers earn very
competitive salaries: High school teachers with 15 years of experience make
102 percent of what their fellow university graduates do. In the United
States, by contrast, they earn just 65 percent._

\-- [http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-
reform-F...](http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-
Finland-US)

~~~
makecheck
Gaining a master's degree doesn't automatically make you a better teacher. I'd
much rather be assured that a teacher has other basic abilities (e.g. good
communication skills, patience, fairness, organization skills, and even some
creativity).

~~~
Androsynth
no, but its a good way to gate on intelligence

~~~
jaredmck
In the US, getting a master's in education probably says more negative than
positive things about your intelligence - there are a ton of degree farms
handing out paper.

~~~
LeafStorm
That's why you check what school the degree is _from_.

------
tuukkah
This article is right to the point but the discussion easily clings on some
misconceptions that are hard to let go.

Here's some of the facts:

* No, the system in Finland doesn't cost much more. Depending on how you measure, it can actually be said to be cheaper: the US spends more of its GDP in education.

* No, the teachers in Finland are not paid a big salary to motivate them. They earn more or less the average salary of workers with a university degree.

* No, it's not just about Finland being more culturally and ethnically homogeneous, or just about child poverty being more rare. There are many other countries like this and they don't automatically get good results in education.

* No, the Finnish children are not highly motivated to go to school, to learn and to achieve. Actually, Finland gets its results despite worse than average motivation, attitude towards school etc.

* No, it's not about the Finnish language being "easier" to learn: Being "easy" is subjective and it takes the Finnish children the normal time to learn to speak.

* No, it's not about the written Finnish being highly phonemic and thus easy to learn to read and write. Many other languages (such as Spanish, Swedish) are highly phonemic as well. The time saved in not having to learn the spelling of each word in the Finnish dictionary separately is spent on the efforts to learn the completely different vocabulary and highly different phonetics and grammar of English as a second language.

* No, it's not just about Finnish being a highly agglutinative language where you can guess e.g. from the word for voltage that it has something to do with some kind of tension. Or maybe it is, I don't have good evidence about this... But there are other agglutinative languages, learning e.g. maths problem solving is little about guessing what words mean, the linguistics mainline theory doesn't support languages having a big effect on how people think.

* No, it's not about the Finnish women having nothing else to do than concentrate on teaching. Finland ranks highly in gender equality and e.g. technology industry.

* No, you don't have to come up with metrics and subject teachers to evaluations to get a good system or to improve on one. Finland doesn't have such evaluations. You can do scientific research on the issue without letting office politics in on the individual numbers.

What plausible explanations remain? Clearly you need to consider many issues
when designing or improving an educational system and there's no silver
bullet, but perhaps you want to read the original article again to get some
good ideas from an expert in the field :-)

------
BlackJack
" I am troubled by this “lacks diversity” argument, because it implies that
African-American and Hispanic children cannot benefit by having highly
experienced teachers, small classes, and a curriculum rich in the arts and
activities."

I don't agree with this. The "lacks diversity" argument doesn't imply that
minorities can't benefit from experienced teachers - it means that teachers
have more trouble with a heterogeneous population compared to a homogeneous
one, which is reasonable if you consider the diversity of backgrounds in a
classroom and how they impact the mental models that children have.

~~~
pjscott
This is why discussing issues involving racial or cultural diversity is so
hard: indignation temporarily destroys people's reading comprehension and
ability to think straight.

------
joelthelion
Every time I read an article about why XYZ's schools are so great, I cannot
help but think, wouldn't it simply be because XYZ's children are great?

At least I think that's a factor we fail to control for. Designing a good
school for well brought-up children is far easier than designing it for
children who grew up in a hostile environment watching TV all day long.

------
tokenadult
A good reality check on several of the assertions made in the article, or in
the comments here, about Finland is to look at another country high in
international educational rankings, namely Singapore. I have known people from
Singapore (mostly students at my state's flagship university) since the
mid-1970s. Always, they have been amazingly smart people. I have been curious
about how schooling is done in Singapore since well before the first time that
Singapore was included in an international education study.

Chapter 1: "International Student Achievement in Mathematics" from the TIMSS
2007 study of mathematics achievement in many different countries includes, in
Exhibit 1.1 (pages 34 and 35)

<http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf>

a chart of mathematics achievement levels in various countries. Although the
United States is above the international average score among the countries
surveyed, as we would expect from the level of economic development in the
United States, the United States is well below the top country listed, which
is Singapore. An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level
for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the
United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore. I have
lived for years in one of the other countries that regularly outperforms the
United States in those studies, Taiwan, and will also comment on the Taiwan
educational experience as a reality check on the comments on Finland in this
thread.

I am amazed that persons from Singapore in my generation (born in the late
1950s) grew up in a country that was extremely poor (it's hard to remember
that about Singapore, but until the 1970s Singapore was definitely part of the
Third World) and were educated in a foreign language (the language of
schooling in Singapore has long been English, but the home languages of most
Singaporeans are south Chinese languages like my wife's native Hokkien or
Austronesian languages like Malay or Indian languages like Tamil) and yet
received very thorough instruction in mathematics. Singapore is very diverse
linguistically--the MAJORITY of the population in my generation spoke NONE of
the four official languages (Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Tamil, or English) in
standard form at home, and certainly not the main language of school
instruction, English, but Singapore has become part of the "outer circle" of
use of English internationally and now maintains a high degree of
multilingualism. I hope that all of us here in the United States can do at
least that well both in language learning and in mathematics learning in the
current generation.

The article "The Singaporean Mathematics Curriculum: Connections to TIMSS"

<http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf>

by a Singaporean author explains some of the background to the Singapore math
materials and how they approach topics that are foundational for later
mathematics study. The key aspect of Singapore's success is a MUCH better
curriculum in primary school mathematics than is used in the United States.
Homeschoolers in the United States, including quite a few parents of top-
scoring students on the American Mathematics Competitions tests, have become
aware of the Singapore curriculum materials,

[http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/1...](http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/134.htm)

and those are generally helpful for American families who are looking for
something better than the poorly organized, often mathematically incorrect
materials used in United States schools.

Professor Hung-hsi Wu of the University of California--Berkeley has written
about what needs to be reformed in United States mathematics education.

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_4.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NCTM2010.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NoticesAMS2011.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CommonCoreIV.pdf>

Other mathematicians who have written interesting articles about mathematics
education reform in the United States include Richard Askey,

<http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/amed1.pdf>

<http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf>

Roger E. Howe,

<http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf>

Patricia Kenschaft,

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf>

and

James Milgram.

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/milgram-msri.pdf

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html

All those mathematicians think that the United States could do much better
than it does in teaching elementary mathematics in the public school system. I
think so too after living in Taiwan twice in my adult life (January 1982
through February 1985, and December 1998 through July 2001). I have seen (and
used) the textbooks from Singapore and from Taiwan. They are much more clear
in their presentation and much more conceptually accurate than the typical
United States textbooks. Moreover, elementary mathematics teachers tend to
specialize in teaching mathematics while other elementary teachers teach other
subjects, at much younger ages than when United States pupils typically
encounter specialist teachers. The United States model of elementary education
is to have teachers who are jacks of all trades and masters of none, and who
do equally poorly (by reasonable international standards) in teaching reading,
mathematics, science, and all other elementary subjects.

The United States could do a lot better and reach the level of Finland by
staffing reforms

[http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads...](http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf)

and by using best practices

[http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-
Class...](http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-
Classroom/dp/0684852748)

in provision of elementary education.

------
Osiris
This article contrasts well with the failure of No Child Left Behind in the
U.S. That program has failed to deliver any statistically significant impact
on the skills and knowledge of students. What is has done is pushed teachers
towards teaching the test rather than teaching critical thinking.

Standardized tests are multiple-choice questions and don't leave room for
critical thinking, or help demonstration how a child reached a certain
conclusion.

The Finnish method of empowering teachers through education and training to
allow them to teach and help their particular students seems to be a much
better way to help individual students succeed as opposed to trying to stick
everyone in a box defined by an academic or bureaucrat.

~~~
mbyrne
If you say No Child Left Behind pushed teachers to teach to a test (easy)
rather than teaching critical thinking, etc. (hard) and then you say No Child
Left Behind failed to deliver any statistically significant impact on test
scores, aren't you just saying teachers can't even teach the easy stuff?

How do you think they can teach the hard stuff if they can't even move the
needle on the easy things (in this scenario of yours)?

~~~
gerrys0
Yes, teaching to a test should be easy, and it is easy to your median 15-year-
old. The gigantic problem with NCLB - and something I've not seen mentioned in
this HN story - is that NCLB is a one-size-fits-all mandate, and there is
NOTHING about education in the US or anywhere that is one-size-fits-all.
Hundreds of factors influence the raw material (children) that teachers have
to work with every day.

Countries like Finland do not try to graduate all of their children in the
same way. 43% of Finland's HS graduates graduate from vocational schools
([http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-
Finlands...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-
Schools-Successful.html)). The US has slowly moved further and further away
from this type of "tracking" since the 70's. Things like NCLB and the over-
valued notion of a college degree has only accelerated this problem. I am not
optimistic.

------
3dFlatLander
I enjoy reading about education here in the US, and in other countries. It's
all well and good to compare our system to others. But, I can't help but
wonder what the chances will be that the system here will ever actually be
reformed.

------
cavalcade
A great education system is a means to an end. The end being the host country
gains a great economic engine and generally happy citizens. Does Finland have
this? Singapore? South Korea?

Curious not disapproving...

~~~
Eeko
So far the results have been fair. But Finland especially is somewhat prone
for brain-drain. All that stuff is paid with hefty, progressive taxation which
hurts the most skilled and salaried the most. Combining all the mandatory
expenses, taxation etc, your wages easily end up to be less than half of what
you could be gaining abroad.

Especially since the level of (tuition-free and gvment-sponsored on all
levels) education, language-skills and the weather-back-home makes emigration
fairly easy and tempting for most Finns. But so far the system does a pretty
good job on keeping competitive. You might end up driving a smaller BMW than
your neighbor, but the quality of education, health, stability etc. make it
very attractive target for long-term settling down, making kids etc.

~~~
cavalcade
I am more familiar with Singapore and from all signs it seems they do not have
the brain drain problem so they are capturing more value from the output of
their great education system than Finland.

~~~
Eeko
Sure about that? There is a nice graph at <http://www.peoplemov.in/> . Don't
know about their sources, but Finland and Singapore seem to have around the
same amount of emigration/capita (6.2 - 6.3%). Granted, Finns go more to
United States and wealthy Europe (probably a bit more weighted towards skilled
labor moving...) than singaporeans. But I would not say those levels qualify
yet for significant brain drain. From Hong Kong, the percentage is closer to
10% and S-Korea has only around ~5% of emigration.

I said Finland could be fairly _prone_ for brain-drain if stuff would get
significantly worse in the future. (Like what is happening at Greece these
days.) But right now I'm pretty sure that the progress will be, though not
outright good, _less_ _bad_ than most of the world. A safer bet, to say.

And healthy amount of emigration is good for a nation. People go abroad for a
few years or decades to make money, gain experience and positive influences
and then can bring 'em back home.

~~~
cavalcade
Seems == not sure. :) In light of this, it will be very interesting to watch
Finland, Singapore and South Korea on a macro level in the coming years.

Another cool data point would be the GDP growth and citizen sentiment over the
years.

------
nhebb
It's funny that the article starts off criticizing standardized testing but
immediately turns to international standardized test results (PISA) as the
foundation for the rest of the article. It could well be that Finland has a
better educational system, but - playing devil's advocate here - how do we
know that it's not just (inadvertently) optimized for the PISA?

~~~
Eeko
Well, the PISA testing started at 2000 and the current Finnish system was
established back in the 1970's. Finland has always been pretty much at the top
of the class with PISA studies. The fame came mostly as a shock for the
nation, as we have always had pretty common lil'brother & grass-is-greener
attitudes towards the rest of the world.

Also: the stuff measured by PISA (Math, sciences & reading) is only around 50%
of the national curricula. The rest are about foreign languages, arts &
excercise, religion, philosphy, history etc... There are more art, craft &
music classes than say, mathematics. While wasting less time teaching and
learning in classroom than most
([http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2010/04/09/less-school-
higher-...](http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2010/04/09/less-school-higher-
scores-in-finland/)). If I were to engineer a PISA-breaking education system,
I would probably not approach it like that.

(The curricula (.pdf):
[http://www.minedu.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/Koulutus/yleis...](http://www.minedu.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/Koulutus/yleissivistaevae_koulutus/perusopetus/perusopetus/tuntijakotaulukko/tuntijako20122001.pdf))

~~~
nhebb
Just to be clear, I am not a proponent of standardized-test-based curricula. I
just thought it was odd that they used an international standardized test as a
basis for criticizing US standardized tests.

The curricula you linked to looks similar to the curricula that my children's
schools use. The difference is in how the subjects are taught. I'm old enough
to have gone to school before standardized testing was widespread in the US,
and since my children go to school near where I grew up, I can compare the
quality of education between then and now. The reading and writing
requirements today (including vocabulary and grammar), are much weaker than I
was exposed to. They rarely even read full books and do in depth reports.
Instead, they simply read excerpts from anthologies and write in-class
paragraphs. It's pretty sad, because writing teaches you a lot about how to
think.

In all, I would say the science curriculum is broader and better. I was
dismayed to learn that proofs are no longer taught in math, and I think that
may be a result of the test-driven mentality of education.

------
SNK
"Finnish educators were astonished ... made no sense to them... surprised ...
did not understand the idea ... can’t understand ... don’t make sense to them.
Nor do they understand ...."

Ignorance and stupidity are nothing to be proud of. Disagreeing with us is one
thing - they could be right. Willful disingenuous bug-eyed goggling is
something else altogether.

~~~
cromulent
I don't think they are engaged in "willful disingenuous bug-eyed goggling".

I think the author is using the term "didn't understand" as in "I don't
understand why you use LOC as a measure of a developer's productivity".

Being a little deliberately obtuse can be nicer, less judgmental, and less
confrontational way of disagreeing with someone than saying outright "that's a
bad way of doing it". And Finns do tend to avoid social confrontations, in my
experience.

------
aboyeji
I think the biggest undisputable difference between the Finnish and American
systems from the article is their high quality teachers and small engaged
classes but I wonder if that is simply a direct result of their having a small
population (less than 6mm). I can't see some of these methods (having a
master's teach in schools, paying very competitive salaries) scaling well in
the American system (more than 60-70mm+). There just aren't those kind of
funds available anywhere.

Another thought that comes to mind is if we already know finish teachers are
the best, then why don't we use the internet to scale their teaching. It might
not be as good as in class teaching but I reckon it would be better than what
we have now.

------
Gravityloss
This is a Swedish guy examining the issue, resolves most of the questions in
comments here:

"What is so special about education in Finland? An outsider’s view" By Peter
Fredriksson in 2006. www.nek.uu.se/StaffPages/Publ/P949.doc

(Sorry, it's a doc file). Results over time (USA has worsened), immigration
(it's not about it), underachievers (less of them in Finland).

------
shareme
Something out of whack..

Let me explain...about 24 years ago mid beginning 1980s the testing and tests
for pre-engineering was the same level as most HS students face now for non-
engineering....

I can remember taking additional tests on top of my HS standards tests to see
if I could get qualified to enter engineering college classes..yes this was
the USA..

my scores was 98 percentile range..

It would seem the author is comparing apples and oranges to display their
political trappings rather than a factual article on what can be compared and
contrasted.

------
ig1
The problem is that what works in Finland won't necessarily work elsewhere.
For example in Finland teach is a high prestige job in a large part because
Finland doesn't have the range or number of alternative professional careers
available that countries like the US have.

~~~
pedrolll
What is this based on? For someone living in Finland, this seems very far from
the truth.

~~~
ig1
<http://www.stat.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_tyoelama_en.html>

The education sector in Finland employs a disproportionately large number of
professionals compared to many other countries. In comparison a male graduate
in the uk chosen at random is more likely to be a software developer than a
teacher.

~~~
gerrys0
I find that hard to believe, but even if true, so what? There are about half
as many teachers in the US as there should be right now.

~~~
ig1
Competition for the top graduates is incredibly tough in many countries. In
many countries the education system can't compete with the private sector (in
terms of salaries and opportunities) in hiring the best, in Finland the
competition is smaller due to fewer opportunities existing for top-tier
graduates so they can afford to hire them.

------
pacala
"I was asked about current trends in U.S. education, and Finnish educators
were astonished by the idea that our governments intend to evaluate teachers
by their students’ test scores; that made no sense to them. They were also
surprised that we turn children over to “teachers” who have only a few weeks
of training and no masters’ degree. They did not understand the idea of “merit
pay.” They are paid more if they do more work for the community, but they
can’t understand why teachers should get a bonus to compete with one another
for test scores. Since they don’t have comparative test scores for their
students, our practices don’t make sense to them. Nor do they understand the
benefits of competition among teachers who ought to be collaborating."

This will not last. The anglo corporatist cancer with its insanely frequent
"performance reviews" and bogus metrics will eat them alive. Long live
exacerbated competitiveness and backstabbing your peers. Long live natural
selection and the annual culling of the herd.

~~~
olliesaunders
> ...will eat them alive

Why will it?

> Long live natural selection and the annual culling of the herd.

How does that occur in the Finish model?

~~~
pacala
Mindshare in the global age. Finland is a 5M country. The world is 1000 times
larger. They can't go against the tide of globalization. They may have the
better product, it doesn't matter. The global mindshare battle is already won
by anglo capitalism.

~~~
vukk
The original comment used "anglo corporatism", which I understand, but why are
you hopping to "anglo capitalism"?

~~~
pacala
Thanks for the attention to terminology detail. The anglo corporation is the
finest outcome of the anglo capitalism. If you build a system around anglo
capitalist rules, you end up with anglo corporations. The reason is that the
anglo capitalism prides itself economic freedom and turns a blind eye to the
political aspect of the economy. The fundamental problems with anglo
capitalism are:

1\. Money, an economic concept, and the freedom to accumulate as much money as
one can possibly do, an economic freedom, wield real political power. The
political power then acts as a positive feedback over the economic field
resulting in an unstable polarized system.

2\. The system assumes infinite resources. This is blatantly false both in the
short term, economy grows only at X% annually, and in the long term, there is
just one Earth and one Sun. This places people on the lower rungs of the
economic system on an intrinsic inferior bargaining position, as their very
existence is under question. This time the effect is that people on the top
ownership rungs have more economic power, which acts as a positive feedback
resulting in an unstable polarized system.

Historically, anglo capitalism has been controlled via a number of negative
feedback loops:

A. Democracy, as a counterweight to point 1. The 99% used to have a
significant share of the political power. Not anymore. There is no more
democracy in America, it's a political market where the deepest pockets but
the most representatives.

B. Trade unions, as a counterweight to point 1 and 2. Trade unions used to
have enough money to match the 1% contributions to politics. Trade unions used
to give the 99% some bargaining power. Thanks to Reagan and the modern
Republicans, there are no more trade unions to speak of.

C. Taxes, as a counterpoint to 1 and 2. There used to be taxes, that both
detracted from the ability of 1% to wield unfettered political power and
served at building a safety net that improved the bargaining power of the 99%.
Not anymore, we now raise about 25% less in taxes as a share of GDP as we used
to (19& -> 15%), and the trend towards "smaller government" is only
accelerating.

We observe how the finest anglo capitalism economic entities have more and
more power, both economic and politic. These economic entities are called
"corporations".

