I am a Finn and I agree on introversion. In our culture hard working in solitude is respected and showing your feelings is suppressed; both good for classroom study.
In sports this culture shows too: we do generally very bad in team sports.
The whole society is based on leveling differences.
The week ones drop out and the good ones are held back but on the average everything looks good. It is also very rare to be self-employed. If you want to accomplish something out of ordinary you have to leave the country; think of Linus Torvalds for example.
About history: Finland has been part of Sweden and Russian and we are still been constantly reminded about it. For example, our current president Tarja Halonen refuses answer questions about democracy in Russia. I think the whole country needs a psychotherapy about the Russia issue.
You should think a Finn as passive-aggressive, risk-avoiding, self-loathing, highly educated native with inferiority complex. Those qualities with the lack of courage to speak up makes us the ultimate slave race.
You remind me of a joke I heard, and I'm curious to know if it's a common one. It goes something like this: A Finnish farmer answers a loud knock at his door to find a detachment of Russian soldiers. The officer informs him that Russia is taking over this land and demands on penalty of death to know which side the farmer chooses to belong to, Finland or Russia. The farmer replies, "It has always been my heartfelt wish to once again be part of mother Russia. But at my age, I couldn't take another Russian winter."
I wonder if you would detect the "passive-aggressive" temperament you mention in this joke? It could be described that way, though it strikes me more as a kind of shrewdness, based in long experience of managing much more powerful neighbors. (I didn't know that Finland had gotten it from both sides.)
The real answer is: introversion. I have a few Finnish friends, and not only are they all introverts, but all their Finnish acquaintances seem to be, too. Finnish social customs reflect this. It would be interesting to figure out why. Finland does have a somewhat strange history.
This article strikes me as politically correct cargo-cultism. The features of Finnish schools that it talks about wouldn't work in just any society.
Do you think Finnish social customs are the explanation of this phenomenon? I.e. that it's not cool to be stupid the way it is in large swaths of the US?
Finland seems to have just as many loud stupid people as I'd imagine can be found in America. In schools, it's the same sort of thing - nerds vs jocks, etc.
Being stupid is certainly not cool, but not exactly frowned upon in the retard-circles either :p
Our social customs are a problem because somehow the whole nation feels like it's not "normal" to strike up a casual conversation with someone you don't already know.
I think that's part of why we seem so introvert. When we get to know others, we can then behave like normal people :)
It's just that getting there is needlessly difficult.
As you seem to have studied Japanese, how does this compare to Japanese culture? I see many East Asian cultural elements among several points in this thread. Also, how unique is this to Finland? I've heard the Swiss also share this "introvert" quality. And the Germans?
As far as I know, Finnish and Japanese people and societies share quite a few traits.
Some degree of introversion seems to be common to both, but based on two trips to Tokyo, I'd say that the Japanese are still considerably more relaxed than Finns are.
I can't comment on Switzerland or Germany, and I don't know much about the Japanese educational system, other than that they don't seem to be teaching English too well :p
I'm afraid that I'd need a more specific question to be able to offer some insight.
I ask because I have no first hand knowledge about Europe. I was told that among the Europeans, the Germans are most similar to Japanese. I can't think of an English equivalent now, but both people are said to "follow the book strictly."
There are many things to ask; I just wondered if you had a general impression about the comparison. You said they share quite a few traits -- for example?
There are some similarities between Finland and Japan that I've noticed or heard of.
Both countries have a relatively high suicide-rate.
Both societies frown upon someone who changes jobs frequently, and being unemployed is considered shameful and terrible in general.
The way we travel in public transports seems to be the same too. Everyone just sits there in silence :)
On a happier note, our languages often sound surprisingly similar.
- For example there are words in the Finnish language that happen to sound like words in the Japanese language.
The meanings are different of course, but at least to me, saying the word "sato" sounds exactly the same in both languages. In Finnish it means "crop" (as in what you reap), and in Japanese it means "village".
There are probably quite a few others like that.
I've been told that Finns most resemble the people in Hokkaido, the northmost area in Japan where the climate is supposedly like (southern?) Finland.
Germany? Maybe they're as methodological in Japan?
I studied German for about 5 years at school (voluntarily even), but nowadays I can probably make it through more sentences in Japanese without breaking any.
As far as I remember, we didn't hear much about their culture..
They had a fun way of wishing good luck though: "Hals- und Beinbruch!", which means something like "Neck- and leg-fractures!", as in "Break a leg!" :)
Well, you guys do belong in the same family of languages after all..
In Finland we just settle for saying "Onnea!" as in "Luck!".
The parallels between Germans and Japanese were indeed about being methodological. I am unsure how this idea really holds though, as the education systems are, AFAIK, very different. There's still much to find out...
"Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show 'Beverly Hills, 90210.'"
Interesting. I remember when I began using IRC at the age of 10. The rate that I read at increased considerably within several months. It's unfortunate that many kids today watch TV without subtitles and SMS each other unintelligibly. If they're on the internet, they're probably looking at pictures of cats on Digg.
How the hell are kids supposed to learn how to read these days?
I think the comments so far in this discussion are misguided in attributing the good school performance of Finnish pupils to some character trait of Finns. That's like saying blacks in America do worse in school because of black culture.
Finland has a great educational system. It's that simple. And that hard too. It takes decades to create a good educational system, and you can't do it with handing out more money or new laws.
There are severe limitations on how far Alfie Kohn and his following will follow the implications of his ideas. They have gone so far as to ban discussion of certain ideas, basically because parents were too uncomfortable about being asked to do that much better.
There are ideas called "Taking Children Seriously" (TCS) and the UP (Unconditional Parenting is a book by Alfie Kohn) forum was closed down to avoid those ideas and the yahoogroup explicitly bans any discussion of TCS -- even when a newbie shows up and asks what TCS is and how it differs from UP, they won't get an answer. The only reason the TCS label is relevant is because that's the way in which they explicitly target which ideas are banned. If I post anonymously and without mentioning the TCS label I would still be unwelcome if I posted exploring certain lines of thought, which are what's actually unwanted.
They want a "supportive atmosphere" which means little criticism (of ideas). This is not unusual. Pretty much no one is philosophically serious about parenting or education, today.
Feel free to email me at curi@curi.us for more details or reply here.
Edit: sigh, Alfie had the major relevant thread on his forum deleted from archive.org, all I seem to have are some partial quotes in AIM logs.
Heh I tricked archive.org and got the first page of the thread i wanted and found:
"Part of the problem here, some argue, is a lack of clarity or transparency in those posts, such that people whose views closely correspond to TCS generally don’t identify themselves as such." -- Alfie Kohn
He wanted TCS people to wear identifying stars, if you know what I mean.
I'm not discounting the Finnish school system or anything but I would take any results based on standardized tests with a grain of salt. Many tests of this nature have been shown to be biased or skewed to the benefit or detriment of certain people. The IQ test is a prime example...
I just had a look through some of the questions of the test and it seems very fair to me. Simple scientific sorts of questions that have good clear questions with answers that can be very definitely said.
I would chock it up to finland being a more homogenous society. Many of those small european countries have top notch education systems, but they are small and everybody is well off. I personally think that the US needs to find its best way to educate, not somebody else's.
The whole society is based on leveling differences. The week ones drop out and the good ones are held back but on the average everything looks good. It is also very rare to be self-employed. If you want to accomplish something out of ordinary you have to leave the country; think of Linus Torvalds for example.
About history: Finland has been part of Sweden and Russian and we are still been constantly reminded about it. For example, our current president Tarja Halonen refuses answer questions about democracy in Russia. I think the whole country needs a psychotherapy about the Russia issue.
You should think a Finn as passive-aggressive, risk-avoiding, self-loathing, highly educated native with inferiority complex. Those qualities with the lack of courage to speak up makes us the ultimate slave race.