Why do students from South Korea and Finland have so good results?

[buritobr]

Korean and Finnish students do very well in international assessment tests.

Why?

Two hypothesis

1) South Korea and Finland have very good education systems. Other countries should follow these examples if they want to have good education

2) The qualities of the Korean and Finnish societies explain the results. These countries would have very good results no matter the kind of education policies they implement

I think that both hypothesis explain a little bit

[Ebsy]

South Korea probably has the worst education system imaginable.

[Santander]

South Korea probably has the worst education system imaginable.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Obviously it's hard to get an apples to apples comparison when it comes to these things because students don't take international standardized tests... so we're, at best, comparing apples to pears here.

Places like Japan, for example, have good results by relentlessly bombarding young people with work.  They go to school 6 days a week and also have cram school 2-3 nights per week.

The U.S. pioneered public education... so we have the longest traditions and it's tough to reform it.. especially since the poorly performing states are the most adamant about maintaining local control.

That said, the problem isn't with the American system at large.  States like Minnesota, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have great schools and compare scholastically with the top 5 OECD nations in education worldwide.

The problem, instead, is with inequality and diversity.  While diversity in and of itself is not a bad thing, it does make education more difficult.  Language and cultural barriers present a major challenge to local school districts.  On top of this, many minority students live in poverty and often don't have adequate parental support in their studies.  To top it off, there are not before or after school programs that might ameliorate this problem.

The solution would obviously involve spending a good amount of money on English as a Second Language (ESL) programs that also focus on cultural issues that might prove to be a barrier in scholastic studies.  Before and after school programs and early childhood education (for ages 3 and 4) are also a good way to keep students at par.  Also, more funding into gifted and talented programs so that the brighter students can move ahead.  Often this is not really allowed until you get to the high school level and then only when you live in a community large enough to support many different ability levels in one school.

I'd also suggest increasing paraprofessionals who aid teachers in lessons and help students during "work time".  If not one per teacher, then one per 2 and they can rotate between classrooms.

Multi-aged classrooms are also very beneficial in early grades for subjects like reading and math.  Often the older students benefit the younger ones by helping with reading and math they were just taught while the older students solidify their skills by being responsible for helping the younger students.  THis is especially effective in reading, since most of the challenge is simply improving your ability.  The older kid's expanded vocabulary will help the younger student... and in teaching the new vocabulary, that student is also practicing it.

There are a bajillion different options... but often we get hung up around stupid religious issues or "this book was inappropriate because the character said a bad word" or whatever... education is about providing the basic skills required to function in a modern society as well as a conduit to encourage a desire to learn and think critically.

[Lurker]

South Korea probably has the worst education system imaginable.

How so?

[Ebsy]

South Korea probably has the worst education system imaginable.

How so?

The kids spend nearly every waking hour in school 6 days a week, either during their excessively long school day or in evening tutoring sessions. The cram schools that operate at night have been at various points outlawed because parents were keeping their kids there until the early hours of the morning. Sure, South Korean students score highly on tests, but the cost is much too high for Americans to stomach, and it quickly becomes a game of diminishing returns.

[Helsinkian]

It might be politically incorrect to say nowadays, but cultural homogeneity does play a part in the success.

Finland and Sweden are very similar societies, but until very recently a major difference has been the fact that Sweden has had a substantially larger immigrant population. While Finland has been number 1 in education comparisons among European countries, Sweden's results have been abysmal by comparison. With the numbers of immigrants now rising rapidly in Finland as well, I am certain that our results will go down too.

When part of the students in the class have difficulty speaking the common language, they aren't going to excel at tests.

Not saying it's the only issue, though. Respect for the teacher's profession (and the high academic qualifications required of teachers) and the fact that almost everyone goes to a public school matter as well. The phenomenon of wealthy parents sending their children to private schools has been basically non-existent here.

[Santander]

South Korea probably has the worst education system imaginable.

How so?

The Korean education system is basically a communalist system. It's very cheap to run a system based on standardized testing and then teach to the test, and in the case of math, you could even argue that teaching to the test is not even a bad thing. East Asian societies (with the possible exception of Hong Kong) are not built upon liberalism and individualism as Western societies are. We cannot compare our own education systems with theirs, because the purpose of education in our societies is, above all, to educate children to be independent thinkers.

The respect Finland has for teaching is certainly something the US could learn from, but I actually think we could learn a lot from Israel. Israel, a tiny, religiously and ethnically diverse nation surrounded by hostile countries, manages to produce more startups per capita than any other country in the world. Yes, there are certainly many factors involved in Israeli society that affect this, but there are unique elements in their education system that we could import into the US. In our obsession with offending as few people as possible, we've forgotten that some degree of irreverence and conflict is an essential part of liberal education and society, and that's something that is certainly not lacking in Israel.

[Boston Bread]

It might be politically incorrect to say nowadays, but cultural homogeneity does play a part in the success.

Finland and Sweden are very similar societies, but until very recently a major difference has been the fact that Sweden has had a substantially larger immigrant population. While Finland has been number 1 in education comparisons among European countries, Sweden's results have been abysmal by comparison. With the numbers of immigrants now rising rapidly in Finland as well, I am certain that our results will go down too.

When part of the students in the class have difficulty speaking the common language, they aren't going to excel at tests.

Not saying it's the only issue, though. Respect for the teacher's profession (and the high academic qualifications required of teachers) and the fact that almost everyone goes to a public school matter as well. The phenomenon of wealthy parents sending their children to private schools has been basically non-existent here.

It depends on where the immigrants are coming from, and their socialeconomic class. In Canada the largest source is Asia and they consistently do better academically than whites. I bet well off Muslim immigrants do better than natives where as refugees do worse, as well.