Finland's Education System

[anvi]

Interesting article about Finland's Education System and some possible missed implications for those who might wish to learn a thing or two from them.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

"Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance...

A master's degree is required to enter the profession (of teaching), and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it...

With America's manufacturing industries now in decline, the goal of educational policy in the U.S. -- as articulated by most everyone from President Obama on down -- is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy."

[Frodo]

Fascinating article. I do feel this particular section deserves special attention from educators:

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[CultureKing]

Yep, Finland seems to have it figured out pretty darn well. Unfortunately here in the US we are obsessed with defining everything, including the education system, in terms of progress along the same lines of the private sector. I especially find the part about competition vs cooperation to be revealing.

[ingemann]

Why do the Finnish education system do well? They have well educated teachers with a relative high wage and high prestige. They don't have standardised tests, the school councils can't decide what the schools teach and last and not least what they teach aren't a political battleground.

[patrick1]

I knew I had read about this several months back but couldnt remember where.

Anvi, here is a similar article from Smithsonian

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html

[anvi]

Nice article, patrick1, thanks!  In fact it gives a better sense, by going into the classrooms, of what is happening in Finnish schools than the first essay.

It seems that the Finnish system manages to accomplish three fundamental things that contribute to its success.  1.)  The system devotes resources to ensure that children in classrooms enjoy both the best instruction on how to learn, and in the process they are both integrated into the community of learning and given individual attention.  2,)  Teachers are well-trained on the front end, and in their careers mentor one another and collaborate to enhance the learning process.  3.)  Measures of performance that would be introduced from outside the classroom are precluded, so that learning inside the classroom can be the focus.  Obviously, enhancing the pay and social profile of teachers also serves as a great incentive to get people into the profession, but the stringency of teacher training programs across the country ensures that only the best of the best get into schools. 

Some interesting solutions suggest themselves.  Focus on techniques that help children learn, not on test scores.  Incentivize teaching and ensure that only the best-trained teachers get into the school system, and find ways to help them continue learning how to teach well once they've started. Trade in standardized measures of performance for a standardized curriculum (that's one important way to emphasize equality of opportunity).         

[Ban my account ffs!]

While the Finnish system is a success, it would be impossible to successfully implement such a system in the U.S.  Finland is a relatively homogenous nation about the size of Colorado in population with much smaller income/wealth inequality than the U.S.

I mean... teachers should be highly trained and well paid... but I don't think it would have nearly the positive results in the U.S. as it does in Finland.

Every student should have equal opportunities.  But the feasible opportunities are going to vary from state to state and community to community based on a huge number of factors.  That is why we have to have a good amount of local control of schools in the U.S.

If a state like North Dakota or Minnesota implemented a similar strategy, I'm sure there'd be positive results... as both states are relatively small and have largely homogenous populations (especially regarding a shared sense of culture/community... race/ethnicity aside).

[dead0man]

Never happen here, teachers unions are way too strong.

[anvi]

I don't think the articles, or Finnish education representatives, or anyone, is suggesting that the Finish system can just be transplanted into the United States, or any other country for that matter.  But, on the other hand, there is nothing wrong with trying to learn a few lessons from success.  We don't do that enough.  Companies spend a lot of time learning from their competitors, things to avoid and things to emulate, despite differences in markets and so on; why shouldn't public educators in the flagging U.S. system learn a thing or two from nations that are presently enjoying better outcomes?

Finland has, in the past decade or so, had to deal with a considerable influx of immigrant children, and, with a combination of special assistance and building the right classroom environment, they have found ways to deal with the growing diversity of their classrooms.  In more than sixteen years of teaching experience, I've found that students from other countries or other cultural backgrounds are often far more enthusiastic about learning and adjusting to the educational environment than native students. 

The interesting thing about the Finnish system, what it brings into the foreground, is the question of how precisely one combines standardization and variation in the right proportions and applied in the right ways to produce good results.  It's the focus on the framework through those features that's important for us to rethink, it seems to me.  The Finnish seem to handle it in their own context by standardizing a certain curriculum, or at least setting national guidelines for one, but then enabling teachers, through training, mentoring and ongoing free collaboration, to use lots of different techniques and approaches with individual classrooms and individual students, with the primary goal of getting them to learn, instead of the primary goal of some idealized proportion of success on some standardized exams.  If the Finnish system has too much homogeneity for our context, perhaps we can learn how to focus more on helping students learn and on precisely where we need more diversity and where we need more uniformity in our system.