{"id":1610,"date":"2011-08-22T16:16:17","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T20:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/why-is-finland-at-the-top-of-the-world-in-education.html"},"modified":"2011-08-22T16:16:17","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T20:16:17","slug":"why-is-finland-at-the-top-of-the-world-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/why-is-finland-at-the-top-of-the-world-in-education.html","title":{"rendered":"Why is Finland at the top of the world in education?"},"content":{"rendered":"Attention to weak students.\nStatus and autonomy for teachers.\nEducators running the show, not business people.\nAll this creates a real educated workforce.\n

\nLynnell Hancock wrote for Smithsonian Magazine September 2011,\nWhy Are Finland’s Schools Successful? <\/a>\nHere’s a clue:\n

\n\n<\/a>\n\u201cChildren from wealthy families with lots of education can be taught\nby stupid teachers,\u201d Louhivuori said, smiling. \u201cWe try to catch the\nweak students. It’s deep in our thinking.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nSo what do they do? Drill the weak students on test questions?\nNope:\n\n\n
\nThere are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one\nexam at the end of students\u2019 senior year in high school. There are\nno rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools\nor regions. Finland\u2019s schools are publicly funded. The people in\nthe government agencies running them, from national officials to local\nauthorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or\ncareer politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws\nfrom the same pool of university-trained educators. The result is that\na Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education\nno matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town.\n<\/blockquote>\nEducators. Not business people.\n

\nIt’s not about locking them inside the schoolroom early and late, either:\n

\nTeachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and spend less\ntime in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the extra time\nto build curriculums and assess their students. Children spend far\nmore time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is\nminimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7. \u201cWe have\nno hurry,\u201d said Louhivuori. \u201cChildren learn better when they are\nready. Why stress them out?\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nOf course, Finns have a big advantage outside schools:\n
\nIt’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless. Finland\nprovides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to\nparents, and preschool for all 5-year-olds, where the emphasis is\non play and socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes parents,\npaying them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she\nturns 17. Ninety-seven percent of 6-year-olds attend public preschool,\nwhere children begin some academics. Schools provide food, medical care,\ncounseling and taxi service if needed. Student health care is free.\n<\/blockquote>\nOh, and they don’t have\n\n1 in 13 adults in the prison system (jail, prison, probation, or parole)<\/a>,\nunlike Georgia.\nFunny how adults can pay more attention to their children when they’re\nnot locked up.\n

\nWhy did the Finns decide to do all this?\n

\nIn 1963, the Finnish Parlia-ment made the bold decision to choose public\neducation as its best shot at economic recovery. \u201cI call this the\nBig Dream of Finnish education,\u201d said Sahlberg, whose upcoming book,\nFinnish Lessons, is scheduled for release in October. \u201cIt was simply\nthe idea that every child would have a very good public school. If we\nwant to be competitive, we need to educate everybody. It all came out\nof a need to survive.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nThat situation sounds familiar somehow.\nMaybe we should consider a similar course: instead of cutting education\nbudgets, make educating everybody a priority.\n

\nThen the Finns got serious about it:\n

\nThe second critical decision came in 1979, when reformers required\nthat every teacher earn a fifth-year master\u2019s degree in theory and\npractice at one of eight state universities\u2014at state expense. From\nthen on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors\nand lawyers. Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because\nthe salaries were so high but because autonomy and respect made the\njob attractive.\n<\/blockquote>\nStatus for teachers?\nThat sounds almost Confucian, almost Chinese!\nOh, wait, \nShanghai is one of the very few places in the world that outdoes Finland<\/a>\nin education, by letting teachers teach, and not just knowledge:\nthey teach creativity.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nMaybe people around here should consider giving teachers more autonomy\ninstead of\n\ntrying to cram more teachers together into a larger school system.<\/a>\nMaybe instead of treating education like a business,\ntry to improve education.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attention to weak students. Status and autonomy for teachers. Educators running the show, not business people. All this creates a real educated workforce. Lynnell Hancock wrote for Smithsonian Magazine September 2011, Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful? Here’s a clue: \u201cChildren from wealthy families with lots of education can be taught by stupid teachers,\u201d Louhivuori said, […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,40,1376,15,3305],"tags":[1859,1860,8704,8705,904,1861,3842,776,1863,1858,1862],"class_list":["post-1610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-education","category-fvcs","tag-autonomy","tag-creativity","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-finland","tag-learning","tag-shanghai","tag-status","tag-survival","tag-teachers","tag-weakest-students"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-pY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}