A Few Radical Proposals
The test designers from Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, included questionnaires for parents about preparation of their children for formal schooling. Ina V. S. Mullins, an executive director of the International Study Center, said that students whose parents reported singing or playing number games as well as reading aloud with their children early in life scored higher on their fourth-grade tests than those whose parents who did not report such activities. Similarly, students who had attended preschool performed better. –Motoko Rich, U.S. Students Still Lag Globally in Math and Science, Tests Show, New York Times, December 11, 2012.
Finland has a superlative education system and a nation of educated citizens which rivals the best of the best around the world. As a result, the small country can boast of a low poverty rate, a low crime rate, and a low unemployment rate. What makes Finland so successful?
Finland’s stellar performance has drawn the attention of education and government officials around the world. These experts have uncovered many attributes of the Finnish educational system that are distinctive and contribute to the success of Finnish students. Some of these features are:
“• The Finnish school system uses the same curriculum for all students (which may be one reason why Finnish scores varied so little from school to school).
• Students have light homework loads.
• Finnish schools do not have classes for gifted students.
• Finland uses very little standardized testing.
• Children do not start school until age 7.
• Finland has a comprehensive preschool program that emphasizes “self-reflection” and socializing, not academics.
• Grades are not given until high school, and even then, class rankings are not compiled.
• Teachers must have master’s degrees.
• Becoming a teacher in Finland is highly competitive. Just 10% of Finnish college graduates are accepted into the teacher training program; as a result, teaching is a high-status profession. (Teacher salaries are similar to teacher salaries in the U.S., however. [But living expenses in Finland are lower.])
• Students are separated into academic and vocational tracks during the last three years of high school. About 50% go into each track.
• Diagnostic testing of students is used early and frequently. If a student is in need of extra help, intensive intervention is provided.
• Groups of teachers visit each others’ classes to observe their colleagues at work. Teachers also get one afternoon per week for professional development.
• School funding is higher for the middle school years, the years when children are most in danger of dropping out.
• College is free in Finland.
• Finnish society is much more cohesive and prone to accept rules and regulations and to comply. This is taught in homes and reinforced in schools. Sameness is preferred to diversity or dissidence, and that makes students more apt to follow a program with enthusiasm.
- The Finnish education system is composed of nine-year basic education (comprehensive school), preceded by one year of voluntary pre-primary education; upper secondary education, comprising vocational and general education; and higher education, provided by universities and polytechnics. Basic education is free general education provided for the whole age group. Upper secondary education consists of general education and vocational education and training (vocational qualifications and further and specialist qualifications). (Ministry of Education 2009.)
“Preschool education–a relatively new addition to the Finnish toolkit–has been part
of their educational system for the past 10 years. According to Jouni Välijärvi, professor. University of Jyväskylä, Finnish Institute for Educational Research, Finland. “Preschools are nonacademic in the sense that no clear academic targets are set. Socialization into school culture and learning to work together with children is the central role. Preschool is not compulsory in Finland, but 96-97% of the children go to it.”
The characteristics of the other most successful school system in the world—Singapore—are very similar to those practiced in Finland. It is reasonable to ask:
“Is it fair to compare the U.S. to tiny Finland or other homogeneous nations?”
“Finnish [and Singaporean] educational practices may provide clues to improvement for the United States, but taken together they cannot constitute a magical pill that will cure our educational blues. For one thing, Finland has a vastly more homogeneous population than the United States. Very few students in Finland speak a language at home other than Finnish. In the U.S., on the other hand, 8% of children are English language learners, according to the U.S. Department of Education.” “Another area where Finland is homogeneous is in school funding. All of Finland’s schools receive the same per-pupil funding, in contrast to the United States where school funding is based upon a complex formula that uses a local-funding component and creates inequities between affluent and poor communities.”-Innote, Lifelong Learning Programme.
On the other hand, Singapore has considerable diversity with four major ethnic, religious, language, and cultural divisions. In Singapore, the benign totalitarian governmental regime has enforced national cohesiveness and order in part by incorporating every ethnic group’s aptitudes, cultural heritage, and aspirations into the nation as a whole; the identity of the different groups is preserved, but the unity as citizens of Singapore is treasured. Throughout the year, everyone celebrates Chinese New Year, Easter, Hari Raya Puasa, Moon Cake Lantern Festival, Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, Deepavali, Birthday of the Monkey God Navarathiri, Festival of Nine Emperor Gods, Hari Raya Haji, Ramadan, and Christmas. And they get along. They agree on the importance of education and upon the need to work to attain a superior education that will give them an advantage in the competitive world.
“Neither major nations such as those belonging to the G7 or G8 group (the main economic competitors of the U.S.), nor the vast majority of nations participating in international education surveys, have populations as diverse as the U.S.,” says Erling E. Boe, Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Center for Research and Evaluation in Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “Only the U.S. collects survey data for the race/ethnicity of students in the study samples. Canada, for example, has a substantial minority group (East Asians), but no data on such Asians as compared with Caucasians. The U.S. has sizable minority groups of Black and Hispanic students that do poorly in international comparisons and lower overall average scores for the U.S., while East Asians generally perform at a high level in math and science achievement. Therefore, it is possible that the overall scores for Canada are enhanced by its East Asian minority population.”
Jouni Välijärvi, professor. University of Jyväskylä, Finnish Institute for Educational Research, believes that some educational choices can produce results regardless of the demographics of a country. “During the last 20 to 30 years most of the industrialized countries have invested huge amounts of money and intelligence on external evaluations and standardized tests. Finland has not. Finland has invested in teacher education,” he says. “I dare to say that the profit of the Finnish investments has been greater.”
“Unlike…Asian models, which emphasize rote memorization and test scores, Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play, according to education researchers who have studied the country’s success. There are no standardized tests, and the focus [is] on equity, not competition between schools or students. There are also no private schools, but some high schools are allowed to select students on the basis of academic merit. Teaching is a high-status profession, with each teacher required to have a master’s degree. Teachers are given generous pay and lots of responsibility, but there are few official metrics of accountability.
“’There’s no word for accountability in Finnish,” Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility, once told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. ‘Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.’” –Washingon Post WorldViews, Max Fisher and the Washington Post Foreign Staff.
“In math, Singapore’s schools teach fewer subjects in greater depth before students are able to move on [blogpost author’s emphasis]. And culturally, there is no shortage of the so-called “Tiger mothers,” who saddle kids with extra math tutorials and drive them to succeed. Of course, Singapore’s small size–there are only 522,000 students and 360 schools–means revamping its school system was ‘more like turning around a kayak rather than a battleship,’ said Professor Lee Sing Kong, director of Singapore’s National Institute of Education.” –Washingon Post WorldViews, Max Fisher and the Washington Post Foreign Staff.
“Successful countries do not have the narrow focus of the United States’ No Child Left Behind…the conservative and intellectual definition of education restricted to math and reading.” –Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, 2010, Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group.
In blogpost 1 of this series on educational issues, the author listed a large number of programs put forth by entirely well-meaning, intelligent, and resourceful people to help alleviate the seemingly entrenched failures in education of American youth—the real hope for our future. All of them have foundered and perished in the ghettos of our inner cities and in the impoverished rural schools in the vastness of the open spaces of America. There are good, even excellent public schools—usually found in rich school districts such as Loudoun County, Virginia. The author of this blogpost series will offer his studied opinions along with several other concerned Americans about what we must do in the next blogposts in the series.
