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This argument doesn't actually hold water when you look at the facts though. Yes, in the rural areas, the schools have largely homogeneous demographics. However, in the cities, like Helsinki, their demographics, when it comes to things like low socioeconomic status and high percentage of immigrant children who don't speak the native language, are just as diverse as in the US. And those schools actually score HIGHER on standardized tests than the rest of the country. The demographics are NOT dictating the educational results. The US uses it as an excuse, we are short changing our kids and doing them a disservice when we excuse their poor performance because of their demographic.
Ok, I'll give you that one, you are correct. Let me see if I can change my OP.
...Done.
More than 20,000 foreigners arrive in Finland each year. Most of them are from Europe and Asia. Refugees are accepted to a limited extent, mostly through agreed quotas and the granting of asylum."
Goes on to talk about Sami (Lapps), Russians, Roma, Jews, and Tartars.
"Until the 1990s emigration exceeded immigration, with Sweden being one of the most attractive destinations for Finnish emigrants. Following World War II, hundreds of thousands of Finns emigrated, while immigration was practically nil, owing to government restrictions. Since 1990, however, Finland has become a country of net immigration. As a result of increasing Finnish prosperity, the fall of the Soviet Union, and a liberalization of Finnish asylum and immigration policy, the number of immigrants rose dramatically at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, with the largest numbers coming from Russia, Sweden, Estonia, and Somalia. Internal migration since the 1950s has been steadily toward the large towns and cities." For the most part, other countries in Europe.
In addition, Finland has a population of 5.4 million, about the same as Colorado and Minnesota (each, not together).
I'm not impressed. Y'know why? Back 20+ years ago, when my kids were in early elementary school, the country we were constantly being compared to was Japan. Japan, Japan, Japan! They had the Holy Grail. When the Japanese education system was looked at more closely, the cracks in their system showed up-rote learning, intense pressure, shortage of special ed services, etc. All systems have their pros and cons.
You missed the most important point. In Finland a generous and equitable social welfare system ensures that no child lives in poverty. In the US a third of children live in poverty. It is important to train teachers well and stop spending so much time on testing and teaching to the test, but when a kid goes home to the stress of not enough food and insecure housing plus parents working multiple jobs and exhausted even if they are home when the kid is, is it any wonder they can't learn well?
What works for a country with a population of 5.4 million doesn't necessarily work for a country with a population of over 320 million. Finland has 3% of its student population living in poverty vs. 20% of US students living in poverty. 5.5% of the population of Finland is foreign born vs. 13% of the US population.
Comparing these 2 countries is like comparing applies to oranges.
What works for a country with a population of 5.4 million doesn't necessarily work for a country with a population of over 320 million. Finland has 3% of its student population living in poverty vs. 20% of US students living in poverty. 5.5% of the population of Finland is foreign born vs. 13% of the US population.
Comparing these 2 countries is like comparing applies to oranges.
You know, someone tried to use the 'the US is just so big!' argument to explain why it was impossible to not have long wait times for doctors. It was bull**** for that, and it's bull**** for this. Per capita (that means per person) Finland's GDP is lower than the US's, at $42,000 compared to $55,000. They have less money per person than the US does to support people. They are just more moral.
The US has the worst rates of child poverty in the developed world (30%, not 20%) because there is a cultural preference that people who are in dire straights be punished. Americans do not want adult men to receive any aid but food stamps, and for even those to be withheld if the man had a drug conviction as an eighteen year old. Americans want poor children to receive the bare basics of necessitites in free lunches, but they won't give the parents any money to buy the food to make their own kids lunch and breakfast and dinner. No, those nasty poor folk need to be punished and made to sweat for their evil failure of working for minimum wage - let them get on a bus after work and spend three hours travelling to a food bank to grovel for charity if they want to eat.
You might try and deny the punitive nature of any help available to American people, but the simple facts are all around and very, very obvious. Look at the stigma in the US for being less wealthy than the next person, look at the stigma of taking and of the paltry assistances, and look at thise trivial and miserly few assistances.
You know, someone tried to use the 'the US is just so big!' argument to explain why it was impossible to not have long wait times for doctors. It was bull**** for that, and it's bull**** for this. Per capita (that means per person) Finland's GDP is lower than the US's, at $42,000 compared to $55,000. They have less money per person than the US does to support people. They are just more moral.
The US has the worst rates of child poverty in the developed world (30%, not 20%) because there is a cultural preference that people who are in dire straights be punished. Americans do not want adult men to receive any aid but food stamps, and for even those to be withheld if the man had a drug conviction as an eighteen year old. Americans want poor children to receive the bare basics of necessitites in free lunches, but they won't give the parents any money to buy the food to make their own kids lunch and breakfast and dinner. No, those nasty poor folk need to be punished and made to sweat for their evil failure of working for minimum wage - let them get on a bus after work and spend three hours travelling to a food bank to grovel for charity if they want to eat.
You might try and deny the punitive nature of any help available to American people, but the simple facts are all around and very, very obvious. Look at the stigma in the US for being less wealthy than the next person, look at the stigma of taking and of the paltry assistances, and look at thise trivial and miserly few assistances.
I thought the topic was education. The previous poster acknowledged the difference in poverty levels.
And you're going off the rails a bit. There is a food program called SNAP. They don't have to take a bus for three hours to a food bank. Now I've been on CD long enough to know that it's sometimes hard to convey what one really means. I'm not saying everything is rosy, but it's not as you describe, either.
<<SNIP>> A Finnish teacher receives the highest level of education in the country. All Finnish teachers are required to get a masters degree, and complete a difficult 1 year teaching residency, very similar to a surgical residency in the states.<<SNIP>>
It doesn't say much for the overall education level if a masters degree is the highest level in the country.
And all that fine Finnish education has of course produced that world-famous... scholar...intellectual...inventor...writer...artis t...tech wizard...scientist....uh, (struggling to come up with any current outstanding person from Finland)
It is true that Finland has less generational poverty than the US, but I'd wager a guess that it's BECAUSE of how they treat education.
All daycare, preschool, and kindergarten is free to everyone, and high quality. Day care teachers have to have bachelor degrees, and the poorest ghetto kid gets free access to that high quality teacher, all day every school day, from 8 months of age on up. Everyone gets free school lunch. Almost every kid, even the poor ones, arrive to "compulsory school" at age 7 with solid reading and math skills already developed, because of the high quality of free universal daycare and preschool. 97% percent of ALL kids over age 3 go to these high quality public preschools. Mothers who choose to "homeschool" their children under age 3 receive a stipend from the government and visits from caseworkers to their homes to ensure appropriate environments.
That right there my friend is how you overcome generational poverty and break the cycle. Can't think of a better way.
I disagree with this type of thinking. Education alone is not the key to ending poverty; the antidote to poverty is actually doing something about income and wealth inequality. There are obviously some key differences between the United States and Nordic countries like Finland that cannot be ignored, but you're painting an incomplete picture if you don't acknowledge that the social safety nets in those countries lay the groundwork for the schools themselves to be able to do their jobs in educating students.
And all that fine Finnish education has of course produced that world-famous... scholar...intellectual...inventor...writer...artis t...tech wizard...scientist....uh, (struggling to come up with any current outstanding person from Finland)
Hang on, let me just finnish trying to cut my Nokia phone with these Fiskars scissors.
I thought the topic was education. The previous poster acknowledged the difference in poverty levels.
And you're going off the rails a bit. There is a food program called SNAP. They don't have to take a bus for three hours to a food bank. Now I've been on CD long enough to know that it's sometimes hard to convey what one really means. I'm not saying everything is rosy, but it's not as you describe, either.
Exactly. The only assistance Americans are willing to give is food, and many people are not eligible, or don't get enough to cover their full needs. Really. Go and read about the actual real assistance available. It will make you very sad, but hopefully very angry. There are huuuge swathes of the population that get nothing at all, and enormous numbers who only get food assistance. They are not in a situation where they're likely to do all those little things that middle class parents do for our kids, starting with being able to let them live without stress.
And you're vastly underestimating how time consuming bus travel is. It is trivially easy for a relatively short trip to take an hour or more in each direction, add in time in the queue and three hours is probably an underestimate. Here's a fun exercise: your day off is Sunday afternoon. Use google to figure out the nearest food bank to you open on a Sunday afternoon and how long a bus from your house to there and back will take.
Last edited by WildColonialGirl; 12-30-2015 at 07:23 PM..
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