Your Thoughts on the Finnish Model of Education

[marie5v]

Originally Posted by jenshoes

Evaluating Finland's education system without regards to its extensive welfare system and national personality is like the blind men and elephant story. You can't separate the three. The Finns wrote the right to an education and culture into the Finnish constitution. They pay a 51% tax rate on a $37,000 per capita income to have a high-tax welfare system that is intertwined with its 1st through 9th basic education system, ensuring every Finnish student receives high quality healthcare, childcare, optimal nutrition, necessary special education services, and fully funded education expenses. Americans would never stand for that. Feeding school children, ensuring all children have adequate healthcare and quality childcare, keeping class sizes low so that teachers really know their students, and getting a nurse, psychologist, and social worker to evaluate underperformers - and following through with a plan to address the underperformer's needs... That will never happen in America. It's just too socialist for our national personality.

This is 100% true. I get angry when I see all this talk about how we can use Finnish this and that to improve our schools, when all administrators and politicians really do is pick out some tiny scrap of their system and pretend that is going to do something here. They ignore the real difference between the two systems because acknowledging it would mean admitting that the American version of school reform is doomed to continued failure as it bypasses the root of our problem - social inequity, not academic inequity.

[Lincolnian]

Originally Posted by marie5v

This is 100% true. I get angry when I see all this talk about how we can use Finnish this and that to improve our schools, when all administrators and politicians really do is pick out some tiny scrap of their system and pretend that is going to do something here. They ignore the real difference between the two systems because acknowledging it would mean admitting that the American version of school reform is doomed to continued failure as it bypasses the root of our problem - social inequity, not academic inequity.

Nothing will get better until the whole picture is evaluated. Politicians are looking for simple solutions to complicated problems that play well to the crowd. Our current president threw education under the bus when he and Secretary Duncan made an issue out of the Central Falls, RI teachers backing their firing. He found out he could appease the far left and far right by somehow diverting attention away from a terrible economy and hanging the lack of jobs on problems with education.

The Feds now hold states and municipalities hostage with politically-motivated policy tied to funding. It is sad.

[marie5v]

Originally Posted by Lincolnian

Nothing will get better until the whole picture is evaluated. Politicians are looking for simple solutions to complicated problems that play well to the crowd. Our current president threw education under the bus when he and Secretary Duncan made an issue out of the Central Falls, RI teachers backing their firing. He found out he could appease the far left and far right by somehow diverting attention away from a terrible economy and hanging the lack of jobs on problems with education.

The Feds now hold states and municipalities hostage with politically-motivated policy tied to funding. It is sad.

Scapegoating...an ancient tradition.