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As admirable as Finland's achievements are and as much as we can learn from them, your argument doesn't have a lot of bearing on the debate at hand. Finland is a homogenous country of five million people spread over an area the size of Montana. Because of this remarkable homogeneity, there is very much a shared value system at work in that country. The other thing? Finland has the lowest income disparity in the entirety of the EU. So the notion of 'poor' and 'rich' isn't really applicable.
Meanwhile, the United States is a sprawling country of 323 million embracing a wide variety of ethnicities, cultures, and regions with different economic priorities. The United States also deals with a much larger immigrant population. Finland's immigrants constitute less than 3% of that country's population while something like 13% of the US population is foreign-born. This also creates challenges for educators.
All that is to say that using Finland as the yardstick by which to measure American schools is simplistic and, in many cases, isn't relevant to the problem we are trying to tackle.
While this is partly true, before the school reformation in the 60's the Finnish schools were crap. Lower quality than the Western European average. Though we didn't have a variety of ethnicities and religions, income disparity was much higher than today, and so was the attitude towards education.
It's also a myth that Finland found some holy grail of education, or/and invented everything ourselves. No, we looked into pretty much every country's education system, including the US, and combined them to a model which suited us the best.
It's also true Finland doesn't have the same number of immigrants as the US, but the immigration to Finland has risen 800% since 1990. Back then we had virtually no immigrants, compared to 6% today, and rising every year. But the education system hasn't suffered. Also, most of the immigrants live in the urban areas of the south. There's an elementary school close to where I live where probably 75% of students are of immigrant background. But they don't do any worse than a rural school where 100% of the students are ethnic Finns. I don't know how they do it as I don't work in education, but the grades don't lie. Good teachers and good planning, I guess.
I don't think the Finnish education system can be directly translated to the US. But the US can learn something from the Finns. To simply dismiss everything because "we're to big" or "wouldn't work here" is a bad attitude. It's completely normal and natural to borrow and learn from other countries and cultures, and it's nothing embarrassing about it even if you are the most powerful country on the planet.
When we first came to the US, my siblings and I attended the worst schools in our area. What can I say, we were poor at the time. The kids at my school used to call me a goodie two shoes for wanting to perform well in school. While we were crammed in a small trailer in a really rough area, we studied really hard to learn the language and did everything required of us. Our parents had expectations for us.
Those same kids who used to bully me and made fun of me for being a goodie two shoes are now working minimum wage jobs while I'm an engineering project manager making 6 figures.
I guess I can’t blame you for having conservative views on economic and education issues.
Because many of those wealthy people didn't start out that way and only became that way due to influence of teachers/mentors and coaches who they encountered in the course of acquiring their education. If we take away that opportunity for a large segment of our population, we miss out on the potential impact that the next Bill Gates (first name that came to mind), etc might have for us all. Everyone has some potential, not just rich people and we ALL benefit by providing opportunity to as many of our citizens as we possibly can.
For the existing oligarchy they can afford and do utilize private schools. Why do they need an additional advantage?
Explain in detail how and why anyone in this country is rich because someone else is poor.
Or vice versa.
Simple. It’s a zero sum game. We live on a finite planet with finite resources. More for me means less for someone else.
It’s why militaries exist.
11-11-2017, 09:48 AM
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Why is it good for poverty to persist across generations?
This is an insane position. Whine and complain and vilify the lower class, all while proposing policies designed to deny opportunity to lower income people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer
Wow, 2 replies and BAM the trusty ol race card.
Race has what to do with the topic?
The post you quoted makes no mention of race whatsoever...
I think he is more concerned about fairness. In my experience, there are two kinds of people.
People who think the money you earn is your own, and the government takes your money away from you.
And people who think everyone’s earned money belongs in a pot that the government can distribute as it sees fit.
And how you see it has nothing to do with whether you are rich or poor. It only has to do with what you think is fair and what is not.
Fairness would mean all children have the same opportunity. He is advocating for a society where one is stuck in the class born to. I'm presuming some propagandist is speaking in his ear and he is simply parroting. Who knows...
I think your observation on how people view taxes as too simplistic. Taxes are necessary for a modern society to function. Countries that have no government or taxes rank the lowest on the scale of desirable places to live. Also, I'm not sure there are many, outside some fringe groups, that believe all income should be put in one pot for the distribution by the Federal Government. That's crazy!
I agree with this BUT it is a fact in most states that wealthy neighborhoods DO have better schools, sometimes much better.
Sure they do and here are some of the reasons why:
In wealthy neighborhoods there tends to be more parental involvement and a good part of involvement is fundraising. My cousin lives in Ross Ca. (a toney little town in Marin County) and years ago when computers were too expensive for schools, the parents pooled their money and provided computers for every classroom, something that was unheard of at the time.
Poor neighborhoods tend to have more single parent families most of whom, contrary to popular belief, work. The wealthier the neighborhood the more likely that there will be a stay at home parent. Stay at home parents are in a better position to volunteer at the school as well as help their kids with homework
The director of admissions at our local school district cited transience as as the biggest factor in low test scores and absenteeism. He said that many people who rent apartments move 2 or 3 times in the school year. He said people could keep their kid in their assigned school for the rest of the year after moving but most don't have transportation or time to drive the kids to school so they transfer the kids. He said some kids miss weeks of school each time the parents move. He said it's even more of a disaster for kids living in weekly or monthly motels.
In this district there are public charters and open enrollment schools, theoretically giving parents the opportunity to enroll their kids in a good school, the problem is that the district is huge and the schools only provide bus transportation for special needs kids, and the poorer the kid is the less likely it is that a family member will be able to drive them to school every day.
Last edited by 2sleepy; 11-11-2017 at 09:58 AM..
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