4 ms·
Are there any reasons to believe that is relevant? If you take PISA scores to be a good indicator than there are homogeneous and non-homogeneous societies near
by r7000 17y ago
Are there any reasons to believe that is relevant?
If you take PISA scores to be a good indicator than there are homogeneous and non-homogeneous societies near the top and bottom.
Canada ranks right up there with Finland every year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA sometimes topping Finland in a category. It is easy to find countries that are culturally homogeneous near the bottom of the rankings as well.
- sesqu 17y agoCanada and Finland are culturally far more similar than the US and Finland. Both are also bilingual, northern, woodsy and even share some genetics (Finns mostly migrated to Canada, Michigan etc. way back when that was happening).
- r7000 17y agoWhen it comes to cultural homogeneity Canada and Finland are not at all more similar than Canada and the U.S. - which was the issue here. Perhaps the Canadian and Finnish educational systems have more in common than with the U.S. which may have been your point. Does being officially bilingual, northern, and woodsy have an impact on PISA rankings? Finns do not make up a large or even a moderate proportion of Canada's population.
- btilly 17y agoAs a dual US/Canadian citizen who grew up in Canada, I absolutely agree with you. There are cultural differences between the USA and Canada, but they are much less than the cultural differences that I've experienced between different parts of the USA. And I'm not sure that growing up I even met anyone with Finnish ancestry outside of my own family.
- r7000 17y agoActually two of my friends ended up married to Finnish-Canadians: one from a Northern Ontario family (Thunder Bay) and one recently from Finland. So if we go by personal anecdote Canada is indeed full of Finns. :)
- btilly 17y agoPart of the whole cultural mosaic thing is that ethnic groups wind up in fairly well defined geographic areas. I have no reason to doubt that there are significant Finnish communities somewhere in Canada. However I didn't notice any in Victoria, BC.
- sesqu 17y agoDoes being officially bilingual, northern, and woodsy have an impact on PISA rankings? If I had to guess: yes. I honestly do believe that winters and environmental controls (like pavement) affect your approach to a wide variety of problems, and are immersive enough to do so on a nationwide scale. Not so sure about language, but a lot of other people seem to be. This might manifest in educational systems more prominently than other parts of culture, or it might not. The thread of discussion is mostly about why the US is feeling inferior to Finland in one particular aspect, and grandparent stated that Canada also tests better there, so I would figure there might be something that Canada and Finland have but the US (and UK?) don't. Like, say, some aspect of culture. Although obviously bordering cultures tend to affect each other greatly, my first instinct is always to look at a nation's climate.
- btilly 17y agoHere is a problem with the climate hypothesis. One of the top Canadian provinces educationally is British Columbia. The majority of the province lives in Vancouver and Victoria. Those two cities have an extremely mild climate that is similar to Seattle and bears no resemblance to Finland or the rest of Canada. If climate was the underlying reason for education going well in Canada, then you would not expect British Columbia to do as well as it does. (Disclaimer. I'm biased because I grew up in Victoria.)
- hugh3 17y agoUnless the important factor is the absence of extreme heat rather than the presence of extreme cold, in which case Vancouver would be just as good as Helsinki. Destroying this hypothesis entirely, though, we have the high educational achievement of Singapore, which is hot and humid as heck every single day of the year.