I am not just picking Finland however. I am picking Scandanavia as a region, which consists of 21 million, or a little over half of Canada's population. The sam

I am not just picking Finland however. I am picking Scandanavia as a region, which consists of 21 million, or a little over half of Canada's population. The sample size is large enough, in my opinion. It passes the smell test as well: teaching children how to learn versus teaching children how to perform a task or pass a test Obviously the former is going to be better. Not forcing children to sit in classrooms for the majority of the day is obviously going to be better. Not being obsessed with standardize testing losing sight of the overall goal of preparing your children for life sounds obviously better. Starting at 7 years old sounds obviously better - I can specifically attest to this as a parent, where Americans seem obsessed to have their glorified daycare service aka "preschool and kindergarten" so that they can work more of their already overworked life away) Irrespective of the above points: I get it (the point about population size, different countries, economic systems, political systems, etc). This fact is brought up every time a desired attribute about a smaller country is mentioned. The things I am talking about are irrespective of population size. It requires a perspective change and getting rid of politicians that still somehow think the turn of the century, industrial-age, overtly standardized school system we have built here in America that more resembles a prison than a place of learning is working and just needs more: more money, more teachers, more books, more standardization (now we need to account for all different metrics and biases! more money to the test generators) etc, so we can keep on chugging along with this failed system when the elephant in the room is the system itself is what is a overall failure and needs a complete rebuild -- which is exactly what Finland did in the 60s when it had similar challenges from the Soviet-era education system.