7 ms·

Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

148 points by mebe 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
skrebbel 15y ago
I can't wait for Finns to pop in here to tell us about the dark sides of this success. There must be some. For one, there's a tax rate that would make most Americans, and even most Europeans, choke on their latte. I'm not sure that's bad, but this article seems to neglect to mention that nothing comes for free. This isn't just "doing it smarter", it's also investing a massive chunk of money. Additionally, I honestly doubt it's sustainable. The example of the Kosovar kid with a language delay is telling: this will only work if there's only a few such kids in the school at once. With immigration to Finland strongly increasing over the past 5 years, the problem may at some point be more difficult to tackle the "traditional way" when, at least in certain cities and suburbs, half the classroom has trouble with the language. I don't think there's an easy solution to this.
- hugh3 15y ago
  I'm not sure that's bad, but this article seems to neglect to mention that nothing comes for free. This isn't just "doing it smarter", it's also investing a massive chunk of money. Doesn't the article say: "Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States"? And Finland's per-capita GDP is practically the same as that of the US.
- rdouble 15y ago
  From the article it sounds like the Finns spend less and actually are "just doing it smarter."
  - autarch 15y ago
    They may spend less per child on education, but they probably spend more on social services. Read the paragraph in the article that starts with "it's almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless." Many American students face huge barriers to learning that originate outside of school. They are hungry, chronically ill, don't have a home, don't have a quiet space to study, don't have supportive parents, etc. No amount of school reform will fix those problems. Check out season 4 of The Wire for a very grim account of a school in a very poor area.
    - rdouble 15y ago
      There's some truth to that. However, most of the USA is not like season four of The Wire, and still manages to have public schools that are mediocre at best. If it's valid to use fictional schools from TV shows as examples, my experience is that schools in small to medium sized cities in the USA are shockingly similar to the one on South Park.
      - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
        The main writer of that series was an ex-inner-city schoolteacher and based those stories on his own experience. "Burns has said that he stumbled into teaching with little preparation because of the intense demand for teachers in inner-city schools.[2] Burns taught seventh grade. Psychologically, he compared the experience of teaching to the Vietnam War.[2] He found the experience profoundly challenging because of the emotional damage that the vast majority of his students had already experienced before reaching the classroom. He saw his primary role as instilling caring behavior in his pupils.[2] He felt his major impact was in giving the children an example of an "adult who's consistent, who's always there, who always comes through with what he said, then that's a new world for them."[2]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Burns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Burns
        rdouble 15y ago
        As a former student in a small town elementary school, I have little doubt Matt Stone and Trey Parker based the South Park school on their own experience growing up in Colorado. Mr. Hand is a bit much - but just a bit. Putting up with bizarre characters, listening to inappropriate personal life details, tolerating dumb lessons and watching videos in class were all standard occurrences.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      Some amount of American school spending also goes towards addressing those problems, not really towards education, which can distort what the "education spending" figures mean. For example, depending on which figures for education spending you use, it might include the free school lunch program, which is really more a kind of anti-poverty program that happens to be distributed via the schools. In addition, beefed up school security, anti-gang programs, and counseling programs are the school acting as policeman and social worker more than as educator. So it could be (but I can't say for sure) that Finland's lower per-student education budget still includes more actual spending on education, if other parts of the government take care of the other issues better.
- borism 15y ago
  They write in the article it's not about the money - they spend third less than the USA. Taxes have nothing to do with how children are being taught.
- dusklight 15y ago
  When all is said and done, I wonder if Hitler will have done more good than evil? For all the things he did when he was alive, one of his lasting legacies has been, he has made it incredibly shameful to be racist. Most people don't dare to be publicly racist anymore .. they use euphemisms like "immigrant" instead.
  - nandemo 15y ago
    Good Lord, just because someone is pointing out that a certain problem might be in a way related to immigration, it doesn't mean that someone is racist. Can you really not see that "more immigrant kids in Finland" might lead to "more kids who have learning problems at school"? Simply because immigrants to Finland typically don't speak Finnish, are poorer than the average Finnish citizen, etc. This is far cry from saying immigrants are inferior. Suppose that we found out that if immigration in US were heavily curtailed, then some social indicators such as "% of population with low income" or "average grades in standardized tests" would improve and then US would compare more favourably in relation to (say) Finland. That's not to say that immigration is a bad thing! I, for one, think that US is helping more people than Finland, even if reluctantly.
    - stan_rogers 15y ago
      Finland has a policy of providing (wherever possible) early-stage immigrant education in the child's first language. Bilingualism, and an eventual transition to study in Suomi (or Swedish -- which seems to be a level alternative officially) are encouraged, of course, but the object of the game seems to be to get the young minds working as well as possible as early as possible, even if that means teaching reading and math skills in Somali, Vietnamese or Arabic in the interim. It seems to work.
      - Stork 15y ago
        But Finland doesn't have any immigrants, that's why they seem to be doing so well.
- nosse 15y ago
  a Finn popping up here. I study at Aalto university, my mom is a teacher and I have thought this stuff a lot. Dark side of success... What success? Given six million people, who all are smart as hell when 15 year olds, you could assume that there would be at least one university in Finland that would be in the group of 30 best universities in the world. Well, our best is Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto at rank 151. Switzerland has Universite de geneve at 33 while Sweden has Karolinska Institut at 51 http://www.4icu.org/top200/ http://www.4icu.org/top200/ I have heard that Finland has quite cheap engineers when compared internationally, but you can hardly speak of very high class upper education. Teaching in Finland is far from perfect. I think these scores have a lot to do with language. As Finnish is written phonetically, average child knows how to read and write after first grade. It would be more fair to compare Finnish 13 year old with English speaking 15 year old.
  - Vargas 15y ago
    Couldn't agree more! English bizantine writing system is a major drag. Sadly a spelling reform doesn't seem possible at the moment.
- schme 15y ago
  Top students get diminished returns for their abilities. Everything is based on your age, so students who learn faster just have it easier, but they can't advance any further than the slowest student in the class. As the teacher tells us, a lot of effort goes to helping the kids with more problems learning, keeping the lows as high as possible. Due to the "everyone needs to have equal education" setting, nothing is done to keep the brilliant brilliant. This isn't a real _problem_ though, just something that could be better and I personally found annoying.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    That's true to a significant extent in the U.S. as well, though districts vary on their policies towards "advanced" or "gifted" classes. I think that on average, even with "advanced" courses, the brilliant students progress further mostly through outside-of-school pursuits, whether it's the internet, independent reading, going to museums, an intellectual hobby, or something else along those lines.
asolove 15y ago
While Finland's educators have much to be proud about, this is not a particularly difficult goal to reach. You simply need teachers who care, administrators who have students' best interests in mind, and parents who aren't trying to protect their children from any challenge or punishment. Of course, those things are fairly rare, and it isn't that easy to create such an environment. But, as anyone who has even been in such a school knows, it isn't due to "reform" or "constantly trying to improve" in the way that parents and education policy analysts expect. It comes from fortuitous groupings of teachers, shared priorities, and people who are sane because they love their families, get enough sleep, and aren't under stress. This is the flaw in most education reform: in a broken social environment, working harder for incremental improvement leads to more stress and worse interpersonal relationships. It's like a bad programmer who works 80 hours a week to make up for his inefficiency, and is surprised that he gets even worse. Sometimes it's better to just take a break, reset your goals, and try something else.
chrismealy 15y ago
Finnish teachers make 100% of the national average for their level of education, compared to something like 60-65% for American teachers.
- qq66 15y ago
  That's true but it's not the only problem. Teaching in America is not a high-status profession the way it is in other countries, so people who are capable tend to choose other professions. We need a new cultural value on teaching.
  - mentat 15y ago
    Some assertions w/o citation: That's partially because many parents see school as free childcare and don't understand the value of education themselves. This in turn is because parents are (in general) spending more time away from their children trying to "make ends meet" which itself has to do with consumer culture and living beyond means. It's a complex problem.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- roc 15y ago
  There really is something to be said for the way the Finnish system has made teaching an attractive and respected profession. In the US, the decades of weak pay, support and heavy criticism almost seem like a high point compared to the demonization of more recent years.
  - prostoalex 15y ago
    It's a chicken-and-egg problem, as if you spend some time on an undergraduate campus in the US, you'll notice that majority of those majoring in Education have deemed other, more profitable, majors as too hard.
    - pavlov 15y ago
Benjo 15y ago
It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless. I don't see how this author can fail to make any mention of the vastly different demographics in Finland as compared to the US. Certainly the US system has problems, but acting like the solutions are so easy doesn't help anyone. Finland has one of the most even wealth distributions in the world. The education problem in the US, as far as I can tell, is mostly in the lower class. So the larger the middle class, the smaller the problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribution_of_wealth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distributi... Am I missing something?
- shaggyfrog 15y ago
  I just happen to have watched the documentary mentioned in the article (Waiting For Superman) a couple of nights ago. It found that children from the middle class are just as effected. The issue boils down to the pervasiveness of bad teachers in the system, and an inability to get rid of those teachers and reward/promote good teachers.
  - scarmig 15y ago
    W4S has a pretty big agenda, though, and it's main point comes off as "it's the unions' fault!" They fail to mention unionization rates in Finnish schools, though.
    - eru 15y ago
      Even if you had unionization rates, American unions probably work different than Finnish unions.
  - lbarrow 15y ago
    Waiting For Superman is right-wing propaganda. Here's a really good NYRB article that explains exactly how distorted that movie is. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-ch... Also, Finnish schools are entirely unionized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_finland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_finland Ctrl-F "union"
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
hugh3 15y ago
These sorts of articles always smack of cargo cultism. First we say "Holy crap, country X is doing better than the US in standardized test Y!". Then we pick out all the ways in which country X is different from the US. Then we throw out the ones which we don't like and assume it must be the other ones which are responsible. Therefore, if we hold childrens' hands more then they'll do better in tests and if build a big flat area in the middle of the jungle and wave sticks in the air then a giant metal bird will land and bring us cargo. The answer to the question of how to improve US education is obvious to everybody... unfortunately the obvious answer always seems to differ depending on whom you're talking to. Teachers' unions will say that the answer is to pay more money to teachers. Anti-union activists will say that the answer is to get rid of teachers' unions. The left will say that we need more redistributive taxation, while the right will say that we need to implement market-based reforms to force schools to compete with one another. And racists will say that it's unavoidable that the US will do worse than European countries, because the US has so many black people. Problems are relatively easy to solve when political agendas are involved, but once you get to the stage where everybody is simultaneously shouting "This new piece of evidence clearly shows that my political agenda was right all along" then problems have become completely insoluble.
- borism 15y ago
  These sorts of articles always smack of cargo cultism. Not this article though. It proposes pretty clear solutions, and no, they don't involve money or anything political you talk about. In fact quite opposite, it talks that both right and left in Finland agree that all kids should get the same quality of education. Did you read it anyway?
- pasiaj 15y ago
  You are spot on about the cargo cultism. Ever since the first great PISA-scores, we've been getting hoards of visitors from all over the world, trying to understand what makes our system good. The problem is, even our own politicians aren't really able to comprehend the reasons. Most politicians aren't able to look at the Finnish system in a way that would question their own political views, so all the statements concerning what makes the Finnish system good are just the same old talking points, with cherry picked details from our system to fit them.
tokenadult 15y ago
From the interesting submitted article: "Teachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and spend less time in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the extra time to build curriculums and assess their students. Children spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7." The bit about teachers having time to prepare their lessons is one of the key observations of east Asian schools too. http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese-Education/dp/0671880764 http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese-Educatio... http://www.tc.columbia.edu/lessonstudy/lessonstudy.html http://www.tc.columbia.edu/lessonstudy/lessonstudy.html Schools in east Asia have similar staffing ratios (teachers per enrolled pupil) to schools in the United States, but they have MUCH larger class sizes, with teachers having work periods during the day when they review and prepare lessons with colleagues. That makes the teachers more effective, per teacher, and helps the teachers cope with the larger class sizes, because they teach more engaging lessons. When I lived in Taiwan a decade ago, I had a chance to see in a bookstore some Chinese-language books used by teachers to prepare mathematics lessons. They are unlike ANYTHING available in English, much richer in mathematical content and much more filled with sound, practice-based pedagogical tips than comparable books published in the United States. Because American schools don't try very hard to engage in best practice in teacher coordination for good lesson preparation, and because many United States school textbooks, especially in mathematics, are just plain lousy, I'm able to make a living as a teacher of supplemental mathematics lessons for children who are already attending their free public schools during other days of the week. In this regard, I'd be happy if the system here changed in a way that put me out of my current job. Another key fact from farther along in the submitted article: "Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive." That explains exactly why I teach in the private sector rather than in the government-operated schools of the United States, which hobble the best teachers and coddle the worst in their employ.
- rdouble 15y ago
  American schools not only "don't try very hard to engage in best practice," that sort of thing is often explicitly forbidden. My cousins are teachers in Americorps and preparing their own lesson plans or using outside materials are not allowed under their employment contracts.
billswift 15y ago
Because they are full of Finns. http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/12/pisa_scores_sho.php http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/12/pisa_scores_sho...
- vukk 15y ago
  http://hardwick.fi/blog/?p=2097 http://hardwick.fi/blog/?p=2097
- hugh3 15y ago
  Wow, if those numbers are true then it sure falls into the "uncomfortable truths" category: ''' * Asian Americans outscored every Asian country, and lost out only to the city of Shanghai, China’s financial capital. * White Americans students outperformed the national average in every one of the 37 historically white countries tested, except Finland (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, an immigration restrictionist nation where whites make up about 99 percent of the population). * Hispanic Americans beat all eight Latin American countries. * African Americans would likely have outscored any sub-Saharan country, if any had bothered to compete. ''' scuze me, I couldn't figure out how to italicise something when it contained asterisky bullet points.
  - eru 15y ago
    Interesting. Though America also probably spends much more on their Foo-Americans than they spend in Foo-istan, so you'd expect a higher showing.
  - mynameishere 15y ago
    If truth is uncomfortable, it's just grinding against some lies you're more comfortable with. But there's no "wow" about it. If America has the pedigree amongst whites, asians, africans, and hispanics, it was simply due to the horrible trials associated with distant migration. Simple Darwinian stuff really.
  - teyc 15y ago
    The article specifically mentions how immigrants are helped in Finland.
Ironballs 15y ago
I do not know if it was mentioned in the article as I did not read it fully, I'm Finnish and am sort of tired of reading or hearing about this particular subject, but it is worth mentioning that all Finnish teachers are required to have a Master's degree to qualify as teachers (even kindergarten ones). Since higher education is free (there are no private universities in Finland), the threshold to study to become a teacher is very small, and usually there is quite a surplus of teachers in popular fields, in hard sciences as an example. Those that select a teaching curriculum in the university spend 1-2 years interning in schools during their studies. Most people end up taking up teaching curricula just because it is a sure way of getting employment especially if one is studying a field in which employment is scarce outside of academia, say, philosophy. I myself am studying computer science and I plan to enroll in a teaching curriculum should life in academia turn out to be boring, mostly because a) teaching is fun b) it pays relatively well c) a three month paid vacation from June to the end of August is a plus and d) it is a respected profession.
- mpk 15y ago
  > [..] it is a sure way of getting employment especially if one is studying a field in which employment is scarce outside of academia, say, philosophy. Just a random observation, but having philosophers with an educational background teaching kindergarten is probably not such a bad thing.
wisty 15y ago
Another article (http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/ http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/, submitted - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918684 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918684) suggests Finish-Ugric languages give Finnish and Estonian schools an edge in PISA results (and education in general). The writing is regular, and vocabulary very simple - think "tear sacs" instead of whatever Latin / Greek / German / French derived term you use in English. I like their right-wing teaching system, which seems to follow the stuff that's got some empirical backing (DI, mastery learning, no retention, etc), but there are other factors.
- CaptainZapp 15y ago
  I like their right-wing teaching system Sorry, but what has the Finnish teaching system to do with right-wing?
djb_hackernews 15y ago
Of course it's easier to teach a smaller homogenous group than a large diverse group. Doesn't make sense to try to find a one size fits all solution for a problem with a multitude of unique aspects: culture, race, language, income, etc. In Finland on the other hand it does, because they are all the same culturally, racially, economically and speak the same language.
godarderik 15y ago
"All children—clever or less so—were to be taught in the same classrooms, with lots of special teacher help available to make sure no child really would be left behind." I imagine this would be very frustrating for a child who is considered "clever". By lumping everyone together in the same classroom, the kids who are ahead of the others could quickly grow bored and lose interest. I live in America, and I know that I was bored as hell until 6th grade, where classes started to be filtered based on abilities. While this article focuses on standardized test scores for all students, I would be interested to see data on "gifted" education in Finland using this one-size fits all approach.

148 points by mebe 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

I can't wait for Finns to pop in here to tell us about the dark sides of this success. There must be some. For one, there's a tax rate that would make most Americans, and even most Europeans, choke on their latte. I'm not sure that's bad, but this article seems to neglect to mention that nothing comes for free. This isn't just "doing it smarter", it's also investing a massive chunk of money. Additionally, I honestly doubt it's sustainable. The example of the Kosovar kid with a language delay is telling: this will only work if there's only a few such kids in the school at once. With immigration to Finland strongly increasing over the past 5 years, the problem may at some point be more difficult to tackle the "traditional way" when, at least in certain cities and suburbs, half the classroom has trouble with the language. I don't think there's an easy solution to this.

hugh3 15y ago
I'm not sure that's bad, but this article seems to neglect to mention that nothing comes for free. This isn't just "doing it smarter", it's also investing a massive chunk of money. Doesn't the article say: "Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States"? And Finland's per-capita GDP is practically the same as that of the US.
rdouble 15y ago
From the article it sounds like the Finns spend less and actually are "just doing it smarter."
- autarch 15y ago
  They may spend less per child on education, but they probably spend more on social services. Read the paragraph in the article that starts with "it's almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless." Many American students face huge barriers to learning that originate outside of school. They are hungry, chronically ill, don't have a home, don't have a quiet space to study, don't have supportive parents, etc. No amount of school reform will fix those problems. Check out season 4 of The Wire for a very grim account of a school in a very poor area.
  - rdouble 15y ago
    There's some truth to that. However, most of the USA is not like season four of The Wire, and still manages to have public schools that are mediocre at best. If it's valid to use fictional schools from TV shows as examples, my experience is that schools in small to medium sized cities in the USA are shockingly similar to the one on South Park.
    - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
      The main writer of that series was an ex-inner-city schoolteacher and based those stories on his own experience. "Burns has said that he stumbled into teaching with little preparation because of the intense demand for teachers in inner-city schools.[2] Burns taught seventh grade. Psychologically, he compared the experience of teaching to the Vietnam War.[2] He found the experience profoundly challenging because of the emotional damage that the vast majority of his students had already experienced before reaching the classroom. He saw his primary role as instilling caring behavior in his pupils.[2] He felt his major impact was in giving the children an example of an "adult who's consistent, who's always there, who always comes through with what he said, then that's a new world for them."[2]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Burns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Burns
      - rdouble 15y ago
        As a former student in a small town elementary school, I have little doubt Matt Stone and Trey Parker based the South Park school on their own experience growing up in Colorado. Mr. Hand is a bit much - but just a bit. Putting up with bizarre characters, listening to inappropriate personal life details, tolerating dumb lessons and watching videos in class were all standard occurrences.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    Some amount of American school spending also goes towards addressing those problems, not really towards education, which can distort what the "education spending" figures mean. For example, depending on which figures for education spending you use, it might include the free school lunch program, which is really more a kind of anti-poverty program that happens to be distributed via the schools. In addition, beefed up school security, anti-gang programs, and counseling programs are the school acting as policeman and social worker more than as educator. So it could be (but I can't say for sure) that Finland's lower per-student education budget still includes more actual spending on education, if other parts of the government take care of the other issues better.
borism 15y ago
They write in the article it's not about the money - they spend third less than the USA. Taxes have nothing to do with how children are being taught.
dusklight 15y ago
When all is said and done, I wonder if Hitler will have done more good than evil? For all the things he did when he was alive, one of his lasting legacies has been, he has made it incredibly shameful to be racist. Most people don't dare to be publicly racist anymore .. they use euphemisms like "immigrant" instead.
- nandemo 15y ago
  Good Lord, just because someone is pointing out that a certain problem might be in a way related to immigration, it doesn't mean that someone is racist. Can you really not see that "more immigrant kids in Finland" might lead to "more kids who have learning problems at school"? Simply because immigrants to Finland typically don't speak Finnish, are poorer than the average Finnish citizen, etc. This is far cry from saying immigrants are inferior. Suppose that we found out that if immigration in US were heavily curtailed, then some social indicators such as "% of population with low income" or "average grades in standardized tests" would improve and then US would compare more favourably in relation to (say) Finland. That's not to say that immigration is a bad thing! I, for one, think that US is helping more people than Finland, even if reluctantly.
  - stan_rogers 15y ago
    Finland has a policy of providing (wherever possible) early-stage immigrant education in the child's first language. Bilingualism, and an eventual transition to study in Suomi (or Swedish -- which seems to be a level alternative officially) are encouraged, of course, but the object of the game seems to be to get the young minds working as well as possible as early as possible, even if that means teaching reading and math skills in Somali, Vietnamese or Arabic in the interim. It seems to work.
    - Stork 15y ago
      But Finland doesn't have any immigrants, that's why they seem to be doing so well.
nosse 15y ago
a Finn popping up here. I study at Aalto university, my mom is a teacher and I have thought this stuff a lot. Dark side of success... What success? Given six million people, who all are smart as hell when 15 year olds, you could assume that there would be at least one university in Finland that would be in the group of 30 best universities in the world. Well, our best is Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto at rank 151. Switzerland has Universite de geneve at 33 while Sweden has Karolinska Institut at 51 http://www.4icu.org/top200/ http://www.4icu.org/top200/ I have heard that Finland has quite cheap engineers when compared internationally, but you can hardly speak of very high class upper education. Teaching in Finland is far from perfect. I think these scores have a lot to do with language. As Finnish is written phonetically, average child knows how to read and write after first grade. It would be more fair to compare Finnish 13 year old with English speaking 15 year old.
- Vargas 15y ago
  Couldn't agree more! English bizantine writing system is a major drag. Sadly a spelling reform doesn't seem possible at the moment.
schme 15y ago
Top students get diminished returns for their abilities. Everything is based on your age, so students who learn faster just have it easier, but they can't advance any further than the slowest student in the class. As the teacher tells us, a lot of effort goes to helping the kids with more problems learning, keeping the lows as high as possible. Due to the "everyone needs to have equal education" setting, nothing is done to keep the brilliant brilliant. This isn't a real _problem_ though, just something that could be better and I personally found annoying.
- _delirium 15y ago
  That's true to a significant extent in the U.S. as well, though districts vary on their policies towards "advanced" or "gifted" classes. I think that on average, even with "advanced" courses, the brilliant students progress further mostly through outside-of-school pursuits, whether it's the internet, independent reading, going to museums, an intellectual hobby, or something else along those lines.

asolove 15y ago

While Finland's educators have much to be proud about, this is not a particularly difficult goal to reach. You simply need teachers who care, administrators who have students' best interests in mind, and parents who aren't trying to protect their children from any challenge or punishment. Of course, those things are fairly rare, and it isn't that easy to create such an environment. But, as anyone who has even been in such a school knows, it isn't due to "reform" or "constantly trying to improve" in the way that parents and education policy analysts expect. It comes from fortuitous groupings of teachers, shared priorities, and people who are sane because they love their families, get enough sleep, and aren't under stress. This is the flaw in most education reform: in a broken social environment, working harder for incremental improvement leads to more stress and worse interpersonal relationships. It's like a bad programmer who works 80 hours a week to make up for his inefficiency, and is surprised that he gets even worse. Sometimes it's better to just take a break, reset your goals, and try something else.

chrismealy 15y ago

Finnish teachers make 100% of the national average for their level of education, compared to something like 60-65% for American teachers.

qq66 15y ago
That's true but it's not the only problem. Teaching in America is not a high-status profession the way it is in other countries, so people who are capable tend to choose other professions. We need a new cultural value on teaching.
- mentat 15y ago
  Some assertions w/o citation: That's partially because many parents see school as free childcare and don't understand the value of education themselves. This in turn is because parents are (in general) spending more time away from their children trying to "make ends meet" which itself has to do with consumer culture and living beyond means. It's a complex problem.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
roc 15y ago
There really is something to be said for the way the Finnish system has made teaching an attractive and respected profession. In the US, the decades of weak pay, support and heavy criticism almost seem like a high point compared to the demonization of more recent years.
- prostoalex 15y ago
  It's a chicken-and-egg problem, as if you spend some time on an undergraduate campus in the US, you'll notice that majority of those majoring in Education have deemed other, more profitable, majors as too hard.
  - pavlov 15y ago

Benjo 15y ago

It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless. I don't see how this author can fail to make any mention of the vastly different demographics in Finland as compared to the US. Certainly the US system has problems, but acting like the solutions are so easy doesn't help anyone. Finland has one of the most even wealth distributions in the world. The education problem in the US, as far as I can tell, is mostly in the lower class. So the larger the middle class, the smaller the problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribution_of_wealth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distributi... Am I missing something?

shaggyfrog 15y ago
I just happen to have watched the documentary mentioned in the article (Waiting For Superman) a couple of nights ago. It found that children from the middle class are just as effected. The issue boils down to the pervasiveness of bad teachers in the system, and an inability to get rid of those teachers and reward/promote good teachers.
- scarmig 15y ago
  W4S has a pretty big agenda, though, and it's main point comes off as "it's the unions' fault!" They fail to mention unionization rates in Finnish schools, though.
  - eru 15y ago
    Even if you had unionization rates, American unions probably work different than Finnish unions.
- lbarrow 15y ago
  Waiting For Superman is right-wing propaganda. Here's a really good NYRB article that explains exactly how distorted that movie is. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-ch... Also, Finnish schools are entirely unionized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_finland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_finland Ctrl-F "union"

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hugh3 15y ago

These sorts of articles always smack of cargo cultism. First we say "Holy crap, country X is doing better than the US in standardized test Y!". Then we pick out all the ways in which country X is different from the US. Then we throw out the ones which we don't like and assume it must be the other ones which are responsible. Therefore, if we hold childrens' hands more then they'll do better in tests and if build a big flat area in the middle of the jungle and wave sticks in the air then a giant metal bird will land and bring us cargo. The answer to the question of how to improve US education is obvious to everybody... unfortunately the obvious answer always seems to differ depending on whom you're talking to. Teachers' unions will say that the answer is to pay more money to teachers. Anti-union activists will say that the answer is to get rid of teachers' unions. The left will say that we need more redistributive taxation, while the right will say that we need to implement market-based reforms to force schools to compete with one another. And racists will say that it's unavoidable that the US will do worse than European countries, because the US has so many black people. Problems are relatively easy to solve when political agendas are involved, but once you get to the stage where everybody is simultaneously shouting "This new piece of evidence clearly shows that my political agenda was right all along" then problems have become completely insoluble.

borism 15y ago
These sorts of articles always smack of cargo cultism. Not this article though. It proposes pretty clear solutions, and no, they don't involve money or anything political you talk about. In fact quite opposite, it talks that both right and left in Finland agree that all kids should get the same quality of education. Did you read it anyway?
pasiaj 15y ago
You are spot on about the cargo cultism. Ever since the first great PISA-scores, we've been getting hoards of visitors from all over the world, trying to understand what makes our system good. The problem is, even our own politicians aren't really able to comprehend the reasons. Most politicians aren't able to look at the Finnish system in a way that would question their own political views, so all the statements concerning what makes the Finnish system good are just the same old talking points, with cherry picked details from our system to fit them.

tokenadult 15y ago

From the interesting submitted article: "Teachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and spend less time in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the extra time to build curriculums and assess their students. Children spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7." The bit about teachers having time to prepare their lessons is one of the key observations of east Asian schools too. http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese-Education/dp/0671880764 http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese-Educatio... http://www.tc.columbia.edu/lessonstudy/lessonstudy.html http://www.tc.columbia.edu/lessonstudy/lessonstudy.html Schools in east Asia have similar staffing ratios (teachers per enrolled pupil) to schools in the United States, but they have MUCH larger class sizes, with teachers having work periods during the day when they review and prepare lessons with colleagues. That makes the teachers more effective, per teacher, and helps the teachers cope with the larger class sizes, because they teach more engaging lessons. When I lived in Taiwan a decade ago, I had a chance to see in a bookstore some Chinese-language books used by teachers to prepare mathematics lessons. They are unlike ANYTHING available in English, much richer in mathematical content and much more filled with sound, practice-based pedagogical tips than comparable books published in the United States. Because American schools don't try very hard to engage in best practice in teacher coordination for good lesson preparation, and because many United States school textbooks, especially in mathematics, are just plain lousy, I'm able to make a living as a teacher of supplemental mathematics lessons for children who are already attending their free public schools during other days of the week. In this regard, I'd be happy if the system here changed in a way that put me out of my current job. Another key fact from farther along in the submitted article: "Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive." That explains exactly why I teach in the private sector rather than in the government-operated schools of the United States, which hobble the best teachers and coddle the worst in their employ.

rdouble 15y ago
American schools not only "don't try very hard to engage in best practice," that sort of thing is often explicitly forbidden. My cousins are teachers in Americorps and preparing their own lesson plans or using outside materials are not allowed under their employment contracts.

billswift 15y ago

Because they are full of Finns. http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/12/pisa_scores_sho.php http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/12/pisa_scores_sho...

vukk 15y ago
http://hardwick.fi/blog/?p=2097 http://hardwick.fi/blog/?p=2097
hugh3 15y ago
Wow, if those numbers are true then it sure falls into the "uncomfortable truths" category: ''' * Asian Americans outscored every Asian country, and lost out only to the city of Shanghai, China’s financial capital. * White Americans students outperformed the national average in every one of the 37 historically white countries tested, except Finland (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, an immigration restrictionist nation where whites make up about 99 percent of the population). * Hispanic Americans beat all eight Latin American countries. * African Americans would likely have outscored any sub-Saharan country, if any had bothered to compete. ''' scuze me, I couldn't figure out how to italicise something when it contained asterisky bullet points.
- eru 15y ago
  Interesting. Though America also probably spends much more on their Foo-Americans than they spend in Foo-istan, so you'd expect a higher showing.
- mynameishere 15y ago
  If truth is uncomfortable, it's just grinding against some lies you're more comfortable with. But there's no "wow" about it. If America has the pedigree amongst whites, asians, africans, and hispanics, it was simply due to the horrible trials associated with distant migration. Simple Darwinian stuff really.
- teyc 15y ago
  The article specifically mentions how immigrants are helped in Finland.

Ironballs 15y ago

I do not know if it was mentioned in the article as I did not read it fully, I'm Finnish and am sort of tired of reading or hearing about this particular subject, but it is worth mentioning that all Finnish teachers are required to have a Master's degree to qualify as teachers (even kindergarten ones). Since higher education is free (there are no private universities in Finland), the threshold to study to become a teacher is very small, and usually there is quite a surplus of teachers in popular fields, in hard sciences as an example. Those that select a teaching curriculum in the university spend 1-2 years interning in schools during their studies. Most people end up taking up teaching curricula just because it is a sure way of getting employment especially if one is studying a field in which employment is scarce outside of academia, say, philosophy. I myself am studying computer science and I plan to enroll in a teaching curriculum should life in academia turn out to be boring, mostly because a) teaching is fun b) it pays relatively well c) a three month paid vacation from June to the end of August is a plus and d) it is a respected profession.

mpk 15y ago
> [..] it is a sure way of getting employment especially if one is studying a field in which employment is scarce outside of academia, say, philosophy. Just a random observation, but having philosophers with an educational background teaching kindergarten is probably not such a bad thing.

wisty 15y ago

Another article (http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/ http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/, submitted - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918684 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918684) suggests Finish-Ugric languages give Finnish and Estonian schools an edge in PISA results (and education in general). The writing is regular, and vocabulary very simple - think "tear sacs" instead of whatever Latin / Greek / German / French derived term you use in English. I like their right-wing teaching system, which seems to follow the stuff that's got some empirical backing (DI, mastery learning, no retention, etc), but there are other factors.

CaptainZapp 15y ago
I like their right-wing teaching system Sorry, but what has the Finnish teaching system to do with right-wing?

djb_hackernews 15y ago

Of course it's easier to teach a smaller homogenous group than a large diverse group. Doesn't make sense to try to find a one size fits all solution for a problem with a multitude of unique aspects: culture, race, language, income, etc. In Finland on the other hand it does, because they are all the same culturally, racially, economically and speak the same language.

godarderik 15y ago

"All children—clever or less so—were to be taught in the same classrooms, with lots of special teacher help available to make sure no child really would be left behind." I imagine this would be very frustrating for a child who is considered "clever". By lumping everyone together in the same classroom, the kids who are ahead of the others could quickly grow bored and lose interest. I live in America, and I know that I was bored as hell until 6th grade, where classes started to be filtered based on abilities. While this article focuses on standardized test scores for all students, I would be interested to see data on "gifted" education in Finland using this one-size fits all approach.