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First, the article seems to contradict your claim of there being very few immigrants in Finland: According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organi

by tuukkah 15y ago

First, the article seems to contradict your claim of there being very few immigrants in Finland: According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, there were 18 states in the U.S. in 2010 with an identical or significantly smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Finland. Second, the part you quote talks about variation between schools, and there definitely are Finnish schools with 0% immigrants as well as ones with 30% immigrants. Yet, a "remarkable lack of variation" in test scores. Yes, the article claims Finland focuses on equality, but it also explains that socio-economic background is a major source of inequality and the Finnish schools have been able to diminish that effect.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
According to the article, the percentage of immigrants went from 2.3% to 4.6% between 2000 and 2010. According to Wikipedia, the number is 2.7%. The fact that the variation between schools is low tells us very little. Supposing Finns score 546, and immigrants score 500, you'd expect the average score of a school with 30% immigrants to be 532. That's not so far off from 546, in spite of the fact that immigrants are scoring 46 pts worse. Like it or not, the data says there is a huge gap between immigrants and non-immigrants. Maybe the vague wording of a reporter suggests differently, but so what?
- maxklein 15y ago
  Almost every comment you make is to support your superior race theory. The article compared finnland to its neighbours.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    This is the second post you've made ascribing views to me that I never expressed. Please go reread whatever posts you believe I wrote about a "superior race theory", I believe you'll discover that I didn't write them.
    - maxklein 15y ago
      Sure: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353557 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353557 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340315 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340315 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321511 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321511 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315126 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315126
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        The words "superior race" don't appear anywhere. The most you've shown is that I've cited the same Sanandaji blog post a few times. Your second and third links don't even mention race, though the second does conditionally postulate a superior gender (i.e., "if the post I'm replying to is correct, then women are inferior").
        danssig 15y ago
        >The words "superior race" don't appear anywhere. Ridiculous. Of course those specific words don't appear there, but that would be the most appropriate summarization of several of those posts. Actually the OP was being charitable. He didn't even mention your superior gender arguments.
        yummyfajitas 15y ago
        If you bothered to read the threads maxklein cited, you'll note I'm quite explicitly agnostic as to "superior race" [1] theories: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3316062 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3316062 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315959 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315959 But I guess it's easier to call me racist than to actually dig up some hard numbers, right? [1] I'm assuming that by "superior race theory" you mean something along the lines of "genetic variation in intelligence causes some races to outperform others in school".
      - 15y ago
- tuukkah 15y ago
  Ok, so your primary concern here is that there's a huge gap between immigrants and non-immigrants in Finland? (I thought you wanted to argue like many others before you that the immigrants in the US caused the non-immigrants to perform badly.) First, I know little about this gap in Finland or what's causing it. However, I can hypothesise that it has to do with the immigrant children having attended school in Finland for less time. Further, the Finnish school system has been developed for Finnish citizens and is less prepared to attend to the needs of different ethnicities than to different socio-economic backgrounds. For starters, the immigrants need to learn the non-Indo-European language.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    Yes, I'm merely pointing out that Finland is not all that equal, and in many ways is less equal than the US. It's just hard to see this effect, due to Finland's homogeneity. I've never made the claim that immigrants cause non-immigrants to perform badly, nor have I heard anyone else make this claim. What is the proposed mechanism? Bad study habits of non-immigrants rub off on native children or something? (I've heard of some yuppies in NYC trying to do the opposite, and make their kids socialize with Asian kids, but I've never seen data on this.)
    - tuukkah 15y ago
      The Finnish schools are equal in the sense that socio-economic background has a smaller effect on study outcomes than elsewhere (and the difference between worst and best performers is small). If the US schools would pay more attention to this, it would be one significant attempt to improve their study outcomes. This could affect both the immigrant and the non-immigrant lower social classes (as well as "underachievers"). As to immigrants causing non-immigrants to perform badly, that's how I understand the arguments that concentrate on the immigration differences while that's hardly the only difference between the two countries (as if the poor in the US didn't lower the average as well, and as if the scores of the Caucasian students weren't below Finland as well). As to the proposed mechanism, I could imagine school funds and teacher resources being directed towards integrating the immigrants in the school. At least in Finland it is a concern, as the schools have less funds than the US ones.
berntb 15y ago
Finland has very few immigrants compared to its neighbouring countries. (Many immigrants are from places like Somalia with low literacy.) Please note that the size of organisatorical problems increase more than linearly with the number of involved people. I seriously doubt it would work to copy Scandinavian solutions to countries like the US, with more than 50 times the population...
- tuukkah 15y ago
  I don't think anyone has suggested copying Scandinavian solutions to the US. Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries. What the article says is you can't use the differences in immigration to blanket-deny all other findings. The US and Finland have their socio-economic issues but the Finnish school system has been able to diminish their effect on education outcomes.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    The effect of immigrants on average scores is (% of immigrants) x (size of individual effect). Finland has minimized (% of immigrants), not (size of individual effect). The only lesson the US can really draw from this is that if we reduced the number of immigrants we have, our average scores would go up. So what? Raising averages due to composition changes is pointless.
    - Eeko 15y ago
      > The only lesson the US can really draw from this is that if we reduced the number of immigrants we have, our average scores would go up. So what? Raising averages due to composition changes is pointless. Nowadays, Finland has much of the same rate of immigration than US. Historically it has not been so. But today, around 20000 people move into Finland every year. Whereas the US gets a bit more than one million new inhabitants. Finland has 1/60th of the population of US. The performance is still better, though there is the same ratio of first-generation immigrants. And I'd guess a lot less people relocating around the world know Finnish than the dominant teaching language in the US...

by tuukkah 15y ago

yummyfajitas 15y ago

According to the article, the percentage of immigrants went from 2.3% to 4.6% between 2000 and 2010. According to Wikipedia, the number is 2.7%. The fact that the variation between schools is low tells us very little. Supposing Finns score 546, and immigrants score 500, you'd expect the average score of a school with 30% immigrants to be 532. That's not so far off from 546, in spite of the fact that immigrants are scoring 46 pts worse. Like it or not, the data says there is a huge gap between immigrants and non-immigrants. Maybe the vague wording of a reporter suggests differently, but so what?

maxklein 15y ago
Almost every comment you make is to support your superior race theory. The article compared finnland to its neighbours.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  This is the second post you've made ascribing views to me that I never expressed. Please go reread whatever posts you believe I wrote about a "superior race theory", I believe you'll discover that I didn't write them.
  - maxklein 15y ago
    Sure: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353557 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353557 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340315 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340315 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321511 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321511 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315126 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315126
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      The words "superior race" don't appear anywhere. The most you've shown is that I've cited the same Sanandaji blog post a few times. Your second and third links don't even mention race, though the second does conditionally postulate a superior gender (i.e., "if the post I'm replying to is correct, then women are inferior").
      - danssig 15y ago
        >The words "superior race" don't appear anywhere. Ridiculous. Of course those specific words don't appear there, but that would be the most appropriate summarization of several of those posts. Actually the OP was being charitable. He didn't even mention your superior gender arguments.
        yummyfajitas 15y ago
        If you bothered to read the threads maxklein cited, you'll note I'm quite explicitly agnostic as to "superior race" [1] theories: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3316062 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3316062 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315959 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315959 But I guess it's easier to call me racist than to actually dig up some hard numbers, right? [1] I'm assuming that by "superior race theory" you mean something along the lines of "genetic variation in intelligence causes some races to outperform others in school".
    - 15y ago
tuukkah 15y ago
Ok, so your primary concern here is that there's a huge gap between immigrants and non-immigrants in Finland? (I thought you wanted to argue like many others before you that the immigrants in the US caused the non-immigrants to perform badly.) First, I know little about this gap in Finland or what's causing it. However, I can hypothesise that it has to do with the immigrant children having attended school in Finland for less time. Further, the Finnish school system has been developed for Finnish citizens and is less prepared to attend to the needs of different ethnicities than to different socio-economic backgrounds. For starters, the immigrants need to learn the non-Indo-European language.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Yes, I'm merely pointing out that Finland is not all that equal, and in many ways is less equal than the US. It's just hard to see this effect, due to Finland's homogeneity. I've never made the claim that immigrants cause non-immigrants to perform badly, nor have I heard anyone else make this claim. What is the proposed mechanism? Bad study habits of non-immigrants rub off on native children or something? (I've heard of some yuppies in NYC trying to do the opposite, and make their kids socialize with Asian kids, but I've never seen data on this.)
  - tuukkah 15y ago
    The Finnish schools are equal in the sense that socio-economic background has a smaller effect on study outcomes than elsewhere (and the difference between worst and best performers is small). If the US schools would pay more attention to this, it would be one significant attempt to improve their study outcomes. This could affect both the immigrant and the non-immigrant lower social classes (as well as "underachievers"). As to immigrants causing non-immigrants to perform badly, that's how I understand the arguments that concentrate on the immigration differences while that's hardly the only difference between the two countries (as if the poor in the US didn't lower the average as well, and as if the scores of the Caucasian students weren't below Finland as well). As to the proposed mechanism, I could imagine school funds and teacher resources being directed towards integrating the immigrants in the school. At least in Finland it is a concern, as the schools have less funds than the US ones.

berntb 15y ago

Finland has very few immigrants compared to its neighbouring countries. (Many immigrants are from places like Somalia with low literacy.) Please note that the size of organisatorical problems increase more than linearly with the number of involved people. I seriously doubt it would work to copy Scandinavian solutions to countries like the US, with more than 50 times the population...

tuukkah 15y ago
I don't think anyone has suggested copying Scandinavian solutions to the US. Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries. What the article says is you can't use the differences in immigration to blanket-deny all other findings. The US and Finland have their socio-economic issues but the Finnish school system has been able to diminish their effect on education outcomes.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  The effect of immigrants on average scores is (% of immigrants) x (size of individual effect). Finland has minimized (% of immigrants), not (size of individual effect). The only lesson the US can really draw from this is that if we reduced the number of immigrants we have, our average scores would go up. So what? Raising averages due to composition changes is pointless.
  - Eeko 15y ago
    > The only lesson the US can really draw from this is that if we reduced the number of immigrants we have, our average scores would go up. So what? Raising averages due to composition changes is pointless. Nowadays, Finland has much of the same rate of immigration than US. Historically it has not been so. But today, around 20000 people move into Finland every year. Whereas the US gets a bit more than one million new inhabitants. Finland has 1/60th of the population of US. The performance is still better, though there is the same ratio of first-generation immigrants. And I'd guess a lot less people relocating around the world know Finnish than the dominant teaching language in the US...