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I think the crux of your argument is that there's a danger in isolating any part of one culture and trying to compare it to another. I completely agree. A cultu

by jordanb 15y ago

I think the crux of your argument is that there's a danger in isolating any part of one culture and trying to compare it to another. I completely agree. A culture is a highly complex set of interactions and taking one piece of it and trying to isolate it in a lab, as it were, is pretty difficult. I think you're being unfair to "academics" though by accusing them "europhilia" (in fact, the author of this article is a Finnish journalist living in the US). I think Europe is an attractive place to look for comparisons because there are so many countries there that it's easy to find a lot of contrast. And the cultures there do have more in common with ours than those in other parts of the world. But it's not like these sorts of comparison are made exclusively with Europe. In fact, it seems as if there have been a deluge of comparisons made in recent years between Asian (and especially Chinese) education and that in the US; with the conclusion being that US students aren't challenged or judged harshly enough and therefore are far behind their Chinese counterparts in STEM. If anything this article seems to be written as a response to those people making comparisons with China: demonstrating a system that seems to be excelling with less rather than more standardization.

brc 15y ago
This is my point. Finland is a much more socialist country than just about anywhere else, as most Scandinavian countries are. They (as a society) have already agreed to much higher income taxes, plus completely nationalised healthcare, transport and many other industries. I don't mention this to say whether Finland is right or wrong in these respects - it's a democracy so I support their decisions in any case. However, it would be foolish to say that a model of nationalised education in a country where a lot of other things are state-provided can necessarily be exported to a country where things are much-less state provided. To me, there is too much focus on the school part of the education - education is clearly the output of parenting, societal attitudes as well as the school curriculum and teaching methods. Schools aren't an island - they live in a national culture, economy and even geography. You can't just import a different teaching style into a society that may value education differently (eg is being a truant a taboo thing to do, or something that is secretly valued in an anti-hero way) and expect to get the same results. Even the amount of time parents spend with their children will have a different result. The best outcome to take from Finland is that there are many different ways to Educational outcomes - probably the most important is that the best fit between national culture and resources should be explored. Perhaps the national (or state?) culture needs to be slowly changed before the educational system can follow. Perhaps the idea that Federal input of education into 50 different states is a bad idea. There are many things to look at.

by jordanb 15y ago

brc 15y ago

This is my point. Finland is a much more socialist country than just about anywhere else, as most Scandinavian countries are. They (as a society) have already agreed to much higher income taxes, plus completely nationalised healthcare, transport and many other industries. I don't mention this to say whether Finland is right or wrong in these respects - it's a democracy so I support their decisions in any case. However, it would be foolish to say that a model of nationalised education in a country where a lot of other things are state-provided can necessarily be exported to a country where things are much-less state provided. To me, there is too much focus on the school part of the education - education is clearly the output of parenting, societal attitudes as well as the school curriculum and teaching methods. Schools aren't an island - they live in a national culture, economy and even geography. You can't just import a different teaching style into a society that may value education differently (eg is being a truant a taboo thing to do, or something that is secretly valued in an anti-hero way) and expect to get the same results. Even the amount of time parents spend with their children will have a different result. The best outcome to take from Finland is that there are many different ways to Educational outcomes - probably the most important is that the best fit between national culture and resources should be explored. Perhaps the national (or state?) culture needs to be slowly changed before the educational system can follow. Perhaps the idea that Federal input of education into 50 different states is a bad idea. There are many things to look at.