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The Finnish education system is consistently praised for its great results. But in addition to innovative educational methods there may be an underlying advanta

by geomark 12y ago

The Finnish education system is consistently praised for its great results. But in addition to innovative educational methods there may be an underlying advantage that Finland has over many other countries - its language. I read a study (can't find a link at the moment) that compared the time it takes children to learn to read and write English versus Finnish at the elementary school level. It was about three years for American school children to learn English and one year for Finnish children to learn Finnish. The Finnish language is apparently very regular with a simple grammar and small number of exceptions (I don't know; that's what the study said). The result is that Finnish kids move on to more advanced subjects sooner and have less friction in their learning due to the language.

cam_l 12y ago
Not disputing what you say, but they also learn other languages at the same time. "All students learn at least two foreign languages, mainly English and obligatory Swedish, up to high school." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland
- geomark 12y ago
  Isn't studying a second or third language a different process than learning your first language? Your first language provides your basic operating system which you build on top of. Unless you grow up bilingual (another topic that is quite interesting).
  - cam_l 12y ago
    Yeah, being bilingual may actually be an educational advantage.. I think of it like learning one language is understanding syntax, learning multiple languages is understanding the underlying concepts. I don't know if the Finnish people I have known are exactly representative of the whole, but they were all bilingual (ie. parents spoke finnish and english or swedish at home).
    - geomark 12y ago
      If most Finns group up bilingual then maybe that's their advantage (or an additional advantage). Studies link growing up bilingual to improved cognitive abilities[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingualism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingu...
      - kiiski 12y ago
        In most parts of Finland, people only speak Finnish at home. It's mainly just Western Finland (and Helsinki to a lesser degree) where there are lots of finnish-swedish people that are bilingual. Elsewhere everyone tends to know English pretty well, but Swedish isn't nearly that common.
    - homarp 12y ago
      A recent study on bilingualim "advantage": Bilingualism changes children’s beliefs about the world around them http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2015/01/13/how-bilingualism-affects-childrens-beliefs.html http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2015/01/13/how-b...
pedrosorio 12y ago
On the other hand, the Chinese education also has great results but would be disadvantaged from that perspective, right?
- geomark 12y ago
  I thought the same thing. How long does it take to learn to write Chinese? A lifetime?
chrismealy 12y ago
That's certainly an advantage, but the reason people are so interested in Finnish schools is that the went from below average to the top after a deliberate reform movement in the 1970s and 1980s.
pakled_engineer 12y ago
They have an entirely different school system http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/why-my-children-were-lucky-to-get-accepted-to-a-finnish-school-in-qatar/article20284411/?page=all http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/why-m... From that article: . kids don't go to school until age 7 . classes are 7:30-1pm with lot's of breaks . lessons only 45mins long . no standardized tests . nobody can fail . learning disability kids given custom lessons
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > nobody can fail I'm not sure that's a good thing.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    I've always found the pressure of exams to be motivating.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      Same here, and having "something to lose" gives you a sense of responsibility. If you can never lose, i'm not sure what message you are sending : like, being lazy and unwilling to be productive is an OK attitude ? in the end it basically defines your values as well.
      - WalterBright 12y ago
        Competition is also motivating. After all, what fun would football be if nobody kept score?
      - saraid216 12y ago
        In this case, the message you're sending is, "A human being is only as valuable as their ability to contribute." Now guess how much you contribute to the NSA's ability to prevent terrorism. (Hint: if you're unwilling, they'll extract the value from you anyways.)
villesundberg 12y ago
Finn here. It's true that Finnish spelling is very simple. The mapping of sounds to letters is quite regular, and much more so than in English. As an example, the word 'computer' is 'tietokone'. The pronunciation is [tietokone]. As a result, a "spelling bee" is a completely foreign concept in Finland. A Finnish spelling bee would go on for days. The grammar of Finnish, on the other hand, is very irregular and full of exceptions. There are 16 noun cases. This makes Finnish laborious for English-speakers to learn.
- Meai 12y ago
  Well I believe finnish is not as defined as german, what's up with all these random 'ä'? When you say "kyntillä" out loud, the last character sounds more like an 'a' than an 'ä'
  - villesundberg 12y ago
    In Finnish, the letter 'ä' denotes the vowel [æ], which is close to the vowel you'd use in the words 'cat' or 'hat' in English. This sound, to my knowledge, doesn't exist in Standard German.
  - kiiski 12y ago
    If the word (I think you mean "kynttilä=candle"?) is pronounced correctly, the last character sounds like an "ä", which is a completely seperate character from "a". In fact, you can't even have an "a" in the same word with a "y" due to the vowel harmony rules. The thing that makes Finnish alphabet very easy, is that every character corresponds to one sound (with the exception of "c", which can be either "k" or "s", but it isn't actually used in Finnish (it just exists for legacy and compatibility with Swedish)) and vice versa (with the exceptions of "w=v" and "å=o", but, again, they're not used in Finnish) That is, a character will always sound the same, regardless of what is around it. There are no silent letters. No things like "ea -> ee" or "ph -> f" (if you write two different characters, you also pronounce two different sounds). No single vowels that randomly became long vowels (like English "ski -> skee" rather than "sky").
netheril96 12y ago
There is also a paper out claiming that elementary school students who learn math in English speaking countries lag behind those in, say, Chinese speaking countries, because the numbering system in English is irregular. For example, 11 and 12 does not follow the construction of 13 or 15. Or the fact that two-digit numbers are composed differently from three-digit numbers. I don't know if this claim is true, but it certainly drives me crazy when I started learning English.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  >For example, 11 and 12 does not follow the construction of 13 or 15. Maybe its because I'm an English speaker, but I don't understand what you mean by this statement - can you explain it?
  - ojanik 12y ago
    13 -> thirteen -> three ten 14 -> fourteen -> four ten 15 -> fifteen -> five ten whereas 11 -> eleven -> why not oneteen? 12 -> twelve -> why not twoteen?
    - ane 12y ago
      Germanic languages have a peculiarity in the words eleven and twelve, they stem from "one left" and "two left", respectively [0]. Cognates in German elf and zwölf, Swedish elv and tolv. [0] "Cardinal Numerals: Old English from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective", http://bit.ly/1HhPzOB http://bit.ly/1HhPzOB, page 161.
      - RBerenguel 12y ago
        Interesting. Worth noting Spanish, French, Catalan and probably some more connected languages I'm not so familiar with are irregular up to 16 (17 is akin to 10-7, whereas 11-16 follow other rules)
      - riffraff 12y ago
        left of what? (or from what?)

by geomark 12y ago

cam_l 12y ago

Not disputing what you say, but they also learn other languages at the same time. "All students learn at least two foreign languages, mainly English and obligatory Swedish, up to high school." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland

geomark 12y ago
Isn't studying a second or third language a different process than learning your first language? Your first language provides your basic operating system which you build on top of. Unless you grow up bilingual (another topic that is quite interesting).
- cam_l 12y ago
  Yeah, being bilingual may actually be an educational advantage.. I think of it like learning one language is understanding syntax, learning multiple languages is understanding the underlying concepts. I don't know if the Finnish people I have known are exactly representative of the whole, but they were all bilingual (ie. parents spoke finnish and english or swedish at home).
  - geomark 12y ago
    If most Finns group up bilingual then maybe that's their advantage (or an additional advantage). Studies link growing up bilingual to improved cognitive abilities[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingualism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingu...
    - kiiski 12y ago
      In most parts of Finland, people only speak Finnish at home. It's mainly just Western Finland (and Helsinki to a lesser degree) where there are lots of finnish-swedish people that are bilingual. Elsewhere everyone tends to know English pretty well, but Swedish isn't nearly that common.
  - homarp 12y ago
    A recent study on bilingualim "advantage": Bilingualism changes children’s beliefs about the world around them http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2015/01/13/how-bilingualism-affects-childrens-beliefs.html http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2015/01/13/how-b...

pedrosorio 12y ago

On the other hand, the Chinese education also has great results but would be disadvantaged from that perspective, right?

geomark 12y ago
I thought the same thing. How long does it take to learn to write Chinese? A lifetime?

chrismealy 12y ago

That's certainly an advantage, but the reason people are so interested in Finnish schools is that the went from below average to the top after a deliberate reform movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

pakled_engineer 12y ago

They have an entirely different school system http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/why-my-children-were-lucky-to-get-accepted-to-a-finnish-school-in-qatar/article20284411/?page=all http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/why-m... From that article: . kids don't go to school until age 7 . classes are 7:30-1pm with lot's of breaks . lessons only 45mins long . no standardized tests . nobody can fail . learning disability kids given custom lessons

ekianjo 12y ago
> nobody can fail I'm not sure that's a good thing.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  I've always found the pressure of exams to be motivating.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Same here, and having "something to lose" gives you a sense of responsibility. If you can never lose, i'm not sure what message you are sending : like, being lazy and unwilling to be productive is an OK attitude ? in the end it basically defines your values as well.
    - WalterBright 12y ago
      Competition is also motivating. After all, what fun would football be if nobody kept score?
    - saraid216 12y ago
      In this case, the message you're sending is, "A human being is only as valuable as their ability to contribute." Now guess how much you contribute to the NSA's ability to prevent terrorism. (Hint: if you're unwilling, they'll extract the value from you anyways.)

villesundberg 12y ago

Finn here. It's true that Finnish spelling is very simple. The mapping of sounds to letters is quite regular, and much more so than in English. As an example, the word 'computer' is 'tietokone'. The pronunciation is [tietokone]. As a result, a "spelling bee" is a completely foreign concept in Finland. A Finnish spelling bee would go on for days. The grammar of Finnish, on the other hand, is very irregular and full of exceptions. There are 16 noun cases. This makes Finnish laborious for English-speakers to learn.

Meai 12y ago
Well I believe finnish is not as defined as german, what's up with all these random 'ä'? When you say "kyntillä" out loud, the last character sounds more like an 'a' than an 'ä'
- villesundberg 12y ago
  In Finnish, the letter 'ä' denotes the vowel [æ], which is close to the vowel you'd use in the words 'cat' or 'hat' in English. This sound, to my knowledge, doesn't exist in Standard German.
- kiiski 12y ago
  If the word (I think you mean "kynttilä=candle"?) is pronounced correctly, the last character sounds like an "ä", which is a completely seperate character from "a". In fact, you can't even have an "a" in the same word with a "y" due to the vowel harmony rules. The thing that makes Finnish alphabet very easy, is that every character corresponds to one sound (with the exception of "c", which can be either "k" or "s", but it isn't actually used in Finnish (it just exists for legacy and compatibility with Swedish)) and vice versa (with the exceptions of "w=v" and "å=o", but, again, they're not used in Finnish) That is, a character will always sound the same, regardless of what is around it. There are no silent letters. No things like "ea -> ee" or "ph -> f" (if you write two different characters, you also pronounce two different sounds). No single vowels that randomly became long vowels (like English "ski -> skee" rather than "sky").

netheril96 12y ago

There is also a paper out claiming that elementary school students who learn math in English speaking countries lag behind those in, say, Chinese speaking countries, because the numbering system in English is irregular. For example, 11 and 12 does not follow the construction of 13 or 15. Or the fact that two-digit numbers are composed differently from three-digit numbers. I don't know if this claim is true, but it certainly drives me crazy when I started learning English.

fit2rule 12y ago
>For example, 11 and 12 does not follow the construction of 13 or 15. Maybe its because I'm an English speaker, but I don't understand what you mean by this statement - can you explain it?
- ojanik 12y ago
  13 -> thirteen -> three ten 14 -> fourteen -> four ten 15 -> fifteen -> five ten whereas 11 -> eleven -> why not oneteen? 12 -> twelve -> why not twoteen?
  - ane 12y ago
    Germanic languages have a peculiarity in the words eleven and twelve, they stem from "one left" and "two left", respectively [0]. Cognates in German elf and zwölf, Swedish elv and tolv. [0] "Cardinal Numerals: Old English from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective", http://bit.ly/1HhPzOB http://bit.ly/1HhPzOB, page 161.
    - RBerenguel 12y ago
      Interesting. Worth noting Spanish, French, Catalan and probably some more connected languages I'm not so familiar with are irregular up to 16 (17 is akin to 10-7, whereas 11-16 follow other rules)
    - riffraff 12y ago
      left of what? (or from what?)