What Can Our Schools Learn from the Finns?
Posted April 9th, 2010 by Homa TavangarThis six-minute BBC clip (BBC Finland\’s Education Success) contains some serious gems gained from learning about what makes some country’s education systems outstanding and why America’s schools have been dropping in global rankings. Finland’s children have consistently performed at the top of international rankings year after year. I highlight this trend in Growing Up Global and organizations like the Asia Society have been studying what works and implementing learnings in their network of internationally-focused U.S. schools.
Some of the success factors are distilled in the video clip: Freedom to explore (hence, walking to school, or excursions for p.e. class), a relaxed, trusting environment (e.g., taking off shoes, good camaraderie among the children and with teachers), not tracking students as above or below standard, close parental involvement as supporters of the process not bullies or strangers of it, early foreign language learning, and especially… well-trained, multi-lingual, trusted teachers that students have a close relationship with. Finnish students demonstrate high standards in core subjects, consistency of lessons across the country, diversity of learners and learning styles side by side (again, not tracking the top students in one class and the lower ones in another), and employers are finding these qualities useful in building a skilled workforce.
Of course, we face complex and some different issues in our struggling U.S. schools, but certainly we can learn much from successful examples. What do you think? Can U.S. schools embrace some of these approaches to improve the quality of education we give to our young learners? And as parents, what should our role be?
6 Comments
Some great things have been said already! Schools are killing creativity, the way I see it. Letting children explore is very important, for all children but especially the young men and their manly hormones. Physically exploring and being in the great outdoors, even building or working with their hands helps my young men study better in their bookwork. Being able to explore things that they are interested in book-learning about is great for girls and boys. All the great ideas in above e-mails are implemented in our house, as I stay home and homeschool and learn with my children, and, we are all better for it! We have gone without luxuries sometimes, but we probably didn’t and don’t need most of them anyway! Decisions, I am glad we made together. I am a mother. I have no degrees. Awesome children!
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April 12, 2010 at 11:51 am by PattiThe comment by Mom2gcnj, I am assuming must be “tongue-in-cheek” ! Finn’s have the same unemployment fears as we American’s – Fear of losing a job, a house, health care, electricity, water, heat, fear of an empty refrigerator. They do have a much, much bigger middle class and smaller upper class which is of course not like we have here. I, for years, as a community college educator, expressed concern as to why we -American’s – can’t seem to look at other schools like Finnish and others and implement some change. One of our problems is too much bureaucracy and people that refuse to move quickly on issues. I have watched “issues” discussed for years and then instead of setting a time-frame of “the next school year” to implement changes it takes other years !! Note our Math instruction issues ! Part of the reason it takes so long to implement something is that our teachers are paid on a low scale verse their counterparts in Finland. They do have higher taxes in Finland but they pay people more as they should be paid for the importance of their job and education is considered to be extremely important – what a novel idea !!
More teachers would be happy to put out extra time to immediately and more dramatically change a failing system if they were paid appropriately.
It goes without saying that IT IS CRITICAL to have parents involvement in a child’s education, if in no other reason but to be sure they do homework and do it well!
We could solve some of the school issues by doing one simple thing.. . . . . allowing appropriate discipline in the classroom and when students disrupt they are sent to the principal where there is a big glassed in room where the student is put to work on their school work under the observation of all the principals and administrative assistants –
When students realize they have a responsibility to pay attention, learn and not disrupt the students around them, they are part of the solution.
Oh, we arrogant Americans think there isn’t much we can learn from the rest of the world on anything ! Unfortunate !
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Julie Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
@Patti, I don’t think the comment by Mom2gcnj is tongue and cheek. After all, Finns live in a socialist society and so will not lose their homes and need to declare bankruptcy, if they get cancer, for example. People there are much more secure and stable financially than in the US because of their system of government. In fact, many, if not all of the top scoring countries on the Pisa test are socialist (or have many social safety-nets that our country lacks.) If you have ever been to an impoverished school in the US, where 100% of the students qualify for a free lunch, you will find that their families suffer from hunger, ill health, addiction, gang violence, and domestic violence.
In addition, regarding funding per pupil, in Finland there are no poor and no wealthy schools, each school educates children at the same per pupil rate. Perhaps that is one reason why the gap between Finland’s highest performing and lowest performing schools was amongst the lowest of all 57 countries tested.
Finally, all universities and post-high school polytechnic schools are FREE, so *all* kids have somewhere to go to study beyond high school. In the US, poor kids are often not able to afford college — so they don’t have an incentive to do well in high school.
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I don’t think the U.S. will learn anything from the Finnish model because first we would have to admit that fear is bad for people and bad for families. Fear of losing a job, a house, health care, electricity, water, heat, fear of an empty refrigerator – all of these are REAL fears for many American families. It is tough to focus on higher order needs like becoming educated when you live in fear that basic necessities of life can not be met. Our economy is based on fear. It is what spurs increased productivity during recessions. We believe there is no ambition without the ever present fear of losing it all. It is the foundation of our economic ethos.
We would have to admit that both parents working full time and then some is not good for families. The anxiety inspiring rat race that Katrina Alcorn (http://workingmomsbreak.com/) nails on the head hurts families and makes us all less than we can be – should be.
We would have to admit that parents are a key and vital part of the educational process and put social structures in place to support that belief. Right now we pay lip service to the belief – a truth really – and use it as another weapon to bludgeon overwhelmed parents – but we do little as a culture to make it a reality.
Instead, we increasingly separate children from their parents at younger and younger ages and drop them into formal educational settings. The Finns wait until the age of 7 for formal education but we insist the earlier the better – sending babies off to formal classrooms. I haven’t watched the video that Diane linked, but I imagine it touches on this. There is something very insidious about this I think. It says we aren’t good enough as parents to even teach colors and ABCs. Better leave it to the professionals while we shuffle off to work. A job, even the most menial and soul-sucking one is more important than being with our children – is the message we get. Instead of providing parents with the time, tools and resources to be part of their children’s’ educational lives, even from the very beginning, we are told (and we’ve bought it) that someone else can do it better than we can. We are a paycheck to our families – that is the most important thing we can do – but for heaven sake don’t miss a PTA meeting.
To learn anything from the Finns we would have to first admit that we can’t hold schools responsible for things over which they have no control. Fear, poverty, over-worked /overwhelmed parents, chaotic home lives – these have a huge impact on the ability to learn. And yet we do little real work to address these issues. Instead we expect educators to put their heads down and bulldoze through – teaching children who have bigger worries – and expecting them all to never ever stop improving and meeting arbitrary standards set from afar.
We would also have to admit that there is more to education than learning how to score well on standardized tests.
I think we have a really long way to go before we can learn anything from the Finns.
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April 10, 2010 at 12:23 pm by DianeRegarding Finland’s “freedom to explore,” I didn’t used to believe in this “mumbo jumbo,” thinking kids should be focusing studiously on core subjects. But lately I’m thinking that that children need to be able explore their creativity more than they do at school. In fact, I was exploring this topic this morning when I ended up on your site through a Google Blogs search, and I also landed upon a related and fascinating video on another site entitled Do schools kill creativity?.
This guy on the video is really entertaining, and helps people understand why we are failing our kids by killing their creativity. I thought you might be interested it watching this as well.
There is ALOT wrong with our school system, that’s for sure. Parents need to get involved and keep an eye on not only what, but how our kids are being taught.
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April 9, 2010 at 8:34 pm by JordanIf we can learn about something that has worked in Finland-China-Scotland, then sure lets try it. I would also venture to say that public schools need contract of communications with parents……an involved parent does make a difference.
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