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Why do Finland’s Schools get the best results?

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Finland’s schools score consistently at the top of world rankings, yet the pupils have the fewest number of class hours in the developed world.

Why?

“The educational system’s success in Finland seems to be part cultural. Pupils study in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.” Furthermore, “There is an emphasis on relaxed schools, free from political prescriptions.”

  • There is very little immigration.
  • Relaxed school free from politicians.
  • Finland values education and parents know they have a key role to play.
  • They stress trust and not competition as they do in the US and the UK.
  • No one fails in Finnish schools. They sometimes have two or three teachers in a classroom; one assigned to the slow learners.
  • Primary and secondary schooling is combined, so the pupils don’t have to change schools at age 13. They avoid a potentially disruptive transition from one school to another.

While watching the BBC video on families and schools in Finland, it struck me how important family structure and parents putting time into caring about their children’s school work, is critical to the child’s success.

Unlike Finland, California has high immigration rates and from talking to teachers, I’ve been told that many immigrant families, (mostly Mexican in southern California) do not enforce or help their kids with school work. Since many parents do not read, write or speak English, how can we achieve the results we see in Finland without a radical change?

No wonder Finland has become the education tourism center of the world where educators come to see how things can be improved in other countries.

After seeing the movie: Waiting for Superman, a documentary about the state of education in the U.S., I wonder to what extent putting an emphasis on trust rather than competition, and relaxed schools free from politicians could improve the U.S. educational system.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

Waiting for Superman: a documentary about the state of our education.

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 waiting for superman

 

“Even if you don’t have kids, you should care about public education,” says Lesley Chilcott, producer of Waiting for “Superman.” “If we want to solve global warming, poverty, health care and the economy, we need to have an educated society. Education is ground zero for tackling all these issues.”

Photo (cc) via Flickr user Editor B.
Tuesday was a miserable, wet day in southern California. I felt guilty about taking the afternoon off to go to the movies and justified it as follows: I want to learn more about what’s going on with education in the U.S. and why so many schools are failing. Education needs to be reformed, the standards are deteriorating, and I worry about the future of our kids. Even Bill Gates said there won’t be enough educated young people in the U.S. in 2020, to fill the
job openings.
Waiting for Superman  is a movie, not about Superman, but about the state of our education here in the U.S.

Without getting into a political debate, which is not the point I’m trying to make here, I’d like to share five points that shocked me while watching this movie. You may already be aware of all of this, but I wasn’t.
 

  • U.S. students ranked approximately 24th out of 29th in math and science in the developed world.
  • There have been no improvements in raising overall standards in reading and math over the last ten years. Almost every state is failing to reach minimum standards.
  • Children are placed on a “track system,” the lower track or the upper track, and generally this will follow the student throughout their schooling, from Kindergarten until 12th grade. Lower track kids don’t get the best teachers. Who decides on the track? Well that is left up to the viewer to determine.
  •  Apparently teachers were offered an alternative: get paid up to $122,000/year and give up the “tenure” system, whereby teachers who are lazy, not teaching properly, or are simply not getting the job done, can be laid off. They refused to vote. (This is in the movie, not something I read or heard.)
  •  A student had a hidden camera in his back-pack to film a “lazy” teacher on the tenure system, who read the newspaper and didn’t teach, and the high school kids were playing games and doing whatever they wanted. (I remember one of my sons telling me that his 10th grade teacher was showing videos and making them color in maps, almost every day, instead of teaching. She was getting ready to retire and was so fed up with her job, she didn’t care.) 

There are so many points covered other than what I brought up, as we follow the lives of inner city kids around the U.S. and how many can only attend their “failing” inner city schools.

Those who struggle to get into the “better” schools try the lottery system. One little Hispanic girl, Daisy, wanted to become a vet. She worked so hard every day and unfortunately, her name was not called out during the lottery, so she had to stay in her “failing” school. 

I could feel the frustration of parents trying so hard to give their children a better education, and who are “stuck” in a school where the standards are ridiculously poor. I hope you take the time to watch this movie. As with any documentary, facts may be distorted, however, there is a real crisis in the U.S. educational system today.

I’d like to say a BIG THANK YOU to all the GREAT teachers.

Message from Davis Guggenheim, Director of Waiting for Superman: “We are never going to have great schools without great teachers.

Please see the film. Any thoughts?

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