Education in Finland/education reform

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An interesting system. Unlike the so-called "education reformers" in the US, they take it seriously.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland

I like the emphasis on equality and social mobility, the respect for teaching as a profession, and I think the split between upper and lower secondary schools (where one chooses the vocational and academic track) makes sense.

In North America (the US and to a lesser extent Canada) teaching is not a particularly prestigious occupation and vocational options aren't as well developed as is the case in Europe. On the other hand, perhaps it allows for more flexibility in terms of deciding what you want to do later. A lot of university students seem to go there for no reason than the credential, but with the Bologna process etc. this mentality seems to be spreading to Europe as well. Another difference seems to be that general "liberal arts" education occurs more at high school rather than in the first year or two of college.

Some questions to ponder:

- What kind of education should teachers receive?

- How long should high school be, and should there be some separate "university-prep" system that starts earlier than in North America?

- Is the emphasis on credentialism sending to many students to university and leading to too many programs of dubious academic merit?

Teacher should be certified competent to teach the subjects they teach

High Schools should be "un watered down" so that by the time a person graduates, he is the equivalent of a college sophomore or junior. Right now freshman year in college is remedial schooling to cover the deficiencies of the public high schools.

And yes. The quality of schooling at the public highschool level is quite dubious.

ruveyn

*Sigh* Wow...ok, where do I start here??? hmmm...

Speaking as a former teacher, the US system is generally crap. Just speaking from my limited perspective here, it's not that teachers are poorly trained or that schools are inadequate. It mostly seems to me that the output of American schools depends on urban and rural culture.

This is not entirely about race, but one of the dirty little secrets about urban and rural America is how myopic we tend to be. If you read the textbooks, they're too P.C. to outright SAY that rural/urban blacks are the demographic they're talking about, but it's true in many areas. There seems to be a preference for being defined by one's race or culture. If you pursue higher education, move out of your neighborhood, get your own place, put off having children until you're older and married, hold down a respectable job, you are viewed as a traitor.

Now, what does that have to do with the education system? Well, a teacher cannot reach a student who doesn't want to be reached. In America, there is a prevalent complacency about parents teaching their children. Public schools are really just free daycare and nothing more. And all a kid has to do is hang on until he ages out. I once had an 8th grader who was 18 years old. No disabilities, seemed reasonably intelligent... Just didn't care. The difference between these parents and parents of kids who excel in school is the level of involvement. When these kids act up in school and discipline referrals get sent home, maybe a parent will beat the kid half to death because she got a phone call from school. Parents in other demographics will put the fear of God into their kids if they so much as look at a teacher cross-eyed. But more than discipline, the ones who succeed are the ones whose parents check their homework regularly, make them repeat everything they did during the school day, and keep them involved in too many extra-curricular activities to even get in trouble in the first place.

As a music teacher, I've often lamented that my students suck because a) they don't practice, and b) their parents do nothing to help. I have a 5-year-old who has barely been studying piano a year and is working through level 2 books. Why? Because I'm his teacher, he has to live with me, and he has to do everything I say! That doesn't mean you have to be a science expert to teach your kid science, or a math teacher to teach your kid math. It does mean, however, that as an adult, you're ahead of the your child's learning curve and have the ability to help your child work through these advanced concepts on his own. When I teach my own child a lesson, I spend MOST of the lesson going over new material--not because I expect him to learn it, but to enhance his reading ability. THEN we do repetitive drills on older material, reinforce fundamentals, and develop solid musicianship. When we "officially" get to new material, it's already familiar, so the lessons begin to focus more on technique and performance. A classroom teacher simply cannot take the time to reteach. Parents, however, CAN, and they have no excuse not to. Oh, and a single mom working three part-time jobs just to make ends meet is no excuse, either. Where's the money going? (We've barely existed over the last couple of years on a household income of <$30k, but we still managed to send two kids through daycare and had enough left to eat out twice a week, see an occasional movie, and even go to the zoo and do a little traveling. AND we were denied assistance based on our skin color. Don't tell me you don't have time to spend with your kids!! !)

If the child's parents don't care, why should the child? One of my former piano students had enrolled in the private school where I taught. He refused to do anything his teachers told him, would not do his classwork...nothing. Eventually the principle called his mother and told her she was just wasting her money sending him to that school. So he was gone by the end of the semester--which I hated because he showed such promise at the keyboard. I don't think it was so much his mom, but more his family environment as a whole that disaffected him so much. He was the only black kid on his street that went to "that white school." If you fail to convince the child that learning is important, and if you fail to reinforce the work at home, and if the child lacks the will on his own, the child WILL FAIL.

This is what urban and rural US teachers have to fight every day. The system isn't the problem. The teachers aren't the problem. It's the culture. I pick on the rural/urban black community because where I live, it's what I'm exposed to the most. You'll probably find similar effects in predominantly white areas of Appalachia where a similar mentality exists. It's not all about race or even poverty, but more prevailing cultural attitudes in those kinds of environments that devalue education.

If you want the system to change, you have to change the culture. And that means convincing the entire population that no individual is defined by money, the color of their skin, their environment, or even their past. Get the parents on board, stop letting schools be daycare centers, and 90% of your problems will vanish.

Now, the problem with so-called education reform has been teacher accountability. Teacher accountability works AS LONG AS environmental and cultural factors don't affect student performance. But to succeed, standardized testing has to be scaled to the lowest common denominator. This creates a dichotomy between affluent regions (better performing students=better performing districts=more attractive jobs for teachers) and low-income regions (students don't care=lower standardized test scores=difficult to get qualified teachers). I quit teaching for several reasons, but one was that I was, according to NCLB standards, a "highly qualified teacher" who couldn't manage to break out of rural school districts. I probably would have been wildly successful if, say, I'd started out in private schools, rotated a school a year for five years, and then got an assistant job at a 5A school. That's just not the kind of person I am, though. And no teacher wants to go out there right out of college, end up looking like a fool after doing the best job anyone could have done, and then have to explain why she left her last job! AND, at the same time, no employer wants to listen to an interviewee complain about why getting canned wasn't HIS fault.

Many teachers in these areas really aren't much more than overqualified, overpaid sh!t-shovelers, and by the end of 5 years in public and private schools, I'd had enough of it--teachers who weren't fit to teach that actually got to keep their jobs, and smug, arrogant administrators on power trips.

Assuming the Finnish system is successful, it's because there's a unified cultural environment behind it. With various cultures/subcultures within the US being as divided as they are, it's unlikely we'll ever get something that works that well without massive change, and I just don't think that King Obama has enough time left in his reign to make something like that happen.

One thing I have to note about the Finnish system that I find amusing--with the focus being more on raw academics than vocation, because people in general do show a tendency towards physical laziness, you can find an expert in physics on any city block but nobody who knows how to fix a leaky water pipe. Basic household maintenance is important to know, and I'll even admit that while I can fix faulty made-in-China wiring on a child's toy, I'm totally unable to replace a lawnmower blade.

I think if we went a little more the Finnish direction, I think we'd benefit from it. We already have a lot in common, anyway. We already have comprehensive education through 8th grade, and, depending on what the school has available, there might be a range of elective courses in vocational/technical skills and advanced academics. Inexpensive community colleges are really just "13th grade" and serve to further prepare students for a specific trade or more advanced academic training--depending on the desired field of study, of course. Universities are still resistant to transferring credits for music majors because of the notorious poor preparation of community colleges in the areas of music theory, literature, and history. From what I understand, though, MOST students do ok before moving up to big universities. I'm a firm believer in an emphasis in college prep over tech-prep. I attended a private school for 12 years, and the emphasis there was college prep. I had high college test scores as did many of my classmates, and many high school seniors I encountered as a high school teacher did barely well enough to get into a community college. There are "tricks," of course, to taking standardized tests, and you're judged by your best performance, not necessarily your last performance. Many of the high school kids I worked with were completely ignorant of the opportunities out there for them, and I even found that their "guidance counselor" discouraged them from trying to do better.

The DOWN side is that even a public university program is expensive. So a college graduate goes out into the big bad world deep in debt. There ARE options, of course, but it's not fun owing anybody money. And there's no way to weasel out of student debts. They'll take your house, your car, and pretty much anything of value that you have and still try to get a judgment against you when everything else is gone. So you can get whatever degree you want to try to live out your dreams, but it's better to get to know the manager at your local IHOP just in case things don't work out. I managed to somewhat recover by opening a private teaching business by keeping a residence at the last school I worked and by doing an after-hours studio at a local college extension. I have a salaried church gig, play in a classic rock cover band, play fundraisers/parties, weddings, funerals, write songs or jingles for fees--really anything I can do that pays, and when I get a little extra money I reinvest in the equipment of my trade. This isn't something that college freshmen are typically going to worry about when they sign for their $50,000 loans, and the last thing they want to do upon graduation is go hungry just long enough to pay it all off in two years.

So, in closing:

- What kind of education should teachers receive?
Teachers in the US already receive plenty of education. I would like to see EVERY state require teachers have a master's degree, but I also think that when master's degrees are required, there should be a longer time available for "provisional" teaching licenses of up to three years so that teachers can have more hands-on classroom experience before going back to academic study. I was only required to have one semester of observation before my field experiences semester, but I think that two semesters of field experiences should be required instead of one. A master's degree program would, of course, require weekly seminars, but should involve close to a full academic year of actual observed teaching together with a curriculum development project serving as a thesis equivalent.

- How long should high school be, and should there be some separate "university-prep" system that starts earlier than in North America?
I think the length of high school in the US should be left alone, except maybe unless you shorten the length and replace it with work-training programs that would be managed by labor unions. OK, I'm NOT a big fan of labor unions, but I'm attracted to any kind of available on-the-job training that gets people in the workforce as quickly as possible. Unions effectively do this with apprenticeships and journeyman programs, and if there's one positive thing I have to say about unions, that's it.

- Is the emphasis on credentialism sending to many students to university and leading to too many programs of dubious academic merit?
I dunno. It depends. Online university programs have been dubious in recent years, but as quality of online education improves this will be of less concern. As for "real" universities, there does seem to be a glut of useless courses in the humanities, like pseudo-science and the like. I've paid my dues as a music student for 6 1/2 years, and though I don't regret the decisions I made for one second, I do think that arts education fails at preparing graduates to support themselves or connect them with the information that they need. The "successful" ones of us are the ones who pursue doctoral degrees and end up teaching in universities, or we just meet the right people. The "right people" aren't always forthcoming to everyone, so there are those like myself who aren't so lucky. I was taught to keep a disdain for church/Christian music and to distance myself from it, and I ended up finding that for me, church music is what keeps the lights on at the house.

Same thing if you're an art student. You don't have a chance without massive government grants unless you go into a side area as a graphic designer and/or digital artist. Undergrad programs like philosophy, sociology, journalism/creative writing, all kinds of "postmodern studies"--all completely useless unless you really excel at what you do or you're going further on up the chain. And what are you going to do then? Teach a bunch of kids to "follow their dreams" and "be themselves" and all they really have are the same prospects you have? And what happens when all the university positions get filled? Or when budgets get cut and whole departments in useless fields get eliminated? What then? You have a millions of kids with Ph.D.'s and over $140,000 in debt with nowhere to go!

The short road to financial independence is get some kind of associate's degree from a community college in lawn management, work nights at the local truck stop, save money to pay for college, get about $20,000 in overhead, buy a good eXmark, and start your own landscaping business right out of school. When you start doing well, buy another eXmark, and hire someone who knows a thing or two about mulching and planting flower beds. Just make sure you have a good plan for the off-season and you're all set.

These kinds of things, of course, are the things people DON'T teach you in higher education, and your profs can't follow you around your first few years to guarantee that you're going to be a success. You are what you make yourself to be in this country. I don't necessarily think we should cut programs, I just think we should work towards being more honest about it.

A very good critique from a left-wing perspective, argues strongly against US-style education reform but also against some of the chestnuts on the left (i.e. the refusal to discuss the anti-intellectualism of the general culture as well as the lack of intellectual rigour in most ed schools):

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/DoBetter.html

I heard Finish guys like playing with knives and shootings while drunk are not that uncommon?
I heard the school system is one of the best in the world too
Hi-tech entrepreneurial activity abounds
Currency is highly valued
so I'm a bit confused

In NZ we used to have manufacturing, its all gone to China and everyone goes to Australia
We had 2 recent British minmisterial imports at high level government but they left in less than a year due to NZ culture of anti intellectualism
We are a bunch of south sea yobbos and business and money has a higher podium than education standards

welcome to hell b*****s

The Finns are a highly educated bunch of macho heavy drinkers.

It's the climate producing tough men and vodka and the social system producing good schools.

The ice gods are very severe, as is the climate. A volatile history of Macbeth style subterfuge and religion, native Sami, and extreme isolation with no chance of a policeman for 100's of miles so self defence becomes an evolutionary strength.
Hopefully now we are peaceful [ ] they get some good buds over there and not drink alcohol so much. In NZ alcohol problems costs the tax payer so much in health and employment related costs
Still, I feel at home with Scandinavians and their aloofness

The problem too is that unlike in Finland the "master's" degree for US teachers is often (though certainly not always) of dubious academic merit and is really just credential inflation:

"All teachers in Finland have a master's degree, and they get extraordinary results from their students. If we want better results in U.S. schools, then, we should require teachers to have a master's degree, so the argument goes.

But this argument has two fatal flaws. First, teachers in Finland hail from the top 10 percent of their graduating class. This selectivity is woven into a set of policies that Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford University, has astutely described as a "teaching and learning system." The Finnish system could scarcely be more different than our domestic grab bag of policies arising from approximately 15,000 separate school districts carrying out their responsibility to provide public education, variously conceived by the diverse states of a country with an unmatched tolerance, at least among wealthy industrialized nations, for inequity in school funding and facilities.

Secondly, Finnish teachers hold master's degrees that augment their knowledge and skills in a way that's deliberately connected to their instructional challenges. Secondary teachers earn a master's in the subject of instruction, and the master's degree required of elementary teachers equips them with specialized knowledge and skills often found only among special education teachers and school psychologists in U.S. schools. Thus, holding master's degrees means Finnish teachers either have a serious grasp on academic content or are well equipped to problem solve around the individual learning needs of their students.

The typical master's degree held by a U.S. teacher and the associated skills attached pale in comparison."

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ ... hievement/

Coming from Ontario, the funny thing is Canadians who can't get into the post-baccalaureatue education programs in Ontario go across the border to New York State to schools that give them "master's."

* The outrage about the salary bump is a red herring used by right-wing school reformers to argue that teachers are "overpaid." I don't agree US teachers make about two-thirds of the average college graduate's salary, whereas in most other OECD countries they are on par

if you pay peanuts
you get monkeys

I'm from Mississippi, so I can tell you from a rural perspective the bar is set pretty low. I think the low bar for Mississippi is more to our advantage, or students' advantage, though, because despite QUALITY of instruction, at the very least we can say students have equal access to education across the board.

The thing that is going to hinder instructional quality all comes down to local culture. Teachers aren't attracted to "critical needs areas." Why? Because, colloquially, critical needs students are a bunch of knuckleheads. Teachers won't perform well if students don't perform well, and students won't perform well if they flat don't want to. That's a problem you can't escape even if you live in Finland! And great teachers don't want a bunch of knuckleheads negatively impacting their teaching record. Smart, career-minded teachers stay far, far away from these schools for that reason.

Which deepens the shortage of qualified teachers. So the only way you can get teachers in these schools is through 1-year emergency certification which can be converted to full certification as long as the teachers meet certain requirements. Let's say local school doesn't have any visual/performing arts teachers at all (which they're required to do). However, Rev. Smith's wife at the Missionary Baptist Church is renowned as a worship leader and working with children/pre-school choir. So the district recruits her to come in and start a youth choir program. It might also be noted that Ms. Smith does not hold any college degree.

This works because when "qualified" teachers are unavailable, the law does allow districts to pull from individuals who have work experience in that area and have the ability to teach it. The trouble is that while this practice can prove successful, it's often used as an excuse not to recruit teachers when they WERE available. So you ended up with a bunch of teachers who were there because administrators were too lazy to replace them and find teachers who really knew the curriculum. And that in turn meant that teachers were teaching from outdated curriculum, not adequately grading students, and just graduating kids for the sake of getting them out of the schools.

What Mississippi did in recent years to fight that was decree that 1-year certificates would no longer be renewed.

So what Ms. Smith would be required to do is immediately start taking relevant college-level coursework during that year, pass Praxis I and II, and then be issued the standard, entry-level teaching license that we all get. The thing that is sad about all this is that while this seems fairly easy in the areas of the arts, which is my specialty and what I know, it has happened in all areas of education. Ever wonder why it is so many of your rural athletic coaches and school administrators also just "happen" to be science and history teachers?

The upside is at least the instruction is being made available and the students who have a desire to learn ARE learning. And I think the truly great teachers are the ones seeking opportunities for exceptional students. One of my students at a "critical needs" school went on to a public arts school. The guidance counselor berated me for sending her, but I have nothing to apologize for. If others in the community were that motivated, the quality of instruction would improve exponentially.

In the US as a whole, I tend to question the motivation for quality education. I think our teacher prep programs are more than adequate for our instructional priorities. I just don't think we have the right priorities! NCLB has helped in a lot of ways, but it has also hurt us in that we're teaching to a standardized test, not teaching for learning--and then when learning does happen, there is no connection to practical use for that knowledge. University educational programs are out of touch because they either have to focus on standardized testing or they have no clue as to what actual curricula is being taught. And I have to wonder if some of these professors have ever even set foot in a classroom themselves!! ! Graduates are fairly well-prepared in their field of study. They just aren't fully aware of the warzone they're about to enter.

In Finland, however, you don't seem to have such a shortage of teachers. If you have the luxury of being picky about educators, you have a luxury we don't have over here. And I still think that Finnish culture has a lot to do with it, too. Our culture (where I live) fosters a lifestyle of dependence and subsequent apathy. Our kids have no reason or desire to learn anything, and naturally great teachers want nothing to do with those kinds of kids. It's an exercise in futile altruism, and one kind of teacher that has become a mainstay over here is the kid from Teach for America--and she's often horribly misinformed about what people are really like where she teaches. They'll express a seemingly genuine desire to teach urban and rural kids, but they do so with a sense of pity for those they serve and general disdain and condescension for everyone else in the surrounding community. And they have a 1-year tour of duty, so really all they're doing is getting a sort of free job, some experience, and they leave no lasting improvements behind. Undo the culture that perpetuates instructional deficiencies, and the education system as a whole will improve.

Diane Ravitch has a two-part piece in the New York Review of Books comparing Finland with the TFA approach:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... -can-envy/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... tion=false

The problem with the "reformer"/TFA approach is they seem to think that teachers aren't real professionals, and it's better done by Ivy League grads who do it as a stint on the way to law school or Wall Street.