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Good luck implementing something like this in the US.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm
According to the OECD, Finnish children spend the fewest number of hours in the classroom in the developed world.
This reflects another important theme of Finnish education.
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.
Teacher Marjaana Arovaara-Heikkinen believes keeping the same pupils in her classroom for several years also makes her job a lot easier.
''I'm like growing up with my children, I see the problems they have when they are small. And now after five years, I still see and know what has happened in their youth, what are the best things they can do. I tell them I'm like their school mother.''
Children in Finland only start main school at age seven. The idea is that before then they learn best when they're playing and by the time they finally get to school they are keen to start learning.
Good luck implementing something like this in the US.
I don't know about holding kids out of school until age 7. Having children learning to share at young ages helps to develop parts of the prefrontal cortex of their brain which controls some of the aggressive tendencies they are born with. We might end up with an even more violent society if we further isolate children to their parents' homes at such formative years. Another reason to not like schooling to begin so late is the fact that kids can learn another language at young ages, while by adolescence it is near impossible. I do like the idea of more stability in their schooling with the same teachers over multiple years though.
I just can't see state day care being something all that popular in the US, even if it would be beneficial. As for the statement about play, that's pretty similar to the idea Alan Kay and Xerox PARC gave in a talk (one I posted here a couple of days ago) where they studied children and how they learn when the group developed the GUI operating system. There was research indicating strongly that children learn best by physical work in the early years, they gain spatial understanding later on, and finally by adolescence they can begin to think logically. I remember one of the experiments he did was to have kids of varying ages draw circles, and the young kids solutions would usually be "you go a little bit, and then turn, then go a little bit, then turn,..." as they were physically solving a system of differential equations. Older kids would think of a circle as the thing where every point is the same distance from the center, and adolescents would think of a circle as the thing that had x^2 + y^2 = r^2.
From the article MB posted
Finland also has low levels of immigration. So when pupils start school the majority have Finnish as their native language, eliminating an obstacle that other societies often face.
Best education and all we get is butt-ugly (but safe) cars and cheap ass furniture?
Are you thinking of Sweden?
Actually, Finns speak Finnish, English, and have somewhat of an inferiority complex with the Swedes, a language they also speak.
Every culture has its own ways to skin a cats. All that counts is that the cats gets skinned. Kids must leave HS with HS-level of education, not 8th grade or below.
And European education is about academics first, with extracurricular activities like sports a distant second if at all.
Which explains the raging success of American public education for native born, English speaking students.
"Finland also has low levels of immigration. So when pupils start school the majority have Finnish as their native language, eliminating an obstacle that other societies often face."
My kids classrooms looks like a mini United Nations.
American public education is focused too much on promoting correct at udes and responses. Way too psychologicalized and propagandized for actual learning to occur.The system's success is built on the idea of less can be more. There is an emphasis on relaxed schools, free from political prescriptions. This combination, they believe, means that no child is left behind.
If you teach to tests with objective answers, and convince yourself that relatively satisfactory results on such tests are evidence that students are learning, you end up with incurious students who (by and large) know relatively little and can't think enough to creatively solve problems.
To challenge a premise of the original article, education is not something that can be measured (beyond the basics). That is, you know an educated individual when you see them. Rote memorization and drill works up to a point. After that, the ability to reason, argue persuasively, and express ideas coherently are not abilities that can be evaluated in a deep manner by standardized examination. This can be evaluated in an intensive program, which perhaps is found scattered about at the collegiate level, or perhaps outside formal programs altogether.
They're coming for you... JACK!
Because Socialism doesn't work...oh, wait.
A lover of America who doesn't believe in America? Say it ain't so, dip .
It ain't so, dip .
Sweden =/ Finland.
Think:
Nokia, not Ikea
Finns are a rather unique lot, with a language not in the Indo-European family. All the ones I have met have been pretty decent people.
They gave the Russians fits during WW2
I think that Europe in general is going to fare pretty well compared to the US in the next 10-20 years. Not hugely confident in that assessment, due to their low birth rates, but they have some things going for them, Italy and Greece excepted. Those two countries are, and will be, in the ter far into the future.
Characteristics of the kind of public educational system I think the US should pursue:
One that doesn't force a one-size fits all program on everyone.
One that allows for long periods of uninterrupted focus on a particular topic.
One that doesn't insist on chopping up knowledge into iron-clad, water tight "subjects."
One that allows for non-academic paths for those not interested in college, perhaps after the 9th grade or thereabouts.
One that doesn't require 9 months per year for 13 years, but much less.
One that is not built on rote memorization and drill after the basic skills are covered.
One that requires lots of deep, challenging reading.
One that has a natural way of removing those who don't want to be there.
And, yes, one that does address values/ethics/morality explicitly and, in general, character building.
What has Europe done with spending in the last couple of years?
hint: austerity
One that requires plenty of argumentation and debate.
One that doesn't present the official view of things (the usual draw for extremists of all stripes to get their hands on the curriculum).
One that encourages self-directed learning.
Basically, one that leads to the individual being able to conduct their own education by the time they leave.
Last edited by Marcus Bryant; 02-22-2011 at 01:53 PM.
It's not a question of resources, it's a question of pedagogy. The one that dominates American public schools is flawed, designed for an age of large assimilation of immigrants, an industrial economy, and, yes, to turn out good patriotic Americans.
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