Last week, Finland was once again among the top-scoring nations on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an exam given to 15-year-olds around the world. U.S. students were in the middle of the pack for science and literacy but below average in mathematics.
To gain insight into what Finland's doing right, I sat down on December 9 with Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture. Sahlberg, who has trained teachers, coached schools and advised policy makers in more than 40 countries, is also a former Washington-based World Bank education specialist. An edited version of our conversation follows.
The Hechinger Report: Two Million Minutes, a recent documentary by Bob Compton, reveals that American students spend significantly less time learning than their counterparts in India and China. But in your work, you've indicated that increasing instructional time isn't necessarily a good idea. Why?
Sahlberg: There's no evidence globally that doing more of the same [instructionally] will improve results. An equally relevant argument would be, let's try to do less. Increasing time comes from the old industrial mindset. The important thing is ensuring school is a place where students can discover who they are and what they can do. It's not about the amount of teaching and learning.
The Hechinger Report: Given your reservations about things like standardized testing, choice and competition, I'm wondering how you're received in the United States. Are you loved by teachers but loathed by some reformers?
Sahlberg: The reception has been very positive everywhere. The thing is that everyone has exactly the same goal -- good schools for all -- but there are disagreements on how to get there. What I want to do is challenge people to see that things can be done differently. In Finland, we've gone from having a very poor system in the 1970s to what the recent McKinsey report called the only excellent system in the world.
The Hechinger Report: How did Finland do it?
Sahlberg: Most educational ideas that we are employing are initially from the United States. They're American innovations done in a Finnish way. You know, in the United States, there are more than enough ideas, there's superior knowledge about educational change and you speak a language that has global reach. If you want to learn something from Finland, it's the implementation of ideas. It's looking at education as nation-building. We have very carefully kept the business of education in the hands of educators. It's practically impossible to become a superintendent without also being a former teacher. ... If you have people [in leadership positions] with no background in teaching, they'll never have the type of communication they need.
The Hechinger Report: So what do you make of the recent trend in the United States of hiring non-educators to run large urban school systems?
Sahlberg: This is a very alien idea to Finns. ... You know, a former head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks was Finnish, and when he returned to Finland, he was appointed director of one of the largest theaters -- a completely different field. He left after one year. There was no buy-in.
The Hechinger Report: What are your thoughts on the use of value-added data to measure teacher performance, which is quite popular in the United States at the moment?
Sahlberg: It's very difficult to use this data to say anything about the effectiveness of teachers. If you tried to do this in my country, Finnish teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn't return until this crazy idea went away. Finns don't believe you can reliably measure the essence of learning. You know, one big difference in thinking about education and the whole discourse is that in the United States it's based on a belief in competition. In my country, we are in education because we believe in cooperation and sharing. Cooperation is a core starting point for growth.
The Hechinger Report: Waiting for "Superman" put pressure on teachers' unions in the United States and they've also come under criticism from some experts, reformers and the Obama administration. But others, like Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, have pointed out that top-performing countries such as Finland have strong teachers' unions. So what do you make of teachers' unions in the United States?
Sahlberg: In Finland, unions aren't an obstacle. Ninety-eight percent of teachers are unionized. And this is very important to the success of our system. I wouldn't buy the argument that unions are a problem.
Justin Snider: Keys To Finnish Educational Success: Intensive Teacher-Training, Union Collaboration
Education in Finland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Early education's top model: Finland - The Globe and Mail
YouTube - Finland's education success
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Linda Darling-Hammond was part of a podcast regarding education in Finland. To listen to "Learning from What's Working," go to http://www.bamradionetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=426:jackstreet54&catid=35:jackstreet54&Itemid=89.
Geez, can't you just imagine someone on the right trying to accuse this line of thinking as socialism at its worst? No wonder we can't make meaningful improvements.
I don't understand how people think creating a system where administrators are trying to fire teachers and withholding tenure will create better school communities. Do you really think adding lack of job security to the immense list of anxieties and responsibilities a teacher already must balance is a great idea?
At a school, a teacher's supervisory should be there to mentor, help them set goals, and help them improve their practice. If you're a teacher and your supervisor is being pushed to deny you tenure, are you really going to be up front and honest about things you are struggling with? That trust and common goal for student achievement is crucial to the success of teachers and their students.
Whenever I hear that Rhee did a good job, I ask people to list any single positive thing she did. Let me clarify, you may consider firing teachers a positive step to "clean out" education, yet, it is not a positive, supportive move that will actually help teachers improve. All she and other reformers had to offer was negativity. One could argue it was necessary (I disagree), yet, I still fail to see anything she did that will actually help teachers do their job better, or, more easily.
Amen. As a teacher at a British International School in Thailand I can tell you cooperation and socializing are the foundation of every lesson. Everything gets flows smoothly when teachers, students, and administration feel that what's happening is fair, and that the outcomes are worth working towards.
How can that happen when people treat school like a business? Employers(Gov, Admin, parents) feel like they aren't getting enough bang for their buck out of teachers.
Teachers aren't employees. They're mediums by which the culture, technical skills, and the values of a society are transmitted to it's newest members. We try to give the best to our students no matter what we're teaching.
But you have to remember that parents teach, the internet teaches, and every medium does as well. Kids don't go to school to learn, they happen to be there some of the time when they're learning about the world.
Many professional teachers back home are rightly fed up. They are undervalued, under-payed, overworked, and they at times reflect this to their charges. As professional as teachers can be, kids can be discerning at times.
It's not easy to deceive your students with promises of how wonderful your culture is, when you as a professional see so much of it coming to pieces.
F&F
Schmidt, William H., Wang, Hsing Chi., McKnight, Curtis C., J Curriculum Studies, 2005, volume 37, number 5, pages 525–559
Amen. As a teacher in a British International School in Thailand I can tell you cooperation and socializing in a harmonious manner are the foundation of every lesson. Everything gets done better when teachers, students, and administration feel that what's happening is fair, and that the outcomes are worth working towards.
How can it happen when people treat school like a business? Employers(Gov, Admin, parents) feel like they aren't getting enough bang for their buck out of teachers.
Teachers aren't employees. They're mediums by which the culture, technical skills, and values of a society are transmitted to it's newest members. We try to give the best to our students no matter what we're teaching.
But you have to remember that parents teach, the internet teaches, and every medium does as well. Kids don't go to school to learn, they happen to be there some of the time when they're learning about the world.
Many professional teachers back home are rightly fed up. They are undervalued, under-payed, overworked, and they at times reflect this to their charges. As professional as teachers can be, kids can be discerning at times.
wealth and power can be a very harsh teacher to any society.
history tells us that. we are living proof of that axiom.
now on to iran and proclaim those oil fields as ours and set up a puppet gov like in iraq and afghan and oh dont forget win over the locals like the russians did in afghan. :-)
bloomberg missed that one big time. :-)
We must understand that the very culture of a society has an impact on the performance of the system of education within that society. Culture plays a significant role for it represents what we value and believe about our self. What we believe about our self prefigures the experiences we will have.
We can’t wish for one thing while in practice valuing another thing. What does the American culture say about what (in practice) we believe about our selves, about what we value? Results, dualistic thinking, individualism and competition, to name a few! For example we value results so much that we even foolishly believe that if we focus on results (e.g. setting goals and making people accountable by doing more testing—recall No Child Left Behind) then things will improve.
If people don’t come through the education system with a greater love for learning than when they entered—and as young children they naturally enter with a thirst for it—then the system will have failed all of us. (see www.forprogressnotgrowth.com/2010/11/26/getting-education-right/ )
Our culture sucks, which is why so many other things suck!
America (and to a lesser extent, its easily influenced neighbour to the north) has seen a decline in science, engineering and mathematics for a variety of reasons. To understand what has happened, perhaps we should look back a few decades to the space race, when the nation was captivated by technological achievements as we raced to put satellites in the sky and men on the moon. The space race inspired millions of young people to study science, engineering and mathematics.
In more recent years, where is the nation's focus? Funneling money into the military to fight foreign wars over oil, quick successes of Silicon Valley startups (which inspired millions to go into business, searching for a quick buck), and talentless, hypersexual reality TV.
Thomas Friedman discussed this Quiet Crisis of the declining American education in The World Is Flat, where he compared America to India and China (rather than Finland). He summarizes the differing cultures quite succinctly with this quote:
"In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears-and that is our problem."
This quote always resonated with me, especially after working in Asia and comparing their highly-motivated students to their lazier North American counterparts.
I am a teacher and it's sad that even the kids who are going to college are doing it for the job, not for themselves. They dont' want to grow, learn, simply enjoy new things, be challenged... just to be over with it, get a good grade and move on to a college.
You cannot compare Finland to the U.S.
I live in Nevada. Drop out central. Most kids have decided they are through with school by the sixth grade.
If mom can get you a job at the casino as a maid and you can make more valet parking why stay in school?
Poverty is realtive. Most of my kids are from Mexico. If dad is making fifteen dollars an hour here in the States working under the table you 've hit the jackpot. Would you rather make fifieen under the table or three dollars day in Nyarit?