The “Finnish Miracle” in Education: We Are the 47%
September 19, 2012 § 6 Comments
Recently, I found this incredibly thoughtful piece in The Atlantic called “What Americans Keep Ignoring About the Finnish Miracle.” Finland has scored at or near the top on the international-standard PISA test since 2000, with the likes of Shanghai, China, and South Korea. Their Westernness has Americans all-aflutter as to what they’re doing so well that we’re not. We’ve been speculating here and here and here. But the real answers, according to the Finns themselves, may surprise you.
According to the Atlantic piece, Pasi Sahlberg, “director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?,” recently came to America to describe Finland’s reform efforts and present success to our education leaders. Sahlberg talked about what we may know by now: teaching is a highly respected career in Finland, and very prestigious (grad students in education get picked from the top 10-13% of applicants; here in the states, the majority of teachers are supplied from the bottom 1/3 of graduates). Finland gives no standardized tests (until you are ready to graduate from high school), or maintains lengthy formal report cards – each teacher designs individual assessments for their class. All of these are well and good, and Americans should take note, but that wasn’t the core of Mr. Sahlberg’s message. As the article’s author, Anu Partanen, put it, “Academic excellence wasn’t a particular priority” to Finland when they reformed their school system; equality was.
There are no private schools in Finland, no magnet schools, no special-entrance lottery charter schools; there are a handful of independent schools, but they receive their money from the government. The first priority of the now-famous “Finnish Miracle” was that all students have the same opportunity to learn in a well-resourced school. They feed them nutritious, free meals at school. Pre-school and college are also free, so parents aren’t stressed out about resume-building to get into a name-brand school that provides a superior opportunity. Parents don’t have to stress because their kids’ school is falling apart, or the teachers don’t care, or the state test is dumbing down their child’s opportunity to learn. Because every kid is offered a superior opportunity to learn. All the schools, regardless of neighborhood, rural/city environment, and income bracket are excellent. This is why they are doing so well.
Critics of the Finnish system say that Finland is very homogenous with little immigration and no language differentiation, making their children easier to educate. But Finland does have immigration, and, according to the PISA score, even neighborhoods that are highly diverse, with lots of immigrants and income disparities, still do extremely well on the test. Why? Because the schools of immigrant children are just as good, just as well-staffed and cared for, as the schools in homogenous neighborhoods.
Critics have also attacked Finland’s social-democracy model that favors an equality where no one stands out, but everyone does well. (One blog commenter said something to the effect: Who is Finland’s Steve Jobs? Famous musicians? Scientific geniuses? We can’t name one.) Finland’s system couldn’t work here, detractors argue, because America’s obsession with outliers and competition is too precious. Competition is what makes us who we are.
Yet we willfully choose to ignore one important fact about our American need for unrelenting competition: in order for there to be winners, there have to be losers. In order to reform American education, we have to talk about the losers, and we need to put ourselves in their shoes. We already know that many who score at the bottom are poor; we know schools in poor neighborhoods don’t get the same resources as the ones in better neighborhoods. Yet, in American reform efforts, we have made competition for great schools the cornerstone anyway. As Sahlberg puts it, in the States, “parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It’s the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same.”
Competition is great for business (the Finns have a capitalism-based business economy, too), but terrible for an education system. When we talk about competition, what we enjoy talking about is the winners. The success stories. But what Americans hate talking about is who loses in the competition. Who doesn’t get into the charter-school lottery. Who doesn’t have the opportunity to move out of the neighborhood. And the numbers show that the kids from these environments are more likely to drop out of high school, not finish college, or, at worst, end up in prison. Is this how we see ourselves?
This is a model we explicitly accept when we accept the school choice, competition and accountability model. (Sahlberg tells a group of Columbia Teachers College students that the word “accountability” doesn’t exist in Finnish: “Accountability is what’s left when you remove responsibility,” he is quoted in the piece.)
What do you make of this? From what I can tell, Finnish education looks a lot like Waldorf education. Children learn to play and get along first and read later, and there is as much thought and focus put into recess, nutritious food, creativity and making learning fun as hard work and doing well. But it’s the distinct lack of competition, and making sure that all children have equal access to resources, according to Minister Sahlberg, that has created its success.
Wow. This problem feels so big that I’m kind of filled with despair just thinking about it. We have identified so many ways that education could be equalized and yet we continue to turn a blind eye to the problems or to dismiss the solutions because to actually implement them would be too expensive, or difficult, or might offend someone.
Along with the American preference to celebrate the winners is an ingrained cultural tendency to blame the victims/losers. You know that argument that folks without health insurance are parasites who deserve the ill health their lowly stations afford them? I think lots of Americans harbor similar prejudices that poor performing schools in rundown neighborhoods educate folks who aren’t working hard enough or who don’t ‘want it’ enough, and therefore they deserve the crappy, dangerous schools they are stuck with. Life in those areas might not inspire greatness – inspiring survival might be a feat in and of itself – and with a continued lack of resources, improvement is always a pipe dream. Ugh.
Keep fighting the good informational fight, Holly, and thanks for thoughtful ideas about this painful topic.
Oh, Camille, it was not my intention to bum you out. So sorry
I believe you are right about blaming the losers – hence the title of my essay – and it’s hard not to, the problem is huge and complex, involving issues of class, race, culture, and, dismally, politics.
What gets me up in the morning is that I get to say, what can we do about this? Did you know that Finland didn’t even strive for academic excellence? What a crazy thought to us here in America, where it’s all we talk about! Yet in certain corners of our country, we are doing an extremely lousy job (in other corners, however, we are doing really really well – that’s to help you not feel so bad).
Thank you thank you for reading and sharing your very personal thoughts. I hope you will come back and do so again.
I recently had a meeting (for various reasons, but in a nutshell I just want to make sure my daughter doesn’t fall through the cracks or develop her whole identity solely on being a “good girl/rule follower/easy kid”) with our principal. One of the things the principal expressed to me is that our school’s educational goal is to get them to the same level, give the students the SAME opportunities, skills, and methods. She admitted/understood that sometimes students on the top and bottom ends of the “achievement” scale will benefit from some more specialized attention, but really made a point of explaining to me that our school strives to set specific standards and help all the students meet those standards, and makes it less of a priority to push the kids at the top.
I’m not sure I’m expressing that well (she was not saying all students learn the same way or have the same aptitude…). I didn’t take it well at first, but I respect it more as I think about it.
….and I am still thinking about it.
(random p.s.: My neighbor is from Finland. Her daughter is in my daughter’s class, too.)
Melissa, when my kids first started at Waldorf school, where there are no grades, no standardized tests, and no competition, I have to admit it was hard to get used to. One night, I even found myself asking, how will I know they are learning? As a recovering Student Council President (haha), it’s hard to undo all those years of best-ness. But they are trying to teach the kids something different – which is for the kids to know themselves when they’ve done a good job.
Do you think that is what your principal was saying? That each kid takes the same info and does something different with it? Love to know what you think. And thanks for posting
I’m a recovering perfectionist as well, and honestly DON’T wish that kind of self-imposed pressure on my girls. It’s hard, though…. (oh, I can relate to those “but how will I know they’re learning?!” tears, haha!)
I think that’s *part* what our principal was saying to me. Our school sets very high academic standards early (Emma starts final exams this year, in first grade, and many of the things on their list for the year are things I’m quite sure I didn’t tackle until 3rd or 4th grade; not just a push on testing, but also writing essays, exploring science and social studies, playing chess, etc…), and the school believes in setting these specific guidelines and helping ALL kids reach them. I think she was saying that we’ve set some very specific learning goals for each grade, and their literal goal as teachers is to help the kids meet those goals. Above (or below) that, she assures me that the kids will get the attention they need to as not to be bored or confused, so it’s not exactly a “cookie cutter” approach, but I had to really think about this idea that their literal goal is that ALL the kids should be reaching the same level.
Now obviously, final exams and testing at such a young age are another topic entirely (I don’t think it’s necessary so young, but when we chose this school, we agreed to “get on board” with their ideals and methodology; I think it works for Emma specifically, anyway)…
Also (off-topic), as a district, we’re now using the Common Core guidelines, which I need to do much more research on… these things are very interesting to me, too.
Love your blog and the work you’re doing, Holly. xo
Ok, I got you: this is a comment about equality in standards. I’m so happy you are happy with your school, and it sounds like your daughter is thriving. I love that. Thank you so much for reading and thinking about this stuff along with me. Come back.