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Re: What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?
Somebody should inform the reporter that "back to
basics" as used in US education discourse, refers
to the exact opposite of Finnish teaching as
described here. Back to basics, since the 1980s
has meant scripted, behaviorist pedagogy. We
don't see any of that in the description of these schools.
Pete Farruggio
At 11:47 AM 3/2/2008, you wrote:
WHAT MAKES FINNISH KIDS SO SMART?
Wall Street Journal -- February 29, 2007
by Ellen Gamerman
Helsinki, Finland -- High-school students here
rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a
night. They have no school uniforms, no honor
societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and
no classes for the gifted. There is little
standardized testing, few parents agonize over
college and kids don't start school until age 7.
Yet by one international measure, Finnish
teenagers are among the smartest in the world.
They earned some of the top scores by
15-year-old students who were tested in 57
countries. American teens finished among the
world's C students even as U.S. educators piled
on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish
youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste
hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm
and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth
grade they're way ahead in math, science and
reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers.
The Finns won attention with their performances
in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, a
group funded by 30 countries that monitors
social and economic trends. In the most recent
test, which focused on science, Finland's
students placed first in science and near the
top in math and reading, according to results
released late last year. An unofficial tally of
Finland's combined scores puts it in first place
overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs
the OECD's test, known as the Programme for
International Student Assessment, or PISA. The
U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math
and science; its reading scores were tossed
because of a glitch. About 400,000 students
around the world answered multiple-choice
questions and essays on the test that measured
critical thinking and the application of
knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.
The academic prowess of Finland's students has
lured educators from more than 50 countries in
recent years to learn the country's secret,
including an official from the U.S. Department
of Education. What they find is simple but not
easy: well-trained teachers and responsible
children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults
hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit
their students. "We don't have oil or other
riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people
have," says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.
Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how
it's done from a viewing balcony perched over a
classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a
city in central Finland. What they see is a
relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school,
which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.
Trailing 15-year-old Fanny Salo at Norssi gives
a glimpse of the no-frills curriculum. Fanny is
a bubbly ninth-grader who loves "Gossip Girl"
books, the TV show "Desperate Housewives" and
digging through the clothing racks at H&M stores with her friends.
Fanny earns straight A's, and with no gifted
classes she sometimes doodles in her journal
while waiting for others to catch up. She often
helps lagging classmates. "It's fun to have time
to relax a little in the middle of class," Fanny
says. Finnish educators believe they get better
overall results by concentrating on weaker
students rather than by pushing gifted students
ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright
students can help average ones without harming their own progress.
At lunch, Fanny and her friends leave campus to
buy salmiakki, a salty licorice. They return for
physics, where class starts when everyone quiets
down. Teachers and students address each other
by first names. About the only classroom rules
are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.
Fanny's more rebellious classmates dye their
blond hair black or sport pink dreadlocks.
Others wear tank tops and stilettos to look
tough in the chilly climate. Tanning lotions are
popular in one clique. Teens sift by style,
including "fruittari," or preppies; "hoppari,"
or hip-hop, or the confounding
"fruittari-hoppari," which fuses both. Ask an
obvious question and you may hear "KVG," short
for "Check it on Google, you idiot." Heavy-metal
fans listen to Nightwish, a Finnish band, and
teens socialize online at irc-galleria.net.
The Norssi School is run like a teaching
hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each
year. Graduate students work with kids while
instructors evaluate from the sidelines.
Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the
profession is highly competitive: More than 40
people may apply for a single job. Their
salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers,
but they generally have more freedom.
Finnish teachers pick books and customize
lessons as they shape students to national
standards. "In most countries, education feels
like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are
the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the
Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.
One explanation for the Finns' success is their
love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a
government-paid gift pack that includes a
picture book. Some libraries are attached to
shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more
remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.
Finland shares its language with no other
country, and even the most popular
English-language books are translated here long
after they are first published. Many children
struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in
English because they feared they would hear
about the ending before it arrived in Finnish.
Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles
instead of dubbing. One college student says she
became a fast reader as a child because she was
hooked on the 1990s show "Beverly Hills, 90210."
In November, a U.S. delegation visited, hoping
to learn how Scandinavian educators used
technology. Officials from the Education
Department, the National Education Association
and the American Association of School
Librarians saw Finnish teachers with chalkboards
instead of whiteboards, and lessons shown on
overhead projectors instead of PowerPoint. Keith
Krueger was less impressed by the technology
than by the good teaching he saw. "You kind of
wonder how could our country get to that?" says
Mr. Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School
Networking, an association of school technology
officers that organized the trip.
Finnish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw
the differences firsthand. She spent a year at
Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict
rules didn't translate into tougher lessons or
dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would
ask students whether they did their homework.
They would reply: " 'Nah. So what'd you do last
night?'" she recalls. History tests were often
multiple choice. The rare essay question, she
says, allowed very little space in which to
write. In-class projects were largely "glue this
to the poster for an hour," she says. Her
Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a
spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.
Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community
Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign
students are told to ask for extra work if they
find classes too easy. He says he is trying to
make his schools more rigorous by asking parents
to demand more from their children.
Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish
education, it would be tough to replicate in the
U.S. With a largely homogeneous population,
teachers have few students who don't speak
Finnish. In the U.S., about 8% of students are
learning English, according to the Education
Department. There are fewer disparities in
education and income levels among Finns. Finland
separates students for the last three years of
high school based on grades; 53% go to high
school and the rest enter vocational school.
(All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.)
Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about
4% -- or 10% at vocational schools -- compared
with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their
respective education departments.
Another difference is financial. Each school
year, the U.S. spends an average of $8,700 per
student, while the Finns spend $7,500. Finland's
high-tax government provides roughly equal
per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities
between Beverly Hills public schools, for
example, and schools in poorer districts. The
gap between Finland's best- and worst-performing
schools was the smallest of any country in the
PISA testing. The U.S. ranks about average.
Finnish students have little angstata -- or teen
angst -- about getting into the best university,
and no worries about paying for it. College is
free. There is competition for college based on
academic specialties -- medical school, for
instance. But even the best universities don't
have the elite status of a Harvard.
Taking away the competition of getting into the
"right schools" allows Finnish children to enjoy
a less-pressured childhood. While many U.S.
parents worry about enrolling their toddlers in
academically oriented preschools, the Finns
don't begin school until age 7, a year later than most U.S. first-graders.
Once school starts, the Finns are more
self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over
accompanying their children to and from school,
and arrange every play date and outing, young
Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta
School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some
first-grade students trudge to school through a
stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch,
they pick out their own meals, which all schools
give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables.
There is no Internet filter in the school
library. They can walk in their socks during
class, but at home even the very young are
expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.
The Finns enjoy one of the highest standards of
living in the world, but they, too, worry about
falling behind in the shifting global economy.
They rely on electronics and telecommunications
companies, such as Finnish cellphone giant
Nokia, along with forest-products and mining
industries for jobs. Some educators say Finland
needs to fast-track its brightest students the
way the U.S. does, with gifted programs aimed at
producing more go-getters. Parents also are
getting pushier about special attention for
their children, says Tapio Erma, principal of
the suburban Olari School. "We are more and more
aware of American-style parents," he says.
Mr. Erma's school is a showcase campus. Last
summer, at a conference in Peru, he spoke about
adopting Finnish teaching methods. During a
recent afternoon in one of his school's advanced
math courses, a high-school boy fell asleep at
his desk. The teacher didn't disturb him,
instead calling on others. While napping in
class isn't condoned, Mr. Erma says, "We just
have to accept the fact that they're kids and they're learning how to live."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425355065601997.html
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