Finland

moore where to invade next


<a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/">http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/</a>

It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a

sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran

teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme—by

Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian

boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best

efforts. The school’s team of special educators—including a social

worker, a nurse and a psychologist—convinced Louhivuori that laziness

was not to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure

so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete.<div class="associated-container">

            
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    <p>Finland has vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy

over the past decade in large part because its teachers are trusted to

do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. This 13-year-old,

Besart Kabashi, received something akin to royal tutoring.

“I took Besart on that year as my private student,” Louhivuori

told me in his office, which boasted a Beatles “Yellow Submarine” poster

on the wall and an electric guitar in the closet. When Besart was not

studying science, geography and math, he was parked next to Louhivuori’s

desk at the front of his class of 9- and 10-year- olds, cracking open

books from a tall stack, slowly reading one, then another, then

devouring them by the dozens. By the end of the year, the son of Kosovo

war refugees had conquered his adopted country’s vowel-rich language and

arrived at the realization that he could, in fact, <em>learn</em>.

Years later, a 20-year-old Besart showed up at Kirkkojarvi’s

Christmas party with a bottle of Cognac and a big grin. “You helped me,”

he told his former teacher. Besart had opened his own car repair firm

and a cleaning company. “No big fuss,” Louhivuori told me. “This is what

we do every day, prepare kids for life.”</p>

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    <p>This tale of a single rescued child hints at some of the reasons 

for the tiny Nordic nation’s staggering record of education success, a

phenomenon that has inspired, baffled and even irked many of America’s

parents and educators. Finnish schooling became an unlikely hot topic

after the 2010 documentary film <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Q6D28C/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003Q6D28C&linkCode=as2&tag=smithsonianco-20&linkId=2TQZ7W4DVFXBHDGE" target="_blank"><em>Waiting for “Superman”</em></a> contrasted it with America’s troubled public schools.

“Whatever it takes” is an attitude that drives not just

Kirkkojarvi’s 30 teachers, but most of Finland’s 62,000 educators in

3,500 schools from Lapland to Turku—professionals selected from the top

10 percent of the nation’s graduates to earn a required master’s degree

in education. Many schools are small enough so that teachers know every

student. If one method fails, teachers consult with colleagues to try

something else. They seem to relish the challenges. Nearly 30 percent of

Finland’s children receive some kind of special help during their first

nine years of school. The school where Louhivuori teaches served 240

first through ninth graders last year; and in contrast with Finland’s

reputation for ethnic homogeneity, more than half of its 150

elementary-level students are immigrants—from Somalia, Iraq, Russia,

Bangladesh, Estonia and Ethiopia, among other nations. “Children from

wealthy families with lots of education can be taught by stupid

teachers,” Louhivuori said, smiling. “We try to catch the weak students.

It’s deep in our thinking.”

The transformation of the Finns’ education system began some 40

years ago as the key propellent of the country’s economic recovery plan.

Educators had little idea it was so successful until 2000, when the

first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment

(PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global

venues, revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the

world. Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first

out of 57 countries (and a few cities) in science. In the 2009

PISA scores released last year, the nation came in second in science,

third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students

worldwide. “I’m still surprised,” said Arjariita Heikkinen, principal of

a Helsinki comprehensive school. “I didn’t realize we were <em>that</em> good.”

In the United States, which has muddled along in the middle for

the past decade, government officials have attempted to introduce

marketplace competition into public schools. In recent years, a group of

Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put

money behind private-sector ideas, such as vouchers, data-driven

curriculum and charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past

decade. President Obama, too, has apparently bet on compe­tition. His

Race to the Top initiative invites states to compete for federal dollars

using tests and other methods to measure teachers, a philosophy that

would not fly in Finland. “I think, in fact, teachers would tear off

their shirts,” said Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years

of teaching experience. “If you only measure the statistics, you miss

the human aspect.”

There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from

one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are

no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or

regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the

government agencies running them, from national officials to local

authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or

career politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws

from the same pool of university-trained educators. The result is that a

Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education no

matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town.

The differences between weakest and strongest students are the smallest

in the world, according to the most recent survey by the Organization

for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Equality is the most

important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right

and left agree on this,” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s

powerful teachers union.

Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or

vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United

States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in

the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student

than the United States.

Still, there is a distinct absence of chest-thumping among the

famously reticent Finns. They are eager to celebrate their recent world

hockey championship, but PISA scores, not so much. “We prepare children

to learn how to learn, not how to take a test,” said Pasi Sahlberg, a

former math and physics teacher who is now in Finland’s Ministry of

Education and Culture. “We are not much interested in PISA. It’s not

what we are about.”

Maija Rintola stood before her chattering class of twenty-three

7- and 8-year-olds one late April day in Kirkkojarven Koulu. A tangle of

multicolored threads topped her copper hair like a painted wig. The

20-year teacher was trying out her look for Vappu, the day teachers and

children come to school in riotous costumes to celebrate May Day. The

morning sun poured through the slate and lemon linen shades onto

containers of Easter grass growing on the wooden sills. Rintola smiled

and held up her open hand at a slant—her time-tested “silent giraffe,”

which signaled the kids to be quiet. Little hats, coats, shoes stowed in

their cubbies, the children wiggled next to their desks in their

stocking feet, waiting for a turn to tell their tale from the

playground. They had just returned from their regular 15 minutes of

playtime outdoors between lessons. “Play is important at this age,”

Rintola would later say. “We value play.”

With their wiggles unwound, the students took from their desks

little bags of buttons, beans and laminated cards numbered 1 through 20.

A teacher’s aide passed around yellow strips representing units of ten.

At a smart board at the front of the room, Rintola ushered the class

through the principles of base ten. One girl wore cat ears on her head,

for no apparent reason. Another kept a stuffed mouse on her desk to

remind her of home. Rintola roamed the room helping each child grasp the

concepts. Those who finished early played an advanced “nut puzzle”

game. After 40 minutes it was time for a hot lunch in the cathedral-like

cafeteria.

Teachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and

spend less time in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the

extra time to build curriculums and assess their students. Children

spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter.

Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7.

“We have no hurry,” said Louhivuori. “Children learn better when they

are ready. Why stress them out?”

It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless.

Finland provides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care

to parents, and preschool for all 5-year-olds, where the emphasis is on

play and socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes parents, paying

them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she turns

17. Ninety-seven percent of 6-year-olds attend public preschool, where

children begin some academics. Schools provide food, medical care,

counseling and taxi service if needed. Stu­dent health care is free.

Even so, Rintola said her children arrived last August miles

apart in reading and language levels. By April, nearly every child in

the class was reading, and most were writing. Boys had been coaxed into

literature with books like <em>Kapteeni Kalsarin</em> (“Captain

Underpants”). The school’s special education teacher teamed up with

Rintola to teach five children with a variety of behavioral and learning

problems. The national goal for the past five years has been to

mainstream all children. The only time Rintola’s children are pulled out

is for Finnish as a Second Language classes, taught by a teacher with

30 years’ experience and graduate school training.

There are exceptions, though, however rare. One first-grade girl

was not in Rintola’s class. The wispy 7-year-old had recently arrived

from Thailand speaking not a word of Finnish. She was studying math down

the hall in a special “preparing class” taught by an expert in

multicultural learning. It is designed to help children keep up with

their subjects while they conquer the language. Kirkkojarvi’s teachers

have learned to deal with their unusually large number of immigrant

students. The city of Espoo helps them out with an extra 82,000 euros a

year in “positive discrimination” funds to pay for things like special

resource teachers, counselors and six special needs classes.</p><p>...
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