[Vision2020] Why Do Finnish Students Perform So Well? Social Democracy, Teacher Professionalism, and "Jussi"

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Good Morning Visionaries:

This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  The full version is attached.

Neither every proposal of our school "reformers" is demolished by the Finnish experience.

Yours for teacher professionalism/unionism,

Nick

WHY DO FINNISH STUDENTS PERFORM SO WELL?
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, TEACHER PROFESSIONALISM, AND “JUSSI”

By Nick Gier, President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFT/AFL-CIO

Finnish children come to school ready to learn. They come to school healthy. 
That’s a problem the United States has not yet solved.
–Julie Walker, Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Finland, Singapore, and South Korea out-prepare, 
out-invest, out-respect, and out-perform the United States.
–Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

According to reigning right-wing ideology, the people of Finland should not excel in anything.  They have very high taxes (43% of GDP), strong unions (76% of workforce), paid maternity leave, monthly child support, universal elder care, and government funded health coverage. 

The Finns, however, do very well by most all standards. They were fifth in the world just behind the U.S. for economic competitiveness in the World Economic Forum list for 2010-11.  Primarily because of its high-tech industries, Finland was declared the world’s most innovative economy by the free market Economist.  Significantly, industry makes up 32 percent of the Finnish economy, whereas it has dropped to 21 percent in the U.S. 

Every year since 2000 Finnish students have received some of the highest scores on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).  In 2009 they were third in reading and math behind Shanghai and Korea, and second in science behind Shanghai.

Critics might say that Finland is a much more homogenuous society than the U.S, which ranked 17th on the PISA list.  But Canada has the highest rate of immigration in the world and it ranked sixth just behind Singapore, whose population is 40 percent foreign born with three major ethnic groups embracing five world religions.

Progressive taxation has dramatically reduced income inequality and poverty in Europe.  In the U.S. 22 percent of children still live in poverty while only 4 percent do in Finland.  In 2005 the Alliance for Excellence in Education estimated that teacher attribution is 50 percent higher in poor American school districts, where dropout rates range as high as 50 percent.  The average dropout rate for the U.S. is 25 percent compared to just 1 percent in Finland.
	
Conservatives have held up teacher unions as the main reason for the U.S. education crisis, but 95 percent of Finland’s teachers are members of the Trade Union for Educators. Finnish union contracts control class size, and one of the reasons why Finnish students do so well in science is that that these classes with daily labs are limited to 16 students.

Only one in ten applicants is accepted at the teacher colleges, so Finnish teachers come from the top of their high school classes. As a result they attain the prestige that has always honored teachers in Asia. Successful applicants begin at the age of 17 and spend 5-7.5 years (depending on chosen fields) earning their Master’s degrees. As in Denmark and other countries, all Finnish university students receive a monthly stipend if they keep up their grades.

The only standardized tests Finns take are the PISA exams and the ones for matriculation at institutions of higher education. Finnish education consultant Pasi Salberg contends that standardized testing leads to “narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, unethical practices related to manipulating test results, and unhealthy competition among schools.”  

In Finland there are no teacher evaluations, and the post of national education inspector was abolished in 1990. Finnish instructors can be fired only for violating the strict ethical code set by the Ministry of Education. Noting that Finnish has no word for “accountability,” Sahlberg explains that “we put well-prepared teachers in the classroom, give them maximum autonomy, and we trust them to be responsible.”  

Home schooling is rare in Finland, and a small number faith-based schools are fully funded by the government.  The schools, however, must be accredited by the state and their teachers need an M.A. degree and a license from the Ministry of Education. 

Even though 4.2 million Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, only 76,000 attend church regularly.  Although most Europeans have entered a post-Christian era, a secular Judeo-Christian work ethic still motivates them.  The claim that strong family values can be achieved only on the basis of religious devotion has no foundation in fact.

Surprisingly, Finnish students have little homework and they have 44 percent fewer learning hours than American pupils. They have 600 annual class hours compared to 1,080 in the U.S. Finnish pupils have longer recess periods—75 minutes to 23 for Americans—and they have far more hours of crafts and music. They also have the lowest number of sports hours of any country in the European Union.

The best way to compare teacher salaries is to calculate their rank according to the other professions. As Samuel Abrams states: “Finnish high school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what their fellow university graduates do. In the United States, by contrast, they earn just 65 percent.” 

For the most of the 20th Century American young women were restricted to nursing and teaching, but as job opportunities widened, the brightest of them have now chosen much better paying positions in medicine, law, engineering, and science. 

In a thorough 244-page analysis of their students’ success, education specialists from the Finnish Ministry of Education drew on a famous statement of national character from the writer Väinö Linna: “In the beginning, there were the swamp, the mattock, and Jussi.” The authors explain: “This Jussi-principle is the Finnish way of studying and learning: we accept the pencil, and with a prepared mind and with a stable hand we can open any booklet and get good scores. And this was what we did!”  

America still has its own Jussi, and there is no reason why we, putting politics aside and learning from other nations, cannot improve the education of our children.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: FinnEd.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 192027 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20110722/d152ec64/attachment-0001.pdf