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June 21, 2005
Schools and competitivness
While I'm on the topic of education (see yesterday's postings), here is a story on how Finland upgraded its education system as part of its drive for improved competitiveness.Washington Post, "Focus on Schools Helps Finns Build a Showcase Nation":
Superb schools symbolize the modern transformation of Finland, a poor and agrarian nation half a century ago, and today one of the world's most prosperous, modern and adaptable countries.
Finland finishes first in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exams that test 15-year-olds in all of the world's industrial democracies. Finland also finishes at or near the top in many global comparisons of economic competitiveness: Internet usage, environmental practices and more. Finland, where the modern cell phone was largely invented, has more cell phones per capita than any other nation -- nearly 85 per 100 citizens.
As recently as the 1970s, Finland required that children attend school for just six years and the education system here was nothing special. But new laws supported by substantial government spending created, in barely 20 years, a system that graduates nearly every young person from vocational or high school, and sends nearly half of them on to higher education. At every level, the schooling is rigorous, and free.
"The key," said Pekka Himanen, 31, a renowned scholar with a PhD in philosophy (earned at age 20) who is a kind of guru of information-age Finland, "isn't how much is invested, it's the people. The high quality of Finnish education depends on the high quality of Finnish teachers. You need to have a college-level degree to run a kindergarten. You need a master's-level degree to teach at a primary school. Many of the best students want to be teachers. This is linked to the fact that we really believe we live in an information age, so it is respected to be in such a key information profession as teaching."
That last point is especially important -- people make the difference. And, in contrast to the solutions that have been pushed in the US (computers and testing):
[Arabia Comprehensive School] includes the computer lab and two dozen laptops that students can check out for their own use. But there is no systematic teaching of information technology in the first nine grades -- no teaching even of typing, and many Finns use just two fingers on the keyboard. It's a good example of the non-compulsive Finnish approach to education.
Another is the general absence of testing. According to Karkkainen, the principal, apart from the PISA exams, her students face math tests at the end of fifth, eighth and ninth grades, and a test in chemistry and physics at the end of eighth grade. That's it. "And there are no bad consequences," for student or school, if the results are not good.
Interesting.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at June 21, 2005 8:12 AM
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