Finland's Success

Until recently, Finland was largely unknown; its lack of internationally renowned successes was nothing short of astonishing. Now, however, Finland has gained a new recognition through an international education test called PISA. PISA surveys the performance of 15 year olds on math, reading, and science. Finland has been in close competition with Singapore and South Korea, each of which have become known as intellectual powerhouses. The US, on the other hand, has rapidly declined. Clearly, the US has to pick up some new tactics and it won't be the stressful, exhaustive strategies of East Asian countries - not in a country that values autonomy so much - but the ideas of Finland don't fit in here either.

Finland's success is based in equity. Just a few decades before, Finland was suffering from a consistently failing school system but their focus was never excellence and never on the tests that Americans seem to prize so much. They wanted each student to get an equal education. In Finland, each school is the same as the others. Even on the college level, all schools are publicly funded. We, on the other hand, are leaning towards charter schools and seem intent on increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. If we did what we did at Townsend Harris and applied it to all other schools, thereby forcing all students to perform at this level, we might possibly gain knowledge, instead of a useless (though impressive) ability to memorize facts from a book.

An attempt at equity sounds quite in line with American standards, doesn't it? The Statue of Liberty says: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free." But this equity would be difficult in America precisely because of our emphasis on diversity. In fact, all of the countries at the top of the list are decidedly homogeneous. Diversity makes it difficult for us to equalize things -- older immigrant students find it difficult to learn English, lessons are usually taught in English unless it is an ESL class, ESL classes are almost always extremely large, etc. Then with diversity comes the problem of racism. Racism causes fear in students and may make them uncomfortable with going to school. Racism further depletes our resources.

The US focuses on competition but does not focus on its teachers -- in Finland, only the top 20% of education majors can become teachers. We can't say nearly the same; in fact, we treat our teachers as though becoming a teacher is a fruitless labor. Teaching should be left to teachers, instead of being used as a vehicle for politicians to boast. Competition forces everyone against each other but by working together, we stay on the same lines.

Diversity isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, minorities are generally towards the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. If we gave everyone the same education, minorities could enjoy a chance at equality educationally and career-wise, if not socially. Theoretically, the most troublesome problem would be teaching languages to students that didn't speak English quite at the level for that age. What's more difficult is the sense of competition we have. If we're not constantly looking at others, we can look introspectively into ourselves and see what is ailing the American system. Who is it that succeeds? Who is it that fails? After analyzing that and the reasons why for both questions, we can replicate the successes.