What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?
Capitalist Pig
American educators are trying to figure out why.
By ELLEN GAMERMAN
February 29, 2008; Page W1
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.
Finland's students are the brightest in the world, according to an
international test. Teachers say extra playtime is one reason for the
students' success. WSJ's Ellen Gamerman reports.
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.
Fanny Salo in class
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.
TESTING AROUND THE GLOBE
Every three years, 15-year-olds in 57 countries around the world take
a test called the Pisa exam, which measures proficiency in math,
science and reading.
* The test: Two sections from the Pisa science test
* Chart: Recent scores for participating countries
DISCUSS
Do you think any of these Finnish methods would work in U.S. schools?
What would you change -- if anything -- about the U.S. school system,
and the responsibilities that teachers, parents and students are
given? Share your thoughts.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.
Ymmersta school principal Hannele Frantsi
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.
At the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, school principal Helena Muilu
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.
Students at the Ymmersta School near Helsinki
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."
free....@gmail.com
wrote:
"Love of Reading" about says it all. You won't find that here. Don't
ask me why. I saw/see nothing odd about how I was taught as a
child ,but we were bombarded with reading comprehension self-tests.
Reading very very short stories and answering some straight forward
questions taken from the article. We had phonics classes and printed
before we wrote. I don't get it. What happened? We loved to read. I
could not wait to turn 13 and check out adult books in the public
library. We read for sheer fun. I can still remember Sister Patrick
telling us, that we should, on occasion ,grab a book beyond our
present level of reading, in order to stretch our abilities. And that
was a challenge to see if you really could.
Europeans learn 2 or 3 languages and read the newspapers and
are up on international news. Whereas our culture makes anything out
of the norm, McDonald's Myopic World, to be foreign, suspect and a
waste of our time, because obviously we are so superior to the rest of
the world. NOT! I do appreciate all the kids that plowed through the
Harry Potter books, because they were reading. I can remember all of
us as kids draped over chairs, lying on the floor, propped up in bed,
and talking about the books we read and then you 'wanted' to read that
same book too.
And then we wonder why we have to hire science and math teachers
from other countries? Want to buy a vowel and find out why?
Alvin E. Toda
Interesting articles. It's really hard to believe.
Maybe it's all the fish that the finns eat?
mg
On Mar 2, 3:47 pm, Capitalist Pig <cochon-capitali...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> parents worry about enrolling their ...
>
> read more »
Alvin E. Toda
> Free love and legalized prostitution, no rightards,
> athiesm.
Great, just great. They're really free in Finnland.
Capitalist Pig
> To answer the question in the subject. Good government, value
> education and do other things to enhance learning. But such starts at
> home. It is cultural
>
> The most significant element why they score so high.
>
> Ethnic groups: Finn 93%, Swede 6%, Lapp 0.11%, Gypsy 0.12%, Tatar
> 0.02%
>
> ---------------------------------------
>
> Why do they have good government, value education and such?
>
> Same answer:
>
> Ethnic groups: Finn 93%, Swede 6%, Lapp 0.11%, Gypsy 0.12%, Tatar
> 0.02%
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> But all is not rosy:
>
> Unemployment rate: 14.6% (1997 est.)
14% unemployment in 1997 ? 1997 was ELEVEN YEARS AGO!