Why Finland has the best schools

I'm just curious if the progs can point to any country that's embraced diversity and has high test scores.

China's a diverse country, but 90% of the population lives on the East coast and are ethnic Han Chinese, and test scores are much higher near the East coast than the interior of the country. Not really a shining example of diversity here.

 

Your kidding right....

Saying the development "throughout someones life" is exactly that. You just chose to attack the little quim/joke at the end for some reason, which is definitely your prerogative I suppose.

But it is obvious what I wrote, and now you are coming close to being flat out untruthful

Poor kid

 

Give up. You lost. People stopped thinking like you decades ago. The Finish know that. No kid is hardwired to learn only one way.

 

Wow, do you realize how temper tantrum middle school of a tactic that is?

You completely lost the argument so tried to fall back on a medical term that you hoped I wouldn't have knowledge on. In other words you ran like a kid at a debate you had no part in being a part of.

Furthermore:

""Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity or neural plasticity, is an umbrella term that describes lasting change to the brain throughout an individual's life course. The term gained prominence in the latter half of the 20th century, when new research[1][2] showed that many aspects of the brain can be altered (or are "plastic") even into adulthood.[3] This notion is in contrast with the previous scientific consensus that the brain develops during a critical period in early childhood and then remains relatively unchanged (or "static").[4]""

So yes, the idea of neuroplasticity is that the brain continues to "hard wire" itself as you continue to age, exactly like I said "throughout a persons' life"

This medical idea, as can be seen above, displaced the old idea that we were already fully wired at a young age. This new idea has proven that experiences in life can continue to develop your brain (hard wire) "even to adulthood" (copied from above) based on your experiences (and injuries apparantly, so it says)

So not only did I bury you and prove you have no basis in being in a political conversation, I turned your pathetic "escape strategy" around on you in your attempt to use a term you obviously know little about. Astonishingly doing the previously thought impossible task of making you look even more foolish than before, I truly am impressed!

You have now lost twice, want to try for that third life?

 

No, actually the point is you can rewire your brain even in adulthood. Even in adulthood you can learn to learn in different ways. Let alone as a child.

You really need to enter the 21st century.

Clearly you have some serious problems, but every board has one or two like you.

 

Nope, fail, you look horrible.

Good game

 

Remember, neuroplasticity means it's never too late, not even for you.

 

One of mine loathes school, and he's highest achiever of all my kids. Nothing to do with whether they like school, it's about drive and motivation. The really motivated kids will see school as a means to an end, and don't see any necessity to 'like it'. It doesn't mean they won't, but liking it isn't essential to their success.

 

Then again part of the reason he may not like school is because he sees it as only a means to an end.

Lifting weights is a means to an end if you're a football player. But it can also be enjoyable. Learning can be a means to an end, and be enjoyable. Or at least not distasteful. Now some of it is unlikeable of course. But far from all of it.

 

Actually, just the opposite. People used to believe that the brain was a blank slate back until Chomsky arrived on the scene.

 

This is way beyond the blank slate debate, and are people born with a moral compass, the ability to develop langue, etc., or not.

 

Well, I don't know how far you've gone off track in this discussion, but I'm guessing you might want to backtrack a bit.

 

If you spend 8 hours being miserable, it will affect your grades. Perhaps your child could have performed even better if they actually enjoyed being at school

 

In your opinion.... it only tells me you have no understanding of how you can teach your kids the joy of learning

 

Well, I don't think we want to backtrack to Chomsky and the 1970s.

It became necessary to bring up neuroplasticity because a poster in here felt that only children from certain cultures could benefit from the Finish approach to education. Or, only a society that didn't have a great variety of children from different cultures. However, a child's mind in very adaptable. It has a high degree of plasticity to it. A child who is born to a nomadic tribe in the deserts of the ME, and a child who is born to WASP parents on the north shore of Massachusetts, both have highly elastic brains. They aren't anywhere near being hardwired to only pick up knowledge in one specific way. Further, as of late, we now understand that even adult brains have a significant amount of plasticity to them. Even at 60, or 70, you can purposely set out to beneficially rewire parts of your brain.

For example:

"Introduction
[1]. Mindfulness is cultivated in formal meditation practices, such as sitting meditation, walking meditation and mindful movements [2]. Mindfulness meditation has beneficial effects on a number of psychiatric, functional somatic, and stress-related symptoms and, therefore, has been increasingly incorporated into psychotherapeutic programs [2], [3].

[4].

[5]. Cross-sectional studies that compared mindfulness meditators and non-meditators found that meditators showed greater grey matter concentration in the hippocampus [6], [7]. In an examination of participants who underwent mindfulness-based stress reduction, structural changes in the hippocampus were detectable within a period of only 8 weeks [4]. In addition, the cumulative hours of meditation training have been positively correlated with grey matter concentration in the ventromedial PFC in experienced meditators [8]. Functional MRI studies found that individuals who had completed a mindfulness-based stress reduction course demonstrated increased insula activation when they focused on their momentary experience compared with individuals who had not practiced mindfulness [9]"

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058476

 

I believe he was referring to different IQs between the races, and he does have a point. Brains are like muscles in some ways, but they aren't made out of play-doh.

 

So a variance in IQ scores, between races, would nullify certain children from learning using the Finnish method? I don't see how. I don't think the system is based on IQ levels, but rather on setting up an encouraging learning environment.

 

An American Teacher's Thoughts on the Finnish Education System
By Guest Blogger on March 17, 2016 1:37 PM

...............snip........................


Trust
As we visited Finnish schools and met with Finnish educators, I saw some stark differences between their system and the American system. It must be noted that Finland is much smaller and more homogenous than the United States, and due to their social safety net, they do not have as much poverty. This, however, does not mean that American teachers should disregard any lessons we can learn from the Finns.

Surprisingly, the word "trust" was something we heard repeated so many times that it became an inside joke among our group. The Finnish education system is founded on the concept of trust, with a national curriculum much broader than Common Core or our state standards. When I first saw the Finnish standard: "Students will develop their reading and writing skills," I thought, 'how can one possibly measure this standard?' Measurement, however, is not the goal of the Finnish educational system according to the Finnish educators we spoke with.

They do not wish to gather data points for every student's success on a certain skill, they told us, because they trust their educators to know their students. They trust that, as a professional, teachers can track students learning through knowing them and their skills on a very deep level.

In my teaching experience, the state has very specific, detailed standards that are measured by the state end-of-course exam, which begets a system of implicit distrust. The standards and exams imply that the state does not trust districts to do an adequate job educating students and relies on the state test to ensure compliance. The district then provides mandatory benchmarks, implying that they do not trust that the students will have success on the state exam or that the principals can run their schools adequately. This results in the teachers being hounded by their principals over data analysis from the benchmarks.

The Finns eliminated the yearly standardized testing because they truly trust their educators to be effective. With a highly qualified, passionate teacher in every classroom, they do not have to obsess over data from 20 different exams. This, in turn, reduces teachers' stress levels and makes the teachers in Finland feel respected. The teachers, in turn are able to empower their students to succeed, regardless of performance on exams. Students who are not successful on traditional standardized tests can be celebrated for their strengths, rather than beat down for their weaknesses. This is what good teachers everywhere want to do, and in Finland they are able to do so effortlessly.

The Whole Child
The Finnish educational system focuses much more on the non-cognitive skills of their students, as opposed to the content knowledge. The attitude of America is much more competitive than Finland, and this is deeply ingrained in our culture. Teaching in Finland is not about creating the best students with the best SAT scores who know the most about history, physics, or algebra. It is about creating globally competent, critical thinkers who are ready to be successful in their post-graduation life. In my mind, the Finns grow their children as if they were plants in a garden. In order to produce well-rounded students, they focus on many disciplines that will help them become well-rounded adults.

Folklore is a mandatory class every year, because the Finns want their students to have imaginative thinking and a sense of national cultural identity. They have cooking class every year (for allstudents), because being able to cook and knowing about nutrition is essential to a happy, healthy adult life.

Finnish schools encourage unstructured playtime, inside and outside of the classroom. For every hour of class, the students are told to go outside and engage in physical play. Can you imagine how my administration might react if I said 25 percent of the school day should be playtime for my American high school students? This playtime not only enables students to focus, but it also allows them to "flex" their social skills and learn how to organically interact with their peers. This is starkly different from the limited American recess time and the organized, and often ultra-competitive team sports.

In Finland, the system is not set up for the kids to be the best, but to be the best version of themselves. Art and music have been proven to increase student performance and help engage students on an intellectual level, as well as an emotional level. In America however, the arts often take a backseat to more "rigorous" content courses. The Finns in contrast, are using this research to devote more time to the arts in the school, not less. This well-rounded outlook toward education allows teachers to nurture the students instead of focusing on a culminating success or failure at the end of the year.

Challenges
While the Finns have gotten a great deal of what they do right, it made me feel relieved to see that American schools are not behind in all aspects of education. In the U.S., there has been an increasing investment of time and money to prepare our students for the global market by teaching them how to use technology. Here, teachers go to trainings to learn the most innovative new ways to use laptops, discussion boards, and digital learning to engage their students. At my school, in which 93 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch, every student is issued a laptop. Teachers post e-books, the students do research, and they use digital tools to create interesting products for projects.

In comparison, the Finnish schools seem to be way behind in both access to technology and investment in training teachers in it. In the classrooms we visited, each had one teacher computer, no SmartBoard, no document camera, no flip cams, no iPads, all of which my school has had for years. The Finnish teachers make it work with what they have, but I can't help but think that the presence of technology in our schools is helping our students for their futures.

How I'm Changing as a Teacher
Overall, my trip abroad was an enlightening experience. I can honestly say it changed my outlook on my profession, and this school year has been exponentially less stressful for me. Not because my school changed or my students are smarter, but because I have changed. I rearranged my classroom to foster more cooperative learning and organic communication. I added more art and music to the environment of my classroom and in my lessons, which make the day more enjoyable for teacher and student alike.

Most importantly, I no longer stay up late worrying about and obsessing over data points for each of my 150 students. Data and test scores are not what inspired me to become a teacher. So I decided to not make it my obsession, and I am better for it. I am going back to focusing on what really matters, "growing" children into successful people, just like the Finns. And for that I am grateful.

Follow Shannon and Heather on Twitter.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/glob...thoughts_on_the_finnish_education_system.html

 

They don't really have a method, so much as an educational philosophy that everybody can learn. Their teachers are selected from the top 10% of university graduates, they all have masters degrees in education, small school with small classes, and a dogged determination to not leave any child behind. If one method doesn't work, they'll try another method.

I would love to see schools adopt that approach to education, but there are a lot of hurdles. The biggest hurdle being a lot of very sub-par teachers who really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a school. We'd have to fire at least 75% of them, fire the administrators, fire everybody in the department of education, tear down any school that has more than
200 students, and then wait 40 years.

As for the IQ thing, lower IQ in the 70-80 range generally results in violent behavior. There have been plenty of teachers who tried that whole "I'm going down to MLK high and teach those kids to be brain surgeons!" thang in the inner cities, but not a whole lot of success. There's nothing that can be done, that I'm aware of.

If anybody knows of a method to teach innercity black students, they're doing a very good job of hiding.

 

I agree with most of this.

I suspect that intercity kids would do very well under the Finnish system, or philosophy, as you want to call it. The problem is setting it up, then giving it time it would need to get off the ground.

BTW, 70-80 IQ range is very low. Are you sure about those numbers regarding a significant percentage of inner city kids? That's borderline functional.

 

Teachers in Finland may have bad salaries, but the profession is still highly regarded and therefore holds quite some authority. The status that the profession holds means less noisy and messy classrooms. It is more of a cultural question than anything and thus it is foolish to think American school can be fixed only by copying the Finnish system (Sweden is very similar in this regard and we suck at education). Reminds me of that recent proposal some "genius" here made, suggesting that Sweden should translate Chinese math-books in order to raise Swedish pupils' math results.

 

It's from memory when I was reading about the warrior gene. Yes, that is low, but Most of sub-sahara africa falls in that general area.

 

Baloney, schools are mostly run by left leaning people. It wasn't right wingers who stopped dodge ball, tag, or most other types of physical activity. It wasn't right wingers who are pushing sexual permissiveness on young children. Then there is our tort system which has stifled so much with groundless lawsuits. Schools have not been changing because of right wingers, you can put almost all the blame for the sorry state of our schools directly on the left.

BTW, aren't Japanese schools much more rigid than Finland or the US? Don't they do much better than us? Seems the school system still has to be compatible with the culture.

 

Scale as well, sir. What is workable within a fairly small relatively homogeneous culture with a small population may be something else within a far larger population with a far more diverse culture.

 

"The Sub-Saharan human brain is frequently maimed in gestation and early childhood, due to six post-conception horrors: disease, violence, malnutrition, pollution, poverty and illiteracy. Many of the cognitive cripplers that I listed in my previous essay, “Brain Damage: 83 factors that stupefy intelligence” are located in this underdeveloped region. Decent humans want to believe everyone remains equal in mental ability, no matter how disparate the environments. I appreciate this idealism, but it is anti-scientific and counter-productive to view our brains as impervious to outside harm."