June 5, 2013 • 26 mins
Finnish Ed: STEM education in the US has been on educators and policymakers' minds. One of the reasons is that the US has become far less competitive in terms of turning out a knowledge-based society. Could Finland hold the answer to raising a generation of science literate brainiacs? Stuff to Blow Your Mind travels to Finland (metaphorically) to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to blow your mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and m Julie Douglas. And
you know, we don't talk a lot about education on here,
but it's something that's that's always on our minds. I mean,
you as a parent, uh, me as a scene to
(00:23):
be parent and uh. And we're ultimately engaged in sharing
information with the world. We're a curiosity brand. We're about
discussing the science of of of the world most of
the time. And we've had the the privilege of working
with Discovery Education UM here and there to promote educational endeavors.
That's right. We actually worked with them on a STEM presentation.
(00:45):
This is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and STEM education.
The US has been on educators and policymakers minds for
for a while now, and one of the reasons is
that we've become far less competitive as a nation in
terms of knowledge based information. Right, that's kind of fallen
away from our society. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's
(01:05):
a sad story and one that I think everyone's absorbed
through the media that we're we're not doing as well
at all on our on our science and our math
and our physics, where we're getting pretty good, I guess
about you know, learning about the science of magical aspects
of the world and how with the latest pop singers doing.
But we're not We're not necessarily all that great when
(01:26):
it comes to science and math, right, And so we're
not going to try to actually, you know, take this
hon as a topic of why the United States is
failing in this area. Instead, we're gonna try to look
at a model that is working. And it's actually in Finland,
and uh and it is actually predicated on on this
idea that all children have a good, solid quality education.
(01:52):
And it's a very simple idea, right, It's not like, hey,
let's create superstars here. Let's not you know, get the
number one rankings the world. But lo and behold, they
have done that. So um as the United States is
one of the richest industrialized nations, you kind of have
to sit back and wonder why would our education system
lagged so far behind less prosperous countries with far less resources.
(02:15):
So we're gonna try to, you know, take on Finland,
see what they're doing, and tease out what what might
be at the bottom of all of this for the
United States and really the rest of the world. Now,
I know what some of you are wondering, and you know,
no no judgment, but some of you are probably wondering,
where is Finland exactly and what is it? Well? Uh,
Finland is a far north European country. It is Scandinavian
(02:40):
and it borders Russia. So if you can picture the
I guess you call it the Horn of Scandinavia, then
Finland is a nice vertical slice of that bordering Russia. Yeah,
it's one of the three fingers of that Nordic area.
In fact, I always think of it as the quieter
sister of Norway and Sweden. Yeah. And I have to
(03:01):
say that I don't know a ton about Norway, but
I do know it's the home of Nokia. Yes, and
I do know that Lapland that area of Finland is
home to Santa Claus Village. Yeah, this is the reindeer
camp that your your brother keeps trying to get. My
brother keeps saying like they're they have real reindeers. There's
a Santa Claus. You take these reindeer rides, and I
(03:22):
just keep thinking about on their backs. Their backs are
two weeks. Yeah, and there are elves and all of
that freaks me. No, but I mean, you know, they
go to great links to make this look as as
realistic as possible. That you know where Santa might live, right, Yeah,
well it's also troll country, so I would be very
(03:44):
concerned about that. I just keep thinking of the movie
Rare Exports. Yes, that was a finished movie. That was
a finishing which involves like these evils elves in this
crampus white creature. So whenever he brings it up, creature,
but crampus ish, I guess you could you could throw
some Crampus in there. YEA Crampus is like the anti Santa, right,
(04:06):
wonderful the scenes with a lot of old man natity
in it. That's great, great for the whole thing. Yeah.
So unfortunately that that's sort of like my baseline of Finland,
you know, in addigit the fact that it is the
home of like two thousand lakes, right, beautiful and very cold. Yeah,
I guess my main you know, I obviously I've never
(04:26):
been to Finland. Uh. I have a great deal respect
for their sauna culture. As as sana traditions fell out
of practice with the most of the rest of Europe,
Finland held onto it the most and it remains a
strong part of Finnish culture. If you if you're if
you live in Finland, if you're finished, you have a sauna,
or you make sure you have access to a sauna.
(04:48):
Even if you are in the army or in prison,
you will have a sauna because it is that important.
And I love a good sauna. I wish I had
time for more of them, or the office would finally
install man Um. I love a good sauna. The fins
love a good sauna, so I can't help but love
the Fins on that count. Also the Russo finished productions
(05:09):
of such films as Jack Frost as they were made
famous over here by Mry Sentence Fetter three thousand. I'm
a big fan of those. And then also they have
a rich folk tradition. You have some monsters such as
Yoka Heinen vast frost giant formed and primordial times from
the melting of giant icicles at the edge of the world,
and he lives in the far North. Um there are
(05:31):
the Mahas, which were earth dwellers, little people and guardian
spirits that live in the ground. And then this is
pretty cool too. There's a tonto, which is a household spirit,
and the way to get a Tonto was to make
a pack with the devil at a graveyard, okay, and
then this invites the Tonto back to your home, where
you make sure the tonto has access the spirit has
(05:52):
access to the best accommodations and a really nice seat
at the dinner table. And in return, the tanto enriches
your alse, generally at your neighbor's expense. So there you go. Well,
so that's so much better than living in Sweden and
just going to Ikea. Yeah, exactly, you can. You can
go to well, yeah you can. You can go to
Ikia where you can can here in Atlanta if you want.
(06:13):
But you know, as Ikeia had its beginnings in Sweden,
I say, hey, there you go, Sweden, you know, little
thumb of the knows there. I should also point out
that Finland is a parliamentary democracy, that's right, and get
that out. Yeah, And they had emerged to um hite
succeeds I believe from from from Soviet influence, and I
guess they're right up there. They're the neighbors, you know, exactly. Hello, Um,
(06:34):
so they really did try to remake their society, to
try to to hearken back to their rich folklore, their
rich tradition. They're rich history. And part of that is
of course rebuilding with a great education system. So when
we talk about Finland today and all that it has accomplished,
we're talking about something that has been in the making since,
(06:56):
uh the seventies. Really, so what have they done? Okay, Well,
they have ranked at or near the top in three
major international education studies since two thousand. We're talking neck
and neck with superachievers like South Korea and Singapore. So
the students in Finland have been, you know, in some
(07:16):
cases sort of outranking these other countries. And yet they're
not putting in nearly as many hours studying and preparing
as their counterparts in some Southeast Asian countries. So recently,
they scored first in science and second in reading in
math on the standardized test administered by the Program for
(07:37):
International Student Assessment, and this is conducted among industrial niche
industrialized nations every three years. And then in contrast, American
students finished twenty five in math, seventeen in science, and
twelve in reading on the latest UH PISA assessment. Yeah,
it's it's such a contrast between like U schools. Increasingly
(07:59):
it's all about these standardized tests. It's about prepping for
these tests, and it gets to where it has a
tendency to suck out a lot of the creativity that
goes into teaching a classroom. We my mom's a kindergarten teacher.
I even hear from her all the time, and you
generally think of the kindergarten classroom as a pretty open
and creative environment, but there's she's always talking about. I'll
(08:19):
ask about, oh, do you still do that thing with
the with the ublic or with the with this book
or that book or this art project, And there's so
many of those things you can't do anymore because they
have to make room for these tests. UM. I encountered
it just a little bit when I very briefly taught
high school. Uh, And you know, it's like a whole
part of the year ends up being just about prepping
for these tests, getting ready to take these standardized tests,
(08:41):
rehearsing for these standardized tests, and it becomes more about
um preparing yourself for a simulation of knowledge rather than
an actual understanding of knowledge, which is really specific, and
it's handed down from policymakers at a national level, which
is then interpreted at a state level. Some of the
problems that we continue to have in the system have
(09:03):
to do with no child left behind because again we're
talking about the stringent testing. Um, So trying to throw
off those shackles and again find more room for the
actual teaching and learning as opposed to as you say,
preparing is really important here. Well, you know, it comes
down to a very American way of dealing with problems.
You first thing you do, you have a meeting about it,
and then you have another meeting about it, and then uh,
(09:24):
and then if you reach it the bureaucracy level, then
you start making some mandates. And that includes all these
mandated tests. How many mandated tests does Finland have? Uh?
They have one at age sixteen, you enter at age seven,
and then at age sixteen you have one one mandatory test.
So already you can begin to see that this is
very contrary to what we do here in the United States. Um.
(09:48):
This is from and you partin in from Atlantic magazine. Uh.
She had said that when she spoke with Passy Salberg,
who wrote a book called finishal lessons what the world
can learn from educational change in Finland? That he said
that Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions. How can
you keep track of a student's performance if you don't
test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you
(10:11):
have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for
good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the
private sector? How do you provide school choice? Now, he says,
for finished educators, none of these questions are relevant, none
of them. And uh, we should take a quick break,
and when we get back, we'll get into why they're
(10:31):
not relevant Finland and and perhaps why this is part
of the reason they're so successful in academia. All right,
we're back. Just want to grow a more quick set
around here before we go into the land of Finland's um.
(10:54):
The two thousand and nine National Assessment of Educational Progress
found barely one third of fourth graders in the United
States were at or above the proficient level of science,
with those proportions slipping tot in eighth grade, in twenty
one in twelfth grade. What this means is that we
have a large population here, some of whom are going
(11:17):
to college and they're not actually prepared, particularly in the
area of science. So what does that spell out for
the future of science brainiacs here in the United States?
A little dim? Right? Meanwhile, in Finland, children are begin
setting outerbra geometry and statistics in the first grade. Yes,
and by age fifteen they tend to speak three languages.
(11:38):
Though that's not really that uncommon in Europe because you're
gonna have the local language. You got Russia right next door,
you got English kicking about so well. In the official
languages are Finnish and Swedish, so you can't really just
hang out which is Finnish language if you want to
hang out with the rest of the world, right, especially culturally. Right.
So Okay, we talked about this education reform happening in
(11:59):
the seven in these in the eighties and that finished,
policymakers wanted to really try to recast their education system
because they felt like that would bolster the entire country,
and they would do this by providing equity, by making
sure that each kid got a fair shot at a
good education. It was actually a pretty prescient move of them,
(12:19):
because I think that this put them on a track
to really compete globally because they realized they didn't have
much to be competitive with. They couldn't rely on manufacturing
or natural resources, and they instead had to invest in
a knowledge based society. Now what does that sound like today?
Very much like the United States, though we do have
American exceptionalism, right, don't we have? No? Well, maybe we
(12:40):
don't have that sometimes that I don't know about that.
So what does their school system look like? Percent of
the schools or public. Only a small number of independent
schools exists in Finland's that's three percent that are independent
or private, and they are all publicly financed. Finland offers
all pupil's free school and meals, easy access to healthcare
(13:02):
which is really important, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
So it's not just hey, we have a great education system.
They have everything in place to actually support uh, everything else. Right, Yeah,
and this family is really telling as well. The people
in the government agencies running these schools, they're there and
this goes from national offices to local authorities. They are educators.
(13:24):
They're not business people. They're not military leaders and not
career politicians. Um and uh. And every school has the
same national goals and draw from the same pool of
university trained educators. Yeah. It really is one of those
things where it's so homogenized, but it works. Right. The
homogeny here is quality. So if you have quality across
the board, then everybody gets the same education. Uh. And
(13:47):
that is where you began to see these numbers, these
incredible numbers. Fully of Finns graduate from high school. That's
seventeen point five points higher than American students. And stick see,
six percent are accepted to college and that's a higher
rate than the US in every European nation. And they
have a zero dropout right right, there's no there is
(14:09):
no Why would they drop out? Is sort of their idea, Okay,
because they're moving through this system and they're really learning
from it now, and all of this with significantly less homework. Yes,
that's true, that significantly less homework. Actually, don't I think
they have said that from from most of the reports
that we read in Smithsonian and Atlantic that at the
(14:30):
most maybe a half hour of homework. Yeah, because I mean,
I'm going to sound like you know, twelve year oldier,
but homework is ridiculous. It's kind of like, I mean, well,
why you spend all day there and then you have
to go home to supposedly learn the stuff that you
were doing during the day. That well, then half the
people or more aren't gonna do it. So yeah. Yeah.
The other thing is that, um, through throughout the school day,
(14:53):
especially for the younger children, they have like forty five
minutes of school and then fifteen minutes of play. Forty
five minutes of school, fifteen minutes played throughout today, so
you do get those mental breaks. And we've talked about
this before how important it is to be able to
sort of take that break so that your brain can
absorb the information. So they're certainly doing it the right way. Um. Okay,
So some people might say, well, I think this is
(15:14):
super expensive. Well, okay, here's the big news here. Finland
spends about thirty percent less per student than the US
does to achieve which is obviously far superior results. Let's
talk about the teachers. Who are these who are these
these cogs in the system that are making making this work,
because they're more than just cogs for starters, We're talking
about highly educated people university degrees and then they have
(15:38):
a remarkable amount of freedom and how they educate their classroom.
I've I've heard it. You know, they're not having to
worry about about sticking to some sort of rigid, standardized
curriculum all the time, and they're able to creatively engage
the students. Right. So, at the the national level level,
or by UH, I should say, the education ministry, they say, okay,
(15:59):
when it comes to math, here are ten pages of
things that we want you guys to cover and make
sure um kids are learning now that is and start
contrast to like hundreds of pages that are usually handed
down by education systems, and by the time it gets
to that particular school or that teacher, they still are
allowed to have a bit of interpretation of what that
means and flexibility and how they teach it. How is
(16:23):
a really big part of this, right, So you have
a centralized government that is helping to structure it, but
they are giving uh teachers that that leeway. Yeah, I
mean it also gives them the ability to look at
the classroom and say, how am I gonna engage this
group of people, Like, what is what is going to
engage them? Is it going to be reading the Great Gasbee?
(16:43):
Probably not? All right? Right? And here's another thing, Um,
some people might say, oh, they must be getting paid,
you know, an amount that we just couldn't do here
in the United States. Well finished teachers starting salaries are
lower than in the US, but high school teachers with
fifteen years experience make one two percent of what other
college graduates make in the US. UH the figure is
(17:04):
six of that. So eventually, over time, finished teachers are
paid more than UH United States teachers. But still, um,
they're not too off in terms of the payment. What
the big story here is is that teachers in Finland
are regarded very highly. And um. This is from The Atlantic,
(17:27):
the article why are Finland Schools so successful? It says
the critical decision came in ninety nine when reformers required
that every teacher earned a fifth year master's degree in
theory and practice at one of the eight state universities,
which are free, by the way, at state expense. So
they did at state's expense. From then on, teachers were
effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers, and applicants
(17:48):
began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high,
because we know they aren't, but because autonomy and respect
made the job attractive. In two thousand and tends some
sixty applicants vibe for six hundred and sixty primary school
training slots. So we're talking about here is really passionate
people who you know, they get to occupy the status
(18:11):
as molders of um, you know, the future of Finland.
And I don't mean to disparage any teachers in United States,
because there's so many wonderful passionate teachers, UM. But there
are also a lot of people who could also be
wonderful passionate teachers, but they don't because when you look
at being a teacher here in the United States, UM,
(18:32):
it's just not as as highly positioned as other things,
right correct. Um. You know, Also, when I was looking
around at various articles and blog posts about this, you
inevitably encounter somebody talking about, oh, what's it's a socialist system, socialism,
and especially in the United States that the term socialism
(18:54):
is often thrown about without any real understanding of what
it means. But I find it interesting that um Clark
Howard uh was a local, uh well not a local
you can hear all over the country, but based in Atlanta.
Generally he's about, you know, finding cheap ways to live
your life for more economically feasible ways to live your life,
that sort of thing. He's a big fan of the
(19:14):
Finland system and he actually compares it compares the teacher's
freedom in the classroom to their approach to the way
an entrepreneur would treat a business. Lots of ability, you know,
on the field in the classroom, doing what's best for
this environment and making it as as you know, great
a classroom as possible. You know, what's really cool too,
(19:36):
is that the teachers do individual assessments of the children
throughout the year. So again there's no big test, but
what they're doing when they do that is they're looking
at the strength and the weaknesses of that one child
and then they're figuring out, well, okay, this kid might
need more support here in math or reading or so
on and so forth, and creating a curriculum that is
geared just for that child. Right, um, so, and now
(20:00):
away you do have the homogeneous everybody gets a quality,
high quality education. But at the same time you get
that everybody gets the support that they need to access
that information and to learn it, which is really key. Yeah,
and you know a lot of the reason that they
can do that is that they spend fewer hours at
school each day, and they spend less time in the
(20:20):
classrooms than American teachers, and they use the extra time
to build those curriculums and assess their students. So again
they're not hamstrung by all of these different uh bits
of standardized testing that are handed down. That being said,
American schools, at least you've got good football programs. So
(20:41):
there's always that now, But the hope here is it's not.
You know, the whole reason we did the spot podcast
was not to be a little American education. Um. I mean,
certainly we're both products of American education. I'm a product
of public schools, um for better and worse. But but
but but no, we we want to point out that
that this is a system that a lot of people
(21:02):
are looking at and they're saying, there's stuff we can
learn from here. There's this is not something just some
sort of a foreign model that doesn't mesh with our
culture or our system. We could easily adopt some of
these same principles, apply them to our own educational system,
and years from now we could be the success story
that we've had. So many of us feel entitled to
well that'll be the interesting thing to see Finland in
(21:24):
twenty years because already, you know, their quality of life
is pretty high, their economy is doing, you know, fairly well,
and then they have this education system to boot support
all of the rest of it. So you know, in
twenty years will they be a major player. I don't know,
but some people will look at this and say, well,
you know, they're a smaller country and it's much more feasible.
(21:45):
Well so are their counterparts, Norway and Sweden, and they
still with their system, they best them in terms of,
you know, how their students are performing. And if you
look at the United States, most of the school systems
are stay run and you have at least eighteen states
that have the same population as Finland. So there are
(22:06):
certainly opportunities to to test this model out to see
to what extent it could be used. But of course
those takeaways aren't that, you know, we need to have
three years of maternity leave in place in order to
be successful, which is not as a country going to
get to that point yet. Right, there are basic things
that Finland has that we won't. But again, this idea
(22:28):
of UM raising the profile teachers and having good quality
for every single child. Well, that's the whole theory of
you know, when waters rise, all all boats rise, right,
um and again, and I want to harken back to
what you said to like, we're not trying to take
on the American education system. That's a huge, huge topic
and it's far more complex and nuanced than we've touched
(22:50):
on here. Um. But I do think that you know,
a sense of pride in America and um and wanting
it to be a vital contributor to the rest of
the World's really important to have an education system in
place that can make sure that everybody plays together on
a global scale. Yeah. Now to your point about to
what extent of Finland may be you know, a major
(23:12):
player in in the future. It is again worth the
pointing out that it is apparently home to Santa, who
was already a major global player. We don't have Santa.
What are we gonna do for me? You know, we
don't have Lapland And if holding them back, it's just
probably that that massive troll problem they have exactly that.
And um, well I depression because of those extremely long
(23:34):
days of darkness. Yeah, but you know, you just buy
a lamp, then you're good, that's true. Lamp At. A
study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which was highlighted
by John Metca for Atlantic Cities, points out that there
are a couple of barriers the decent STEM education in
the US. I just want to take them off real quick,
something for us all to ponder. The first is a
(23:55):
persistent reluctance to embrace the theory of evolution. In states
like Ury and Tennessee, learning about Darwin's theory of natural
selection is still voluntary in schools um And recently there
was a news item, by the way, that came out
about UM kids who were taught to creationism and they're
really poor science UM skills. Well that's not surprising at all, right,
(24:17):
uh So, and uh let me said a cath says,
says many standards also in events, a remarkable vagueness in
the goals that they hope to achieve. And math instruction
is lacking in many jurisdictions, and teachers don't have enough
guidance when it comes to building science instruction into their
lesson plans. So again, the support system isn't quite there,
(24:38):
all right, So there you have it. Uh again, we
just wanted to provide some information about this finished system
that a lot of people were talking about. UM. Certainly,
do some Google searches, you'll find most of these the
documents we're talking about. There are a lot of news
stories without there a lot of blogs discussing the various
aspects of this that could be applied to the U
S system. Uh. In the meantime, we would love to
(25:00):
hear from any teachers out there. Uh. You could be
American teachers, maybe your Finish teachers, anyone who has actual
firsthand experience with the Finnish system. That would be great
to hear from you to get your two cents on
all this. Uh. Oh, and I did want to just
just to underline it, um, my cat and lamp solution
to depression. I'm only talking about seasonal effective disorder, and
I'm doing so right kind of flippantly. Uh, But not
(25:23):
to get into the much deeper subject of depression, which
we may may discussed in the future podcast. Indeed, that
is for another topic. And UM, yeah, we would love
to hear from you guys. And I also would love
to hear any success stories as a student or a teacher, um,
And what sort of models you may have experience that
works for because I think this is really honestly a
fascinating topic. You can't say that we're not all interested
(25:47):
in some level. We all support good education, right yeah, yeah,
I mean it would be madness, not too so. How
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(26:07):
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(26:28):
free to drop a line. You can do so at
below the Mind at discovery dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff
Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to blow your mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and m Julie Douglas. And
you know, we don't talk a lot about education on here,
but it's something that's that's always on our minds. I mean,
you as a parent, uh, me as a scene to
(00:23):
be parent and uh. And we're ultimately engaged in sharing
information with the world. We're a curiosity brand. We're about
discussing the science of of of the world most of
the time. And we've had the the privilege of working
with Discovery Education UM here and there to promote educational endeavors.
That's right. We actually worked with them on a STEM presentation.
(00:45):
This is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and STEM education.
The US has been on educators and policymakers minds for
for a while now, and one of the reasons is
that we've become far less competitive as a nation in
terms of knowledge based information. Right, that's kind of fallen
away from our society. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's
(01:05):
a sad story and one that I think everyone's absorbed
through the media that we're we're not doing as well
at all on our on our science and our math
and our physics, where we're getting pretty good, I guess
about you know, learning about the science of magical aspects
of the world and how with the latest pop singers doing.
But we're not We're not necessarily all that great when
(01:26):
it comes to science and math, right, And so we're
not going to try to actually, you know, take this
hon as a topic of why the United States is
failing in this area. Instead, we're gonna try to look
at a model that is working. And it's actually in Finland,
and uh and it is actually predicated on on this
idea that all children have a good, solid quality education.
(01:52):
And it's a very simple idea, right, It's not like, hey,
let's create superstars here. Let's not you know, get the
number one rankings the world. But lo and behold, they
have done that. So um as the United States is
one of the richest industrialized nations, you kind of have
to sit back and wonder why would our education system
lagged so far behind less prosperous countries with far less resources.
(02:15):
So we're gonna try to, you know, take on Finland,
see what they're doing, and tease out what what might
be at the bottom of all of this for the
United States and really the rest of the world. Now,
I know what some of you are wondering, and you know,
no no judgment, but some of you are probably wondering,
where is Finland exactly and what is it? Well? Uh,
Finland is a far north European country. It is Scandinavian
(02:40):
and it borders Russia. So if you can picture the
I guess you call it the Horn of Scandinavia, then
Finland is a nice vertical slice of that bordering Russia. Yeah,
it's one of the three fingers of that Nordic area.
In fact, I always think of it as the quieter
sister of Norway and Sweden. Yeah. And I have to
(03:01):
say that I don't know a ton about Norway, but
I do know it's the home of Nokia. Yes, and
I do know that Lapland that area of Finland is
home to Santa Claus Village. Yeah, this is the reindeer
camp that your your brother keeps trying to get. My
brother keeps saying like they're they have real reindeers. There's
a Santa Claus. You take these reindeer rides, and I
(03:22):
just keep thinking about on their backs. Their backs are
two weeks. Yeah, and there are elves and all of
that freaks me. No, but I mean, you know, they
go to great links to make this look as as
realistic as possible. That you know where Santa might live, right, Yeah,
well it's also troll country, so I would be very
(03:44):
concerned about that. I just keep thinking of the movie
Rare Exports. Yes, that was a finished movie. That was
a finishing which involves like these evils elves in this
crampus white creature. So whenever he brings it up, creature,
but crampus ish, I guess you could you could throw
some Crampus in there. YEA Crampus is like the anti Santa, right,
(04:06):
wonderful the scenes with a lot of old man natity
in it. That's great, great for the whole thing. Yeah.
So unfortunately that that's sort of like my baseline of Finland,
you know, in addigit the fact that it is the
home of like two thousand lakes, right, beautiful and very cold. Yeah,
I guess my main you know, I obviously I've never
(04:26):
been to Finland. Uh. I have a great deal respect
for their sauna culture. As as sana traditions fell out
of practice with the most of the rest of Europe,
Finland held onto it the most and it remains a
strong part of Finnish culture. If you if you're if
you live in Finland, if you're finished, you have a sauna,
or you make sure you have access to a sauna.
(04:48):
Even if you are in the army or in prison,
you will have a sauna because it is that important.
And I love a good sauna. I wish I had
time for more of them, or the office would finally
install man Um. I love a good sauna. The fins
love a good sauna, so I can't help but love
the Fins on that count. Also the Russo finished productions
(05:09):
of such films as Jack Frost as they were made
famous over here by Mry Sentence Fetter three thousand. I'm
a big fan of those. And then also they have
a rich folk tradition. You have some monsters such as
Yoka Heinen vast frost giant formed and primordial times from
the melting of giant icicles at the edge of the world,
and he lives in the far North. Um there are
(05:31):
the Mahas, which were earth dwellers, little people and guardian
spirits that live in the ground. And then this is
pretty cool too. There's a tonto, which is a household spirit,
and the way to get a Tonto was to make
a pack with the devil at a graveyard, okay, and
then this invites the Tonto back to your home, where
you make sure the tonto has access the spirit has
(05:52):
access to the best accommodations and a really nice seat
at the dinner table. And in return, the tanto enriches
your alse, generally at your neighbor's expense. So there you go. Well,
so that's so much better than living in Sweden and
just going to Ikea. Yeah, exactly, you can. You can
go to well, yeah you can. You can go to
Ikia where you can can here in Atlanta if you want.
(06:13):
But you know, as Ikeia had its beginnings in Sweden,
I say, hey, there you go, Sweden, you know, little
thumb of the knows there. I should also point out
that Finland is a parliamentary democracy, that's right, and get
that out. Yeah, And they had emerged to um hite
succeeds I believe from from from Soviet influence, and I
guess they're right up there. They're the neighbors, you know, exactly. Hello, Um,
(06:34):
so they really did try to remake their society, to
try to to hearken back to their rich folklore, their
rich tradition. They're rich history. And part of that is
of course rebuilding with a great education system. So when
we talk about Finland today and all that it has accomplished,
we're talking about something that has been in the making since,
(06:56):
uh the seventies. Really, so what have they done? Okay, Well,
they have ranked at or near the top in three
major international education studies since two thousand. We're talking neck
and neck with superachievers like South Korea and Singapore. So
the students in Finland have been, you know, in some
(07:16):
cases sort of outranking these other countries. And yet they're
not putting in nearly as many hours studying and preparing
as their counterparts in some Southeast Asian countries. So recently,
they scored first in science and second in reading in
math on the standardized test administered by the Program for
(07:37):
International Student Assessment, and this is conducted among industrial niche
industrialized nations every three years. And then in contrast, American
students finished twenty five in math, seventeen in science, and
twelve in reading on the latest UH PISA assessment. Yeah,
it's it's such a contrast between like U schools. Increasingly
(07:59):
it's all about these standardized tests. It's about prepping for
these tests, and it gets to where it has a
tendency to suck out a lot of the creativity that
goes into teaching a classroom. We my mom's a kindergarten teacher.
I even hear from her all the time, and you
generally think of the kindergarten classroom as a pretty open
and creative environment, but there's she's always talking about. I'll
(08:19):
ask about, oh, do you still do that thing with
the with the ublic or with the with this book
or that book or this art project, And there's so
many of those things you can't do anymore because they
have to make room for these tests. UM. I encountered
it just a little bit when I very briefly taught
high school. Uh, And you know, it's like a whole
part of the year ends up being just about prepping
for these tests, getting ready to take these standardized tests,
(08:41):
rehearsing for these standardized tests, and it becomes more about
um preparing yourself for a simulation of knowledge rather than
an actual understanding of knowledge, which is really specific, and
it's handed down from policymakers at a national level, which
is then interpreted at a state level. Some of the
problems that we continue to have in the system have
(09:03):
to do with no child left behind because again we're
talking about the stringent testing. Um, So trying to throw
off those shackles and again find more room for the
actual teaching and learning as opposed to as you say,
preparing is really important here. Well, you know, it comes
down to a very American way of dealing with problems.
You first thing you do, you have a meeting about it,
and then you have another meeting about it, and then uh,
(09:24):
and then if you reach it the bureaucracy level, then
you start making some mandates. And that includes all these
mandated tests. How many mandated tests does Finland have? Uh?
They have one at age sixteen, you enter at age seven,
and then at age sixteen you have one one mandatory test.
So already you can begin to see that this is
very contrary to what we do here in the United States. Um.
(09:48):
This is from and you partin in from Atlantic magazine. Uh.
She had said that when she spoke with Passy Salberg,
who wrote a book called finishal lessons what the world
can learn from educational change in Finland? That he said
that Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions. How can
you keep track of a student's performance if you don't
test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you
(10:11):
have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for
good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the
private sector? How do you provide school choice? Now, he says,
for finished educators, none of these questions are relevant, none
of them. And uh, we should take a quick break,
and when we get back, we'll get into why they're
(10:31):
not relevant Finland and and perhaps why this is part
of the reason they're so successful in academia. All right,
we're back. Just want to grow a more quick set
around here before we go into the land of Finland's um.
(10:54):
The two thousand and nine National Assessment of Educational Progress
found barely one third of fourth graders in the United
States were at or above the proficient level of science,
with those proportions slipping tot in eighth grade, in twenty
one in twelfth grade. What this means is that we
have a large population here, some of whom are going
(11:17):
to college and they're not actually prepared, particularly in the
area of science. So what does that spell out for
the future of science brainiacs here in the United States?
A little dim? Right? Meanwhile, in Finland, children are begin
setting outerbra geometry and statistics in the first grade. Yes,
and by age fifteen they tend to speak three languages.
(11:38):
Though that's not really that uncommon in Europe because you're
gonna have the local language. You got Russia right next door,
you got English kicking about so well. In the official
languages are Finnish and Swedish, so you can't really just
hang out which is Finnish language if you want to
hang out with the rest of the world, right, especially culturally. Right.
So Okay, we talked about this education reform happening in
(11:59):
the seven in these in the eighties and that finished,
policymakers wanted to really try to recast their education system
because they felt like that would bolster the entire country,
and they would do this by providing equity, by making
sure that each kid got a fair shot at a
good education. It was actually a pretty prescient move of them,
(12:19):
because I think that this put them on a track
to really compete globally because they realized they didn't have
much to be competitive with. They couldn't rely on manufacturing
or natural resources, and they instead had to invest in
a knowledge based society. Now what does that sound like today?
Very much like the United States, though we do have
American exceptionalism, right, don't we have? No? Well, maybe we
(12:40):
don't have that sometimes that I don't know about that.
So what does their school system look like? Percent of
the schools or public. Only a small number of independent
schools exists in Finland's that's three percent that are independent
or private, and they are all publicly financed. Finland offers
all pupil's free school and meals, easy access to healthcare
(13:02):
which is really important, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
So it's not just hey, we have a great education system.
They have everything in place to actually support uh, everything else. Right, Yeah,
and this family is really telling as well. The people
in the government agencies running these schools, they're there and
this goes from national offices to local authorities. They are educators.
(13:24):
They're not business people. They're not military leaders and not
career politicians. Um and uh. And every school has the
same national goals and draw from the same pool of
university trained educators. Yeah. It really is one of those
things where it's so homogenized, but it works. Right. The
homogeny here is quality. So if you have quality across
the board, then everybody gets the same education. Uh. And
(13:47):
that is where you began to see these numbers, these
incredible numbers. Fully of Finns graduate from high school. That's
seventeen point five points higher than American students. And stick see,
six percent are accepted to college and that's a higher
rate than the US in every European nation. And they
have a zero dropout right right, there's no there is
(14:09):
no Why would they drop out? Is sort of their idea, Okay,
because they're moving through this system and they're really learning
from it now, and all of this with significantly less homework. Yes,
that's true, that significantly less homework. Actually, don't I think
they have said that from from most of the reports
that we read in Smithsonian and Atlantic that at the
(14:30):
most maybe a half hour of homework. Yeah, because I mean,
I'm going to sound like you know, twelve year oldier,
but homework is ridiculous. It's kind of like, I mean, well,
why you spend all day there and then you have
to go home to supposedly learn the stuff that you
were doing during the day. That well, then half the
people or more aren't gonna do it. So yeah. Yeah.
The other thing is that, um, through throughout the school day,
(14:53):
especially for the younger children, they have like forty five
minutes of school and then fifteen minutes of play. Forty
five minutes of school, fifteen minutes played throughout today, so
you do get those mental breaks. And we've talked about
this before how important it is to be able to
sort of take that break so that your brain can
absorb the information. So they're certainly doing it the right way. Um. Okay,
So some people might say, well, I think this is
(15:14):
super expensive. Well, okay, here's the big news here. Finland
spends about thirty percent less per student than the US
does to achieve which is obviously far superior results. Let's
talk about the teachers. Who are these who are these
these cogs in the system that are making making this work,
because they're more than just cogs for starters, We're talking
about highly educated people university degrees and then they have
(15:38):
a remarkable amount of freedom and how they educate their classroom.
I've I've heard it. You know, they're not having to
worry about about sticking to some sort of rigid, standardized
curriculum all the time, and they're able to creatively engage
the students. Right. So, at the the national level level,
or by UH, I should say, the education ministry, they say, okay,
(15:59):
when it comes to math, here are ten pages of
things that we want you guys to cover and make
sure um kids are learning now that is and start
contrast to like hundreds of pages that are usually handed
down by education systems, and by the time it gets
to that particular school or that teacher, they still are
allowed to have a bit of interpretation of what that
means and flexibility and how they teach it. How is
(16:23):
a really big part of this, right, So you have
a centralized government that is helping to structure it, but
they are giving uh teachers that that leeway. Yeah, I
mean it also gives them the ability to look at
the classroom and say, how am I gonna engage this
group of people, Like, what is what is going to
engage them? Is it going to be reading the Great Gasbee?
(16:43):
Probably not? All right? Right? And here's another thing, Um,
some people might say, oh, they must be getting paid,
you know, an amount that we just couldn't do here
in the United States. Well finished teachers starting salaries are
lower than in the US, but high school teachers with
fifteen years experience make one two percent of what other
college graduates make in the US. UH the figure is
(17:04):
six of that. So eventually, over time, finished teachers are
paid more than UH United States teachers. But still, um,
they're not too off in terms of the payment. What
the big story here is is that teachers in Finland
are regarded very highly. And um. This is from The Atlantic,
(17:27):
the article why are Finland Schools so successful? It says
the critical decision came in ninety nine when reformers required
that every teacher earned a fifth year master's degree in
theory and practice at one of the eight state universities,
which are free, by the way, at state expense. So
they did at state's expense. From then on, teachers were
effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers, and applicants
(17:48):
began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high,
because we know they aren't, but because autonomy and respect
made the job attractive. In two thousand and tends some
sixty applicants vibe for six hundred and sixty primary school
training slots. So we're talking about here is really passionate
people who you know, they get to occupy the status
(18:11):
as molders of um, you know, the future of Finland.
And I don't mean to disparage any teachers in United States,
because there's so many wonderful passionate teachers, UM. But there
are also a lot of people who could also be
wonderful passionate teachers, but they don't because when you look
at being a teacher here in the United States, UM,
(18:32):
it's just not as as highly positioned as other things,
right correct. Um. You know, Also, when I was looking
around at various articles and blog posts about this, you
inevitably encounter somebody talking about, oh, what's it's a socialist system, socialism,
and especially in the United States that the term socialism
(18:54):
is often thrown about without any real understanding of what
it means. But I find it interesting that um Clark
Howard uh was a local, uh well not a local
you can hear all over the country, but based in Atlanta.
Generally he's about, you know, finding cheap ways to live
your life for more economically feasible ways to live your life,
that sort of thing. He's a big fan of the
(19:14):
Finland system and he actually compares it compares the teacher's
freedom in the classroom to their approach to the way
an entrepreneur would treat a business. Lots of ability, you know,
on the field in the classroom, doing what's best for
this environment and making it as as you know, great
a classroom as possible. You know, what's really cool too,
(19:36):
is that the teachers do individual assessments of the children
throughout the year. So again there's no big test, but
what they're doing when they do that is they're looking
at the strength and the weaknesses of that one child
and then they're figuring out, well, okay, this kid might
need more support here in math or reading or so
on and so forth, and creating a curriculum that is
geared just for that child. Right, um, so, and now
(20:00):
away you do have the homogeneous everybody gets a quality,
high quality education. But at the same time you get
that everybody gets the support that they need to access
that information and to learn it, which is really key. Yeah,
and you know a lot of the reason that they
can do that is that they spend fewer hours at
school each day, and they spend less time in the
(20:20):
classrooms than American teachers, and they use the extra time
to build those curriculums and assess their students. So again
they're not hamstrung by all of these different uh bits
of standardized testing that are handed down. That being said,
American schools, at least you've got good football programs. So
(20:41):
there's always that now, But the hope here is it's not.
You know, the whole reason we did the spot podcast
was not to be a little American education. Um. I mean,
certainly we're both products of American education. I'm a product
of public schools, um for better and worse. But but
but but no, we we want to point out that
that this is a system that a lot of people
(21:02):
are looking at and they're saying, there's stuff we can
learn from here. There's this is not something just some
sort of a foreign model that doesn't mesh with our
culture or our system. We could easily adopt some of
these same principles, apply them to our own educational system,
and years from now we could be the success story
that we've had. So many of us feel entitled to
well that'll be the interesting thing to see Finland in
(21:24):
twenty years because already, you know, their quality of life
is pretty high, their economy is doing, you know, fairly well,
and then they have this education system to boot support
all of the rest of it. So you know, in
twenty years will they be a major player. I don't know,
but some people will look at this and say, well,
you know, they're a smaller country and it's much more feasible.
(21:45):
Well so are their counterparts, Norway and Sweden, and they
still with their system, they best them in terms of,
you know, how their students are performing. And if you
look at the United States, most of the school systems
are stay run and you have at least eighteen states
that have the same population as Finland. So there are
(22:06):
certainly opportunities to to test this model out to see
to what extent it could be used. But of course
those takeaways aren't that, you know, we need to have
three years of maternity leave in place in order to
be successful, which is not as a country going to
get to that point yet. Right, there are basic things
that Finland has that we won't. But again, this idea
(22:28):
of UM raising the profile teachers and having good quality
for every single child. Well, that's the whole theory of
you know, when waters rise, all all boats rise, right,
um and again, and I want to harken back to
what you said to like, we're not trying to take
on the American education system. That's a huge, huge topic
and it's far more complex and nuanced than we've touched
(22:50):
on here. Um. But I do think that you know,
a sense of pride in America and um and wanting
it to be a vital contributor to the rest of
the World's really important to have an education system in
place that can make sure that everybody plays together on
a global scale. Yeah. Now to your point about to
what extent of Finland may be you know, a major
(23:12):
player in in the future. It is again worth the
pointing out that it is apparently home to Santa, who
was already a major global player. We don't have Santa.
What are we gonna do for me? You know, we
don't have Lapland And if holding them back, it's just
probably that that massive troll problem they have exactly that.
And um, well I depression because of those extremely long
(23:34):
days of darkness. Yeah, but you know, you just buy
a lamp, then you're good, that's true. Lamp At. A
study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which was highlighted
by John Metca for Atlantic Cities, points out that there
are a couple of barriers the decent STEM education in
the US. I just want to take them off real quick,
something for us all to ponder. The first is a
(23:55):
persistent reluctance to embrace the theory of evolution. In states
like Ury and Tennessee, learning about Darwin's theory of natural
selection is still voluntary in schools um And recently there
was a news item, by the way, that came out
about UM kids who were taught to creationism and they're
really poor science UM skills. Well that's not surprising at all, right,
(24:17):
uh So, and uh let me said a cath says,
says many standards also in events, a remarkable vagueness in
the goals that they hope to achieve. And math instruction
is lacking in many jurisdictions, and teachers don't have enough
guidance when it comes to building science instruction into their
lesson plans. So again, the support system isn't quite there,
(24:38):
all right, So there you have it. Uh again, we
just wanted to provide some information about this finished system
that a lot of people were talking about. UM. Certainly,
do some Google searches, you'll find most of these the
documents we're talking about. There are a lot of news
stories without there a lot of blogs discussing the various
aspects of this that could be applied to the U
S system. Uh. In the meantime, we would love to
(25:00):
hear from any teachers out there. Uh. You could be
American teachers, maybe your Finish teachers, anyone who has actual
firsthand experience with the Finnish system. That would be great
to hear from you to get your two cents on
all this. Uh. Oh, and I did want to just
just to underline it, um, my cat and lamp solution
to depression. I'm only talking about seasonal effective disorder, and
I'm doing so right kind of flippantly. Uh, But not
(25:23):
to get into the much deeper subject of depression, which
we may may discussed in the future podcast. Indeed, that
is for another topic. And UM, yeah, we would love
to hear from you guys. And I also would love
to hear any success stories as a student or a teacher, um,
And what sort of models you may have experience that
works for because I think this is really honestly a
fascinating topic. You can't say that we're not all interested
(25:47):
in some level. We all support good education, right yeah, yeah,
I mean it would be madness, not too so. How
you can how you can find us, how you can
get in touch with us, How you can see what
we're up to, various blogs, podcasts, eos, holograms, whatever we're
doing in the weeks ahead. You can find us at
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is the mothership,
(26:07):
that is where all content begins or ends. It's the
center of our universe. And uh, you can also find
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let us know that you are out there and feel
(26:28):
free to drop a line. You can do so at
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