Our education system could get a boost by copying Finland

Well we need to get up to speed. That's why we need to pay teachers more in the first place. Teaching needs to be a very highly specialized profession. The training for teachers needs to be at least as rigorous at that for doctors. We need our very best in this profession. We need people who are devoted to the cultivation of knowledge. We need people who are convinced that the proliferation of knowledge throughout human society is the most important activity. We need people who have realized and understand that the cultivation of qualities like humility, respect for others, cleanliness, tolerance, and love of humanity, are the foundation of human civilization and indeed are what distinguishes human society from animal society. That's what we need.

 

Teachers are the tools that place the blocks, which form the foundation of human civilization, into place. As such, the teaching profession should be held in the highest esteem. It should be protected with the utmost vigilance, nurtured with the utmost care, and deemed to be human society's most precious asset. Teachers should be highly respected and should be facilitated properly to weld power to guide human society.

 

Instead of giving power to humble, tolerant, people who are devoted to the cultivation of knowledge, we give it to greedy, arrogant, people who only care about making money. Indeed such persons will do any abominable thing to increase their wealth. Then we wonder why there are so many problems in the world today.

 

They have to upgrade themselves and the profession first. Can't teach the way they have been and expect extreme respect.

 

Regarding funding...it is impossible to know how much funding is required when the collective we can't even decide how to design and maintain an effective public education system.

For example and this will tick off many of you, but why does public education include sports? What if everything sports was eliminated from public education...how much money would be saved? If communities want sports then let the private sector fund it by advertising their Buicks and tractors. Sports has nothing to do with academics. A huge percentage of public students aren't even involved in sports so obviously it is not necessary.

And this gets back to my first statement above in that we don't even know how to define public education...

 

I think we all need to upgrade ourselves and the nation in which we live. We need to think deeply and ask ourselves, are we really better off giving greedy, arrogant people, whose only true love is making more money for themselves power? If not, then we need to create a class of first class teachers. Otherwise, do not be surprised in the increase in malice, which manifests itself as war and various types of terrorism in the world. These things are the by products of the poisonous, combustible mixture of ignorance and arrogance. They can only exist in the absence of a proper system of education.

 

I would not go so far as to say that it should be entirely eliminated. However, there is far too much emphasis placed on it, and that certainly needs to stop.

 

People who act like common low-skill workers (i.e. they strike, demand collective bargaining, etc.) don't get respect. By allying with the union thugs (part of the AFL-CIO), they have lost credibility.

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And then the schools lose a major carrot with which to entice male students to stay in school.....

 

1. Finnish kids don’t start until they are seven.
Taxcutter could agree with that – particularly boys.

2. Kids don’t do homework or take tests
Taxcutter rejects this. How do you measure that which you cannot measure?

3. Kids not tested
4. Only one standardized test.
As with No. 3 this makes checking progress impossible.

5. All children whether clever or not are taught in the same classroom
Taxcutter says the train never moves faster than the caboose. This is a formula for across-the-board mediocrity.

6. Finland spends 30% less than the US per pupil
Taxcutter’s main objection to US schools is that we spend a lot and get little to show for it.

7. 30% of Finnish kids get extra help in their first nine years.
Taxcutter has no problem with this, but remember item 6.

8. 66% go to college.
Taxcutter say good for them. No doubt doable in a small population. What kind of colleges do they go to?

9. The difference between the strongest and the weakest students is the smallest in the world.
Taxcutter says that flies in the face of normal human differences. Have the Finns brought up the weakest or just discouraged the strongest? Taxcutter suspects the latter.

10. Science classes are capped at 16 students so they can do experiments.
Taxcutter likes this but remember item 6.

11. 93% graduate from high school.
Taxcutter says that sounds nice but given that nobody is ever tested (items 2,3,4), are they just handing out diplomas to dummies? Do the Finns have any standards?

12. 43% of Finnish high school student go to vocational school.
Taxcutter notes item 8. 66%+43%>100% this calls items and 12 into question.

13. Elementary students get 75 minutes of recess a day vs. 27 minutes for US students
Taxcutter wonders; How long are their school days? Are they an hour longer or do the kids just goof off more?

14. Teachers only spend four hours a day in the classroom.
Taxcutter says: Sweet gig if you can get it.

15. Finland has a higher teacher to student ratio.
Taxcutter notes that in light of item 6, they must pay their teachers less. Of course if the teachers are only working part time (item 14) they deserve less.

16. The school system is 100% state funded.
Taxcutter notes that is the same as the US public school system.

17. All teachers in Finland must have subsidized masters degrees.
Taxcutter wants to know if the standards for masters degrees are as lax as everything else in Finland appear to be.

18. The national curriculum is only broad guidelines.
Taxcutter is not surprised.

19. Teachers are selected from the top 10% of graduates
Again, Taxcutter is not surprised. There must not be much opportunity for college grads in Finland if the top 10% go into an underpaid (item 15) low-stress (items 2,3,4,13) goof-off job (item 14) rather into the tough private sector.

20. In 2010, there were ten applicants for every teaching job.
Yup. Not much opportunity in Finland.

21. Finnish teachers start at slaries 20% less than US teachers.
As Taxcutter suspected. But then for a low-stress part-time job this is reasonable.

22. After 15 years experience, Finnish teachers make a little more than other college grads.
This confirms the lack of opportunity in Finland.

23. There is no merit pay for teachers.
Taxcutter is not surprised. How could you tell one teacher is better than another in a system that does not measure performance?

24. Teachers get the same status as doctors and lawyers
Taxcutter notes that Finnish doctors must be really awful to be treated the same and goof-off teachers.

25. Finnish children do well in reading, math, and science.
Taxcutter wonder how you can tell given they never measure performance.

 

I think people lose credibility when they become unnecessarily arrogant and cruel. Then they usurp things that belong to others, engage in the practice of torturing and destroying those who are in their way, and behave as if they have the right to do whatever they want with disregard to the harmful effects it has on others. That's when people lose respect.

If all that is keeping someone in school is sports, then perhaps they should not be there in the first place.

 

This needs to be considered in the definition of public education; all sports, some sports, or no sports? Is the goal of public education to create athletes? Or is it academics? If we can't afford the dismal public education system we have today where can we cut expenses...I say eliminate all sports...

 

I appreciate your position. Certainly, it is not the business of institutes of higher education to function as farms for the development and recruitment of athletes by professional sports clubs.

 

Its not about money.....its about demographics......Washington, D.C. and the City of Atlanta spend enough per pupil that you could send the kids to private school..........but you would get the same results...

 

School level football will be dead soon.

The first "lottery" award based on concussions will make insurance premiums on football prohibitively high.

 

Sports, though useless, have been successful in developing talent and getting students interested in improving their skills in it. So it should be used as a model to follow in order to get students to study. This present system is unnatural and fails not because of poor teaching or any of the other media-supplied answers, but it treats students like insignificant inanimate objects. Their natural needs and desires are ignored.

Divide classes into teams and quiz frequently. The team with the highest score will get Friday off. The team with the lowest score will have to come in on Saturday.

This idea of immediate and naturally satisfying reward has to be continued through college. One of the reasons high-school students quit studying is that all it leads to in the short term is four years of working without pay in college. Unpaid education is so stupid and dysfunctional that only dumbed-down people could ever have accepted it.

 

Nothing will help our schools as long as lazy parents are part of the equation.

 

You've just proved twice that businessmen are dumb jock bullies. Now I understand why colleges give so much more to athletes than they do to scholars.

 

Since the university is designed for the children of the rich, sports serve as their entertainment center. We must keep spoiled brats happy or they'll feel that their Daddies don't love them. And their Daddies are our God-given Masters.

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Since the university is designed for the children of the rich, sports serve as their entertainment center. We must keep spoiled brats happy or they'll feel that their Daddies don't love them. And their Daddies are our God-given Masters.

 

Nor should it function as a free farm system for the corporations either. Why don't people ever consider that? Because we don't teach how to think, but how to respond in the way we're told to think. The ruling-class ventriloquists are using us as dummies, especially on the copycat Internet.

 

Again compare it to school sports, where lazy parents are not much of a factor. It is not the parents' responsibility to educate, just as it is not their responsibility to coach.

 

Good point!

 

Let's deal with the premise that all brains are created equal, do you have anything that supports this?

I don't expect them to produce the same results for everyone, but results nontheless. We all didn't come out of school with the same results when I attended, but the vast majority of us came out with a good education and competent in our core subjects. That cannot be said of today.

How about doing what we used to do which produced better results?

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What are corporations?

You really let them do that to you? Why?

 

Knowledge should not be a prerogative of the rich. Therefore we should place the development of a fine system of education as one of the top priorities of government.

 

There's a defiantly some interesting things that the Fins are doing, that seem worth a try. I especially like the vocational training, and higher educational standards for teachers.

 

Finland, like Japan, is a homogeneous society -- no stupid, violent, loud, boisterous, jiving, strutting students who disrupt the classes, bully, vandalize, beat up the teachers, and sue the school system for alleged violations of political correctness.