Pasi Sahlberg, a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, spoke recently to Citizens for Public Schools in Massachusetts.
His topic: what can Massachusetts learn from “Finnish Lessons”?
It is worth watching. Pasi is always a wonderful speaker, and he is a leader in the international fight to resist test-mania and privatization and to protect education and children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I support what Finland does in its public schools. I really think the U.S. should pay very close attention to what Finland does, but how much of what they do will work in America’s public schools to bring about dramatic changes in a short period of time? What else is needed?
Finland has a poverty rate that is less than 5% and the country’s 99+% Scandinavian, white culture/population (almost 80% belong to the same religion) is pro-education and the average parent starts teaching their kids to read at age three, four years before the children start school.
Versus, the US with a childhood poverty rate of 23% and often little or no support from parents who live in poverty where we discover the largest ratio of unemployed, illiterates and/or non readers. Just because someone reads at a fifth grade level or above doesn’t mean they read books, magazines or newspapers. Literacy studies reveal that 80% of adult Americans who don’t go to college never read a book again after high school. To grow up loving books and enjoying reading usually starts as young as three.
In the U.S. we have more than sixteen million children living in poverty and that is more than three times the total population of Finland.
The point I want to make is that Finland doesn’t have an early childhood education program. To find out who does and the impact, we should look at France where 100% of children by age four are in early childhood education programs and France, in the last few decades, has cut poverty from 15% to less than 7%.
In addition, to even find countries that have poverty rates in schools equal to what we will find in the U.S., we have to look at Turkey and Mexico because we aren’t going to find poverty rates that high in most developed countries.
And the PISA, for all of its flaws, says this of France: “Share of low achievers is somewhat higher than the EU average, with a slightly improving trend since 2009, in all 3 domains. There is a strong relationship between socio-economic status and student performance. There is also a large gap in performance between native-born and first-generation migrants but significantly better performance for second-generation migrants compared to first-generation migrants.”
“how much of what they do will work in America’s public schools to bring about dramatic changes in a short period of time?”
I would estimate approximately zero percent.
My thirty years as a public school teacher agrees with you 110%. Almost every—well, actually, every time teachers were forced to try out a new, untested theory and stop doing what the teachers found worked from years of experience, those untested theories failed and failed again and again and again.
Buy parents, CEOs, courts, administrators, school boards and elected politicians never quit, and they never included real (experienced) classroom teachers, who are still teaching, in the decision making process.
Need I go on.
What Bill Gates did to bribe and force Common Core on the country is nothing new. It’s just on a much larger scale. Usually these things only happen at the district or state level.
Finish education doesn’t work withou Finns.
And there aren’t enough Finns (5 million) to replace 316 million Americans. I think size has something to do with it too.
Finns are not Scandinavian. Finland has a substantial Scandinavian minority (Swedish), who were formerly the ruling class. It also has a Sami-speaking population in the north. For University admittance Finnish citizens must demonstrate competence in their mother tongue, whatever that might be.
Rome cannot be built within a short period of time, but everything will eventually lead to Rome. Similarly, freedom and democracy did not just happen without fighting against dictatorship from many intellectual generations, but all intellectual people will eventually get together and fight for their freedom and democracy.
Courage and action with good intention for public welfare will reign in the end. Back2basic.
That is an excellent post m4potw! Thanks
I loved his parting three statements: create equity, testing too much, children must play…awesome goals.