William Doyle won a Fulbright scholarship, which enabled him to live and teach in Finland. His family went with him, and his son enrolled in the local public school. Doyle was bowled over by the happy, joyous spirit of learning in the school. When he returned to the US to tell the story, he frequently encountered the claim that the Finnish model was not right for urban children (children of color).
Corporate reformers believe that poor kids, especially African American kids, need a militaristic, no-excuses environment, where they are taught strict obedience.
Doyle disagrees. He writes:
“Skeptics might claim that the Finnish model would never work in America’s inner-city schools, which instead need boot-camp drilling and discipline, Stakhanovite workloads, relentless standardized test prep and screen-delivered testing.
“But what if the opposite is true?
“What if high-poverty students are the children most urgently in need of the benefits that, for example, American parents of means obtain for their children in private schools, things that Finland delivers on a national public scale — highly qualified, highly respected and highly professionalized teachers who conduct personalized one-on-one instruction; manageable class sizes; a rich, developmentally correct curriculum; regular physical activity; little or no low-quality standardized tests and the toxic stress and wasted time and energy that accompanies them; daily assessments by teachers; and a classroom atmosphere of safety, collaboration, warmth and respect for children as cherished individuals?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Ultrahyperhypocrite”
“Test and punish, that is it!
To give the poor kids smarts”
Said ultrahyperhypocrite
Whose children take the arts
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What a perfectly appropriate verse! I invite Mr Ultrahyperhypocrite to a morning at an urban chain daycare/ PreK whose enlightened owner includes wkly Spanish [that’s me] & other artsy specials in their reasonable, state-subsidized tuition. Ed-reform has its ugly claw all over NJ’s once-superlative PreK state stds– yes there’s too much seat-time & pencil-work here, but still plenty of unstructured playtime outdoors & indoors. Still dressup & mock-mealprep & pot-planting & cocoon-monitoring. And boot-camp-leaning teachers/ aides are gently guided to better methods by its equally-enlightened director.
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You’ve done it again, SomeDAM Poet. Kudos!
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GTE programs emphasize the very things these kids need. We need to take to heart the message from Beyond Measure. http://beyondmeasurefilm.com/
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Maybe in the English speaking world there’s a some stubborn, ancient desire to abuse poor children through the schools? Remember Thomas Gradgrind from Dickens’s Hard Times.
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It’s a matter of the culture of patience. If a kid misbehaves, screaming or spanking will yield quick results but without long term benefits.
In the US we are in a constant race to get quick results. We want to win now. Fastfastfast.
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Reformers want to indoctrinate children. Break them down, tear them down, and remold them to be docile and respectful to….the wealthy, and the white. Why would Duncan, et al., want 24/7 control over “those kids” to be in lock down like orphanages of old? They want to metaphorically beat the savage out of the natives. its disgusting. Hillary calls young black men super thugs, and gets away with it, and the very people she is disparaging are voting for her in droves. I don’t get it.
The reformers feel they are of a better class than the rest of us, and certainly better than inner city, urban, children. They call them scholars, yet treat them like criminals…and their parents are all for it, or have little choice amongst all the available choices – “Do you want to send your children to charter school x, y, or z?” Even when there is a neighborhood school left down the block, someone like Cami Anderson installs the OneNewark app where no matter what YOU choose, the choice is made for you — and the choice, if you have 4 kids, is to send them to 4 different schools, possibly charters, just to get “butts in seats” so she can claim that overwhelmingly parents choose charters – when they did not.
Scratch a reformer and you’ll find a racist. TFA is racist too. The billionaires are racists. AND, they counted on Obama as president to make it not look that way–how better than to have a black president do everything he and his administration did to disenfranchise poor blacks, browns, yellows, whites?
WE WOULD NOT TREAT OUR OWN CHILDREN with the disdain and disgust as the reformers do…so why would we want that for other people’s kids? What happens at Success Academy is a systemic mistreatment of little kids, and it sucks the joy out of not only learning, but of life itself. Children deserve joy, love, nurturing, playtime…not lengthy days filled with extreme discipline, belittling, punishments and sanctions. No one feels good about his/her self when they are in a no-win situation, without even the power to speak up and defend his/her self.
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Exactly this, Donna. You have stated it perfectly, thank you.
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Then, when their spirits are broken, and poor young people have mastered the art of obedience, they are ready to serve as combat troops for the next war the military, industrial complex decides we need to wage. That’s how to maximize profits.
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Wow, Donna. On another day I might have skimmed your post thinking it overstated. But just this a.m. I was letting my brother vent via phone about the cultural challenge of living in the south for the last 20 yrs. He was saying he preferred the in-your-face racism of the working-class FL nbhd where he used to live, compared to his new NC city, where he finds it indirect & nasty, w/ the n-word popping out after a couple of drinks among highly-educated people. But then, we were raised in a progressive collegetown surrounded by rural John Birchers. As a kid I thought of that as a political difference, & was oblivious to what any black or Jewish friend could have told me had I asked about their daily experience. Traveling in Engl as a young adult I thought the culture almost comically classist compared to the US (how sheltered my upbringing had been!). Racism was obvious & pronounced in Mich where I lived in the ’70’s, & it lurks loudly on LI, & here in NJ too. Not much of a stretch to imagine it infects the entire country.
Now my reaction to your post is– yes, of course, any national ed-reform movement is almost by definition going to be populated by folks who think they know what’s best for all those ‘other’ folks.
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Thank you, Donna.
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A fine and correct hope, AND I would think the universal desideratum. And it used to be the common expectation. In the 30’s and 40’s my wife got a better education in the Detroit Public Schools than I got in a private high school in Connecticut.
But is it feasible NOW? Has it been tried, ever, even on a small scale with inner city populations? I have a friend who WANTS to do it, with whom I am working, as best I can, but she is planning to open as a charter.
And is the difference in scale between Finland and the USA a factor as well? Is it possible to find 600,000 teachers who can meet the standard of professionalism seen in Finland?
Finally, under current CONTEMPORARY state and federal law can a Finnish model even be legally implemented, even assuming the money were forthcoming from the taxpayer?
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We can do whatever we want. This is America. If the law needs to change, then we need to change it. I didn’t say that would be easy, but it isn’t about easy. At the end of the day, this country was founded by Europeans who wanted people to be “free.” Since Europe, at least Western Europe, was no longer enslaving whites at that time, one has to think about what they meant by “free.” It certainly had to do with taxation and religious freedom and those things, but it also had to do with economic and social equality, which is why it is illegal in the U.S. to have special privileges and titles just because your ancestors were medieval war heroes. If capitalism replaces feudalism as a means of locking entire families into generations of privilege, then it is no longer capitalism, and our troops will have fought and died for nothing. We’ve always understood that education was the most important way to achieve equality, and so if that’s no longer happening, then the end justifies the means of correcting it. I feel safe saying this in a country that fought a brutal war over the question of slavery. In America, the end always justifies the means when it comes to questions of equality. Hallelujah for that. So while you’re correct to question whether we could be like Finland now, the conversation must not end there. If we can’t be like Finland, how to change so we can be? (At least I don’t think it will require another Civil War!)
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Catherine, I agree completely with you about the “can do” attitude of Americans, and also about the fundamental importance of “equality,” and social egalitarianism, BUT the only equality we can even come close to guaranteeing, in my view, is equality before the law, and even that is an immense struggle, and hardly perfect even now.
The goal of economic equality, however, will always be the enemy of the freedoms we treasure.
Even so, and leaving aside trying for optimum education for all (as in Finland), we should not have to tolerate illiteracy and innumeracy in high school graduates.
So why is it still happening?
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Good questions.
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I think all students could benefit from the type of education offered in Finland. The teachers would benefit from getting respect and a greater level of autonomy, but the United States does not have the appetite to support strong public education. We would have to vote out a lot of conservatives and neo-liberals to make this happen.
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Mr. Harlan Underhill: while much more often than not I disagree with you, I do read all your comments and hope you are in good health and spirits.
Or as the “Sage of Concord” put it, far better than I can:
“The first wealth is health.” [Ralph Waldo Emerson]
😎
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You are quite right about health. Thank you for your kind wishes. If you know what “oxygenation consistently at 97” means, you will understand how things are going with me at present. ‘Twas not always so.
I continue to be interested in the political and economic and human problems of how to bring the kind of superior education which I had the privilege of delivering to motivated students in a private school to all children in the country.
It is not getting universally done, nor are the solutions proposed or blames assigned especially convincing to me.
Why Finland can do it and we can’t remains baffling to me.
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I much appreciate the honesty of your last sentence.
I had to google your “oxygenation consistently at 97” phrase. I came across this from the Mayo Clinic website:
“Normal pulse oximeter readings usually range from 95 to 100 percent.”
Link: http://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/hypoxemia/basics/definition/sym-20050930
If I am interpreting this correctly, you are presently—haven’t always been—doing ok.
I hope I got that right.
😎
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Yes, indeed. You are correct.
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There are mountains and mountains of data that prove this method of education works. It works because it is in harmony with the human condition, Not only is it developmentally appropriate, it actually HONORS a child’s natural development- and USES it to educate. Round peg, round hole. Totally efficient, totally successful, totally obvious when seen in action.
What form of – what? Underestimation? Superiority complex? Racism? would seek to argue that the natural human condition of childhood does not apply to a poor child, a rich child, a white child, a brown child or a purple child all the same? It’s the one thing that, by nature, is true for ALL children. Put a group of 6 year olds together, from any varying walks of life- and TREAT THEM LIKE 6 YEAR OLDS. Respect their talents and unique traits, treat their age-typical behaviors as strenghts rather than weakness… And watch what happens.
These schools are amazing to see in action.
Kids participate, behave nicely, laugh, learn, like each other, include each other.
If the evidence wasn’t so ubiquitous and overwhelming- one would actually think it was magic in the works. Developmentally appropriate education by teachers trained in child development, working in developmentally correct classrooms IS the elusive magic bullet. Every step taken away from it leads to putting round pegs in square holes. Which leads to a need to manage all the problems that come from shoving round (living) pegs into square, ill fitting, painful to squeeze into holes.
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Sadly, we are seeing the great divide in our country between those who believe in true equality and those who want it only for others who are exactly like them.
Psychologists and other social scientists are discovering these two groups are are wired differently and that their brains, their perceptions of the world, and the way the think and react to what they see, hear, and understand are totally opposite each other.
Media and technology have served as amplifiers and magnifiers of these always-there differences and the resulting polarization is truly frightening because the biggest change it is serving is allowing a small, wealthy elite to run roughshod over the vast majority of us because we are too busy hating and fearing each other to notice what they are doing and too consumed with fear and hatred to challenge them and stop them.
Yes, there are many, many racists who do NOT want poor black and brown children to have a decent education or economic opportunities because their deeply held beliefs tell them that the only way to do that is to deny them and their children the same things.
Generations of political demagoguery and extremist religious pandering have convinced a very large number of people that the only way to survive and to succeed is through hatred, suppression, and sequestration of those who are different and to deny the “other” basic human dignity and equality.
I cannot predict the future but I have lived long enough and explored enough things and read enough to see the horror of this all-too-common human failing as it has grown and festered throughout the modern day USA. It has rarely ended well historically.
We can, however, create pockets of good and be decent, affirming, loving, kind, and generous ourselves despite the situation. It is the only way for me to find and have meaning in life.
If even just a few of us open schools that follow the model of Finland we are radically changing the world for those children and families we serve. The vision is there, the understanding is there, and the desire is there.
We must find the will, the perseverance, the financial backing, and the legal support to do this.
The future of humanity and the Earth cry out for it!
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““But what if the opposite is true?”
It is.
We are in a bizarro world, where the greediest know what’s best for the neediest.
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Ed Detective:
TAGO!
😎
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Yup. Bizarreality: The virtual reality of the billionaire businessmen.
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This SHOULD BE a no-brainer for the heavyweight rheephormsters: if their test-to-punish hazing ritual-style schooling is so effective, then it should be norm at all the schools that THEIR OWN CHILDREN attend.
Remember: out-of-school factors are not destiny, everything depends on classroom teachers squeezing high standardized test scores out of their pupils at any cost, stack ranking of students and teachers and schools is the only way to get accountability, blahblahblah.
Or so they say.
Rheeally! And they have even convinced themselves that that is what’s necessary for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. Even when delivered in a most Johnsonally sort of way…
But once Rheeality Distortion Fields, often self-inflicted, are subtracted from the equation, not really.
For a tiny sampling of the disconnect between rheephorm words and deeds, see this blog:
[start posting]
This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
[end posting
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Bizarrely inconsistent? Not really. That’s what happens when Marxist dictums are allowed to reign supreme among the chief beneficiaries and enforcers and purveyors of self-styled education reform:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
As the usual unconfirmed rumors have it, TFALoveFest#30 will be dedicated to their main man, Groucho.
Like everything else TFA does, makes a lot of ₵ent¢…
😎
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I find the Finnish education model very attractive especially for impoverished students like mine. I do however wonder if the Finn’s society has much more structure, including the family model. We always say, “Don’t blame it all on the schools (teachers)” so I’m wondering if the Finnish education model would work for many of my students who have no structure of any kind in their lives. I think it would be a wonderful thing to try and would love to see it put to the test (sorry!) at my school. I can just imagine how enjoyable it could be for students and teachers.
It would be great if say, a university were to put a trial program into place at different public schools and see how schools within the study compared to each other and other more traditional public schools.
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Some poor children might not have a lot of structure in the home, but they don’t need the type of “no excuses” structure that is heartless and punitive. If poor students had smaller classes, more resources and supports, they would perform better in school. If those schools included wrap around services to support students and their families, the students would respond positively. We did a lot of outreach with our neediest students, and we got positive results in my former school district. Unfortunately, in many instances, the neediest get the least due to the way we fund schools. My poor ELLs were fortunate because they attended a mostly middle class school where expectations were high and resources were abundant.
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A misconception of developmentally based classroom is that it lacks structure.
Structure can mean sit- and -track rigid- or structure can mean invisible organization.
In a developmentally based school-the structure is there, somewhat invisible to the child, and above all honors childrens healthy, natural curiosity and inclinations. It is NOT a free for all.
The structure is simply appropriate to their age.
For the youngest kids, There must be room for lots of moving about, multiple “stations” available for the kids to choose. Each station has a playful task: Dress-up, mail station, wash the baby-dolls station, etc. For pre-schoolers, one station is a true free play -as in on a Playground.
Each of these stations is a play space -contained to the task.
It’s actually highly organized in the big picture. Kids choose which play-task they want to do and are free to move from one to the other at any time.
As kids gets older, “sit down” time increases. Formal instruction begins and is steadily increased.
It is definitively NOT without structure.- is IS without what we now think of as formal instruction at the youngest ages.
By the way- my child learned to read and write in a developmental, play-based pre schooll. In happened over time at the “Mail station” -never one minute of “formal” instruction- simply the watchful eye of a good teacher-aide who engaged with him while he “wrote letters to his cousins”.The first few months the letters were scribbles. The play sessions with an aide led to learning letters. Then reading names. This is, of course, formal instruction. The difference is- the child doesn’t know it. They learn by playing a game that is meaningful to them, fun, and motivated by delight in being able to finally ” write a real letter.!”
Compare that to sitting down with a work sheet tracing letters.. Ugh.
What it requires is trained teachers- and aides. to provide an invisible- but very real- structure.
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I think you are right, Ms. Cartwheel…Librarian, to remind us of the role of out-of-school factors. Finland definitely has a social structure that is supportive of the well being of its citizens. The attention paid to education is not an outlier but a well integrated feature of Finnish society.
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Just remember that Montessori wasn’t targeting the elite rich like those who utilize her programs today. She was targeting the poorest of the poor.
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Actually, before Maria Montessori opened her first school for poor children, she had worked with developmentally disabled children and others with learning problems. This is where she developed the techniques that she later used with the non-disabled.
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Thank you both for noting that. I am a huge fan of Montessori and now, at the end of my career, I am actually contemplating returning to school to achieve Montessori certification for the purpose of brining Montessori back to its roots in a poor, urban setting.
I have devoured all of Dr. Montessori’s writings and I can’t praiser her enough! She proved that the Finnish model works amazingly well among the poorest and least privileged a century ago.
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Slightly off topic, but an interesting article in the NYT regarding race and the standardized testing wars:
Comments like this from former middle school teacher Sonja Brookins Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy and practice at the Education Trust, boggle the mind:
“If students are being made to feel inferior, she said, it is because educators — from teachers to district officials — aren’t taking responsibility for their own failures and instead are sending low-income students the message that their poor performance is their fault.”
“She also urged minority students and parents to use the testing data to call out schools and districts that are not serving them well.”
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“If students are being made to feel inferior, she said, it is because educators — from teachers to district officials — aren’t taking responsibility for their own failures. . . ”
Exactly, especially those supposed educator GAGAers* who have sold their souls for filthy lucre by instituting the many malpractices that abound but especially the standards and testing regimes.
* Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution** upon their passing from this realm.
**Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to Go Along to Get Along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
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It sounds as if you have a dream. . . .
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“What if high-poverty students are the children most urgently in need of . . . highly qualified, highly respected and highly professionalized teachers who conduct personalized one-on-one instruction; manageable class sizes; a rich, developmentally correct curriculum; regular physical activity; daily assessments by teachers; and a classroom atmosphere of safety, collaboration, warmth and respect for children as cherished individuals?”
If?
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The interesting thing is that the Finnish system apparently is based on educational research conducted in the US. Old timers see great similarities between the current Finnish system and the US one in the 1970’s.
From Sahlberg’s book titled “Finnish lessons”
visitors to the United States often wonder why innovations that have brought improvement to all successful education systems in the world have not been practiced on a large scale in the U.S. school system. Lessons from Finland suggest that it may be that the work of the school in the United States is so much steered by bureaucracies, test-based accountability, and competition that schools are simply doing what they are forced to do in this awkward situation. Many visitors from the United States often note that what they see in Finnish schools reminds them of practices they had seen in many schools in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.
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You mean there was actually a “golden age” of education in the US?
There was a start but then all the folks of color, non-European ethnicity and the smarmy lower class started to get uppity so something had to be done, eh!?!
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“You mean there was actually a “golden age” of education in the US?”
So it seems. What seems to be definitely true is that there was a golden age of educational research which has been largely ignored nowadays in the US, while much of the world incorporated it in their education systems.
Btw, Duane, thanks for the tip about camping for the conference: I ended up doing that in Umstead state park.
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How was Umstead? Was it noisy? I thought of camping there but the airport was too close. I was up at Falls Lake about a 20 mile drive north of the convention center.
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It was very pleasant, but yours probably was more outdoorsy. I didn’t think about Falls Lake. Creek or lake would have been nice.
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