Reader Jack Covey, a teacher in Los Angeles, sent the following comment to me:

 

First, watch this clip from Michael Moore about
schools in Finland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-DcjwzF9yc
Now, read Education Next on the same topic, in
the context of a book review by Cherker Finn.
https://www.educationnext.org/more-play-will-save-our-schools-book-claims-review-let-the-children-play-sahlberg-doyle/
Here’s the ending of Chester Finn’s “Stick with GERM” 
review of Past Sahsberg’s new book, and his
argument that “play” hurts poor kids, but it’s fine
for middle class kids (and presumably upper class
kids as well).  
He says we’re “bizarrely and cruelly” damaging 
those poor kids when U.S. schools “model themselves 
on a charming small country in northern Europe 
(it’s Finn vs. Finns, I guess)
CHESTER FINN:
But wait. We’re living in a time when academic achievement is flat at the end of high 
school; when scads of young people emerge unready for either college or career success; 
when American employers must look overseas for skilled personnel; and when results-based  
accountability for kids, teachers, and schools alike hangs in the balance and “soft skills” are in
 the ascendancy. 
We also have ample evidence that while “playful teaching and learning” does little harm to 
middle-class kids with support and structure in the rest of their lives, for children from 
troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure. Many such youngsters already have plenty 
of “play” of various sorts in their lives, even a corrupted sort of “natural state,” but 
precious little formal learning—and few of the other benefits (character formation, 
self-discipline, citizenship, etc.) that also flow from purposeful adult direction.
Are we—bizarrely and cruelly—to exacerbate the achievement, economic 
and mobility gaps that already plague us as a nation, while turning a blind eye to the 
academic mediocrity that already afflicts even those on the up side of those gaps, 
all in the name of modeling America on a charming small country in northern Europe? 
The evidence the authors cite is persuasive that kids need to play but not that we 
should diminish the quest for stronger skills and knowledge or should try to organize 
U.S. schools the way they do in Vuohtomaki, the rural village where Sahlberg grew up. 
Appealing as that model is in its way, it doesn’t transplant at scale to the Bronx, nor 
would it pave a path out of poverty for children who live there (or in Memphis, Houston, etc.)
I think I’ll stick with GERM—and keep doing what I can to infect others. It 
may be too late to block America’s migration from one education sun to the other, 
but it’s a dreadful mistake to accelerate it.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.