Education in Finland: Can High Finnish Test Scores be Replicated in Other Countries?

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?, reads a Wall Street Journal Headline. It seems that test scores for Finnish children are among the highest of all advanced countries, and a lot of educators from North America and elsewhere want to know "why?"

...by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules....In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland's students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland's combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD's test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

...The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students.

...The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

...Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% -- or 10% at vocational schools -- compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.

...Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying their children to and from school, and arrange every play date and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.___WSJ

It seems that teachers in Finland are much better trained and are given more freedom to teach to their students' needs and interests. Teaching is seen as a desirable job in Sweden, and the enthusiasm of teachers helps keep students interested.

Although Finnish people do not have higher IQs than other Europeans--and it is not likely the children are born with higher Executive Function or short-term memories--the nature of child up-bringing, and early education likely contributes to a more independent mind-set, and a tendency to understand the need to follow the guidance of parents and teachers in preparing for the future. Life in Finland can be hard, due to extremes of climate and insolation. All of these things are likely to help Finnish children learn more self-reliance than more coddled children of lower Europe and North America.

Psychological neoteny is a very real problem for North American children and children in many other first world countries. Children are too often treated as fragile, pampered parental trophies, rather than as human beings who have to learn to deal for themselves with a real and often dangerous world.

H/T to Dennis Mangan and Steve Sailer , who have provided interesting comments on the WSJ article, and its topic. Check out their take on the article.