Finnish students ace international tests, notes the Wall Street Journal, which asks: What makes Finns so smart?
Finnish students, who start school at age seven, are expected to be more independent than American children. Well-trained teachers focus on making sure slower students keep up; there’s no special attention for gifted students. Homework is minimal. So are extra-curriculars: A model school has “no sports teams, marching bands or prom,” writes Ellen Gamerman.
TV-watching Finns read a lot of subtitles.
Finland shares its language with no other country, and even the most popular English-language books are translated here long after they are first published. Many children struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in English because they feared they would hear about the ending before it arrived in Finnish. Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show “Beverly Hills, 90210.”
Technology is not a big deal in Finnish schools.
(Visitors) saw Finnish teachers with chalkboards instead of whiteboards, and lessons shown on overhead projectors instead of PowerPoint.
While Finns are much more homogenous than Americans in ethnicity, education and income, only 53 percent of students go to academic high schools; the rest go to vocational programs for their last three years of education. (International exams test all students, not just those in academic high schools.)
Finns spend less per student on education than the U.S., but spend more equitably: There’s little difference in funding between “rich” and “poor” schools.
Colleges charge no tuition. There are no super-elite universities that students compete to get into; motivated student know they can go to college.
The Finns are starting to worry that they’re not pushing their best students to excel, Gamerman writes. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy will begin to pay a high price for the cognitive skills deficit, economists predict.
“Finnish students ace international tests, notes the Wall Street Journal, which asks: What makes Finns so smart?”
If I’m recalling correctly, Gerald Bracey has some (old) international proficiency tests with data at least partially broken out by state. Iowa tends to score very near the top, along with the commonly seen countries (Japan, Singapore, the nordic countries, …).
Iowa has a population about 60% of Finlands (about 3M vs about 5M).
Maybe we should be asking what makes Iowans so smart?
-Mark Roulo
A recent article discusses the PISA test itself on which the Finns do so well. See:
http://solmu.math.helsinki.fi/2005/erik/PisaEng.html
Thank you, Barry. Very interesting article.
This tired story of Finland’s superior educational methods (it has been floating around since 2005) is complete and utter bunk.
The real reason Finland is doing so well on these tests has nothing to do with different “methods.” It is merely because the Finns have practically zero immigration from third or second world countries.
They have one of the most homogenous populations in the world, nearly all lily-white. Their population is 93% Finnish; the largest minority group at 6% is…wait for it…Swedes! (next Russians 0.4%, Estonians 0.2%). So they seal their borders and score high on international tests. Big whoop. I would note the #2 country, Hong Kong, is 96% Chinese. Both these ethnic groups, Finnish and Chinese, have IQs above the mean. I would love to compare these nation’s scores against American Chinese or American Finns. We would probably beat them! Pah.
Bottom line: every other Western country takes lot of second and third world immigrants, and this pushes mean test scores down. Finns, and many Asian countries, won’t let in immigrants. So they score highest on average. Big whoop. In fact, I believe the Swedes used to be on top of the international testing game before they had a few decades of massive Muslim immigration.
This whole silly story is like everyone heading out to Montana to figure out why their educational “methods†are so superior to, say, Atlanta. Should we laugh or cry?
The real question from the WSJ story: are educators really this stupid? Or do they know the truth, and are just laughing their way to a few weeks vacation in Europe? It’s hard to tell.
“Both these ethnic groups, Finnish and Chinese, have IQs above the mean.”
Well, except for Finland, it seems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations
(97 according to the table in the middle of the article)
And from the Bell Curve, we get about 98.
-Mark Roulo
Mark, that 98 IQ is for the United States, not the world.
The worldwide average IQ is about 90 (very rough average), putting the Finns nearly a full SD above average…although I doubt Finland has very in-depth IQ testing data, so who knows how accurate your 97 is. The American number is very good.
The 1920 American Census shows Michigan/Minnesota to be home to largest numbers of Finnish-Americans. After that they mix in real fast, but I would guess Minnesota is still the best demographic match to Finland in America. And, natch, Minnesota has led the nation in average ACT sores for the last three consecutive years. Hmmm.
In other words, the article is bunk. I agree American education methods suck (hey, I’m a victim), but to be fair only way to compare Finnish education to American Education is to compare Finns living in both locals…or to weight the PISA test scores with IQ tests taken at age 7. But hey, that would be too intelligent and ruin the whole education scam.
I thought the average IQ was 100, and 10 IQ points was a standard deviation.
See, the problem with the foreign immigrants argument is, it holds up if you are looking at just Finland (about 4% foreign born) and the US (around 12% or so). In the US, only about 25% finish college and 40% have less than high school. In Finland, its about 19% finish college and over 50% don’t complete high school. But then when you throw in Sweden, with a comparable percentage of foreign born and college completion, but a much smaller number (about 30%) who don’t finish high school, then things start to unravel a bit. Then, when you look at Canada (about 18% foreign born, close to 40% going to college and only 30% not finishing high school), then you have to start really looking at some other factors–things that we can do something about (besides closing the borders). It can’t be just coincidence that their teachers are more highly educated, that the systems of social support interface with the school systems or that they have rigorous secondary programs for all students–not just the college bound.
source: No More Failures: Ten Steps to Equity in Education, OECD, 2007.
“Mark, that 98 IQ is for the United States, not the world.
The worldwide average IQ is about 90 (very rough average), putting the Finns nearly a full SD above average…although I doubt Finland has very in-depth IQ testing data, so who knows how accurate your 97 is.”
All relevant, but if the U.S. has a (slight) IQ edge on Finland, then noting that Finns have an IQ above the world average isn’t terribly relevant. The U.S. population has an IQ above the world average, too
[And I have no idea how relevant the two Finnish IQ numbers are. But they don't really support the contention that Finns are, on average, smarter than the U.S. population].
-Mark Roulo
Margo/Mom,
Canada has different immigration requirements than the U.S. We tend to bias in favor of reuniting families. Canada biases in favor of allowing in more highly educated foreigners.
I have no idea what Sweden does.
-Mark Roulo
Margo / Mark,
“Foreign born” as a metric is not very relevant. Canada actually increases test scores via immigration (by generally bringing in wealthy Asians), while Sweden and America lowers theirs. In other words, demographics of a nation are what rule, not educational methods or immigration per se, or even slight differences in IQ. Yet the WSJ and these so-called education experts traveling to Finland didn’t even consider anything but “teaching methods.”
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: the strongest determinant of the quality of American schools is proximity to the Canadian border. Since educational “methods” do not change based upon latitude, I think one must look elsewhere.
One thing that everyone seems to have missed in the article is that the Finns know when a kid is behind. That means they test frequently. There are subtle differences between the modus operandi the typical American school and that of the Finish schools. I had to look closely in many published articles to find them.
Basically it seems to me that the Finish model is similar to that of Achievement Collaborative. They teach to a national standard. They frequently test and quiz to that standard. They frequently evaluate and use the results of the tests and quizzes to determine who is learning what and who is teaching what. They act on those findings at each evaluation.
One major improvement over American education is the is quality of the teachers in Finland. The quality of the help is the single most important variable.
Also there are lots of minorities in Finland. So I do not buy that excuse.
Tom Linehan,
Also there are lots of minorities in Finland. So I do not buy that excuse.
Try examining the facts, not your opinion.
Finland’s population (source CIA Worldbook):
93% Finnish
6% Swedes
Russians 0.4%
Estonians 0.2%
That’s 99.6% white.
For contrast, America (source US Census):
whites 69%
Hispanics 13%
blacks 12%
Asians 4%
other 2%
In other words, it’s all about the basics. Yes, yes, and yes.
“Also there are lots of minorities in Finland. So I do not buy that excuse.
Try examining the facts, not your opinion.
Finland’s population (source CIA Worldbook):
93% Finnish
6% Swedes
Russians 0.4%
Estonians 0.2%
That’s 99.6% white.”
I believe we have a winner.
Vital Core, which IQ tests are you referring? Can you correlate these with any other PISA scores?
I’d love to check that out.
Best,
Hans