Finnish Ed

the time. And we've had the the privilege of working with Discovery Education UM here and there to promote educational endeavors. That's right. We actually worked with them on a STEM presentation. This is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and STEM education. The US has been on educators and policymakers minds for for a while now, and one of the reasons is that we've become far less competitive as a nation in terms of knowledge based information. Right, that's kind of fallen

away from our society. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a sad story and one that I think everyone's absorbed through the media that we're we're not doing as well at all on our on our science and our math and our physics, where we're getting pretty good, I guess about you know, learning about the science of magical aspects of the world and how with the latest pop singers doing.

But we're not We're not necessarily all that great when it comes to science and math, right, And so we're not going to try to actually, you know, take this hon as a topic of why the United States is failing in this area. Instead, we're gonna try to look at a model that is working. And it's actually in Finland, and uh and it is actually predicated on on this idea that all children have a good, solid quality education. And it's a very simple idea, right, It's not like, hey,

let's create superstars here. Let's not you know, get the number one rankings the world. But lo and behold, they have done that. So um as the United States is one of the richest industrialized nations, you kind of have to sit back and wonder why would our education system lagged so far behind less prosperous countries with far less resources. So we're gonna try to, you know, take on Finland, see what they're doing, and tease out what what might be at the bottom of all of this for the

United States and really the rest of the world. Now, I know what some of you are wondering, and you know, no no judgment, but some of you are probably wondering, where is Finland exactly and what is it? Well? Uh, Finland is a far north European country. It is Scandinavian and it borders Russia. So if you can picture the I guess you call it the Horn of Scandinavia, then Finland is a nice vertical slice of that bordering Russia. Yeah, it's one of the three fingers of that Nordic area.

In fact, I always think of it as the quieter sister of Norway and Sweden. Yeah. And I have to say that I don't know a ton about Norway, but I do know it's the home of Nokia. Yes, and I do know that Lapland that area of Finland is home to Santa Claus Village. Yeah, this is the reindeer camp that your your brother keeps trying to get. My brother keeps saying like they're they have real reindeers. There's a Santa Claus. You take these reindeer rides, and I

just keep thinking about on their backs. Their backs are two weeks. Yeah, and there are elves and all of that freaks me. No, but I mean, you know, they go to great links to make this look as as realistic as possible. That you know where Santa might live, right, Yeah, well it's also troll country, so I would be very concerned about that. I just keep thinking of the movie Rare Exports. Yes, that was a finished movie. That was a finishing which involves like these evils elves in this

crampus white creature. So whenever he brings it up, creature, but crampus ish, I guess you could you could throw some Crampus in there. YEA Crampus is like the anti Santa, right, wonderful the scenes with a lot of old man natity in it. That's great, great for the whole thing. Yeah. So unfortunately that that's sort of like my baseline of Finland, you know, in addigit the fact that it is the

home of like two thousand lakes, right, beautiful and very cold. Yeah, I guess my main you know, I obviously I've never been to Finland. Uh. I have a great deal respect for their sauna culture. As as sana traditions fell out of practice with the most of the rest of Europe, Finland held onto it the most and it remains a strong part of Finnish culture. If you if you're if you live in Finland, if you're finished, you have a sauna, or you make sure you have access to a sauna.

Even if you are in the army or in prison, you will have a sauna because it is that important. And I love a good sauna. I wish I had time for more of them, or the office would finally install man Um. I love a good sauna. The fins love a good sauna, so I can't help but love the Fins on that count. Also the Russo finished productions of such films as Jack Frost as they were made famous over here by Mry Sentence Fetter three thousand. I'm a big fan of those. And then also they have

a rich folk tradition. You have some monsters such as Yoka Heinen vast frost giant formed and primordial times from the melting of giant icicles at the edge of the world, and he lives in the far North. Um there are the Mahas, which were earth dwellers, little people and guardian spirits that live in the ground. And then this is

pretty cool too. There's a tonto, which is a household spirit, and the way to get a Tonto was to make a pack with the devil at a graveyard, okay, and then this invites the Tonto back to your home, where you make sure the tonto has access the spirit has access to the best accommodations and a really nice seat at the dinner table. And in return, the tanto enriches your alse, generally at your neighbor's expense. So there you go. Well, so that's so much better than living in Sweden and

just going to Ikea. Yeah, exactly, you can. You can go to well, yeah you can. You can go to Ikia where you can can here in Atlanta if you want. But you know, as Ikeia had its beginnings in Sweden, I say, hey, there you go, Sweden, you know, little thumb of the knows there. I should also point out that Finland is a parliamentary democracy, that's right, and get that out. Yeah, And they had emerged to um hite succeeds I believe from from from Soviet influence, and I

guess they're right up there. They're the neighbors, you know, exactly. Hello, Um, so they really did try to remake their society, to try to to hearken back to their rich folklore, their rich tradition. They're rich history. And part of that is of course rebuilding with a great education system. So when we talk about Finland today and all that it has accomplished, we're talking about something that has been in the making since,

uh the seventies. Really, so what have they done? Okay, Well, they have ranked at or near the top in three major international education studies since two thousand. We're talking neck and neck with superachievers like South Korea and Singapore. So the students in Finland have been, you know, in some cases sort of outranking these other countries. And yet they're not putting in nearly as many hours studying and preparing

as their counterparts in some Southeast Asian countries. So recently, they scored first in science and second in reading in math on the standardized test administered by the Program for International Student Assessment, and this is conducted among industrial niche industrialized nations every three years. And then in contrast, American students finished twenty five in math, seventeen in science, and twelve in reading on the latest UH PISA assessment. Yeah,

it's it's such a contrast between like U schools. Increasingly it's all about these standardized tests. It's about prepping for these tests, and it gets to where it has a tendency to suck out a lot of the creativity that goes into teaching a classroom. We my mom's a kindergarten teacher. I even hear from her all the time, and you generally think of the kindergarten classroom as a pretty open

and creative environment, but there's she's always talking about. I'll ask about, oh, do you still do that thing with the with the ublic or with the with this book or that book or this art project, And there's so many of those things you can't do anymore because they have to make room for these tests. UM. I encountered it just a little bit when I very briefly taught

high school. Uh, And you know, it's like a whole part of the year ends up being just about prepping for these tests, getting ready to take these standardized tests, rehearsing for these standardized tests, and it becomes more about um preparing yourself for a simulation of knowledge rather than an actual understanding of knowledge, which is really specific, and it's handed down from policymakers at a national level, which

is then interpreted at a state level. Some of the problems that we continue to have in the system have to do with no child left behind because again we're talking about the stringent testing. Um, So trying to throw off those shackles and again find more room for the actual teaching and learning as opposed to as you say, preparing is really important here. Well, you know, it comes down to a very American way of dealing with problems.

You first thing you do, you have a meeting about it, and then you have another meeting about it, and then uh, and then if you reach it the bureaucracy level, then you start making some mandates. And that includes all these mandated tests. How many mandated tests does Finland have? Uh? They have one at age sixteen, you enter at age seven, and then at age sixteen you have one one mandatory test. So already you can begin to see that this is very contrary to what we do here in the United States. Um.

This is from and you partin in from Atlantic magazine. Uh. She had said that when she spoke with Passy Salberg, who wrote a book called finishal lessons what the world can learn from educational change in Finland? That he said that Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions. How can you keep track of a student's performance if you don't test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for

good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice? Now, he says, for finished educators, none of these questions are relevant, none of them. And uh, we should take a quick break, and when we get back, we'll get into why they're not relevant Finland and and perhaps why this is part of the reason they're so successful in academia. All right,

we're back. Just want to grow a more quick set around here before we go into the land of Finland's um. The two thousand and nine National Assessment of Educational Progress found barely one third of fourth graders in the United States were at or above the proficient level of science, with those proportions slipping tot in eighth grade, in twenty

one in twelfth grade. What this means is that we have a large population here, some of whom are going to college and they're not actually prepared, particularly in the area of science. So what does that spell out for the future of science brainiacs here in the United States? A little dim? Right? Meanwhile, in Finland, children are begin setting outerbra geometry and statistics in the first grade. Yes, and by age fifteen they tend to speak three languages.

Though that's not really that uncommon in Europe because you're gonna have the local language. You got Russia right next door, you got English kicking about so well. In the official languages are Finnish and Swedish, so you can't really just hang out which is Finnish language if you want to hang out with the rest of the world, right, especially culturally. Right.

So Okay, we talked about this education reform happening in the seven in these in the eighties and that finished, policymakers wanted to really try to recast their education system because they felt like that would bolster the entire country, and they would do this by providing equity, by making sure that each kid got a fair shot at a

good education. It was actually a pretty prescient move of them, because I think that this put them on a track to really compete globally because they realized they didn't have much to be competitive with. They couldn't rely on manufacturing or natural resources, and they instead had to invest in a knowledge based society. Now what does that sound like today? Very much like the United States, though we do have

American exceptionalism, right, don't we have? No? Well, maybe we don't have that sometimes that I don't know about that. So what does their school system look like? Percent of the schools or public. Only a small number of independent schools exists in Finland's that's three percent that are independent

or private, and they are all publicly financed. Finland offers all pupil's free school and meals, easy access to healthcare which is really important, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance. So it's not just hey, we have a great education system. They have everything in place to actually support uh, everything else. Right, Yeah, and this family is really telling as well. The people in the government agencies running these schools, they're there and

this goes from national offices to local authorities. They are educators. They're not business people. They're not military leaders and not career politicians. Um and uh. And every school has the same national goals and draw from the same pool of university trained educators. Yeah. It really is one of those things where it's so homogenized, but it works. Right. The homogeny here is quality. So if you have quality across

the board, then everybody gets the same education. Uh. And that is where you began to see these numbers, these incredible numbers. Fully of Finns graduate from high school. That's seventeen point five points higher than American students. And stick see, six percent are accepted to college and that's a higher rate than the US in every European nation. And they have a zero dropout right right, there's no there is

no Why would they drop out? Is sort of their idea, Okay, because they're moving through this system and they're really learning from it now, and all of this with significantly less homework. Yes, that's true, that significantly less homework. Actually, don't I think they have said that from from most of the reports that we read in Smithsonian and Atlantic that at the most maybe a half hour of homework. Yeah, because I mean, I'm going to sound like you know, twelve year oldier,

but homework is ridiculous. It's kind of like, I mean, well, why you spend all day there and then you have to go home to supposedly learn the stuff that you were doing during the day. That well, then half the people or more aren't gonna do it. So yeah. Yeah. The other thing is that, um, through throughout the school day, especially for the younger children, they have like forty five

minutes of school and then fifteen minutes of play. Forty five minutes of school, fifteen minutes played throughout today, so you do get those mental breaks. And we've talked about this before how important it is to be able to sort of take that break so that your brain can absorb the information. So they're certainly doing it the right way. Um. Okay, So some people might say, well, I think this is

super expensive. Well, okay, here's the big news here. Finland spends about thirty percent less per student than the US does to achieve which is obviously far superior results. Let's talk about the teachers. Who are these who are these these cogs in the system that are making making this work, because they're more than just cogs for starters, We're talking about highly educated people university degrees and then they have a remarkable amount of freedom and how they educate their classroom.

I've I've heard it. You know, they're not having to worry about about sticking to some sort of rigid, standardized curriculum all the time, and they're able to creatively engage

the students. Right. So, at the the national level level, or by UH, I should say, the education ministry, they say, okay, when it comes to math, here are ten pages of things that we want you guys to cover and make sure um kids are learning now that is and start contrast to like hundreds of pages that are usually handed down by education systems, and by the time it gets to that particular school or that teacher, they still are allowed to have a bit of interpretation of what that

means and flexibility and how they teach it. How is a really big part of this, right, So you have a centralized government that is helping to structure it, but they are giving uh teachers that that leeway. Yeah, I mean it also gives them the ability to look at the classroom and say, how am I gonna engage this group of people, Like, what is what is going to engage them? Is it going to be reading the Great Gasbee?

Probably not? All right? Right? And here's another thing, Um, some people might say, oh, they must be getting paid, you know, an amount that we just couldn't do here in the United States. Well finished teachers starting salaries are lower than in the US, but high school teachers with fifteen years experience make one two percent of what other college graduates make in the US. UH the figure is six of that. So eventually, over time, finished teachers are

paid more than UH United States teachers. But still, um, they're not too off in terms of the payment. What the big story here is is that teachers in Finland are regarded very highly. And um. This is from The Atlantic, the article why are Finland Schools so successful? It says the critical decision came in ninety nine when reformers required that every teacher earned a fifth year master's degree in theory and practice at one of the eight state universities,

which are free, by the way, at state expense. So they did at state's expense. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers, and applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high, because we know they aren't, but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive. In two thousand and tends some sixty applicants vibe for six hundred and sixty primary school

training slots. So we're talking about here is really passionate people who you know, they get to occupy the status as molders of um, you know, the future of Finland. And I don't mean to disparage any teachers in United States,

because there's so many wonderful passionate teachers, UM. But there are also a lot of people who could also be wonderful passionate teachers, but they don't because when you look at being a teacher here in the United States, UM, it's just not as as highly positioned as other things,

right correct. Um. You know, Also, when I was looking around at various articles and blog posts about this, you inevitably encounter somebody talking about, oh, what's it's a socialist system, socialism, and especially in the United States that the term socialism is often thrown about without any real understanding of what it means. But I find it interesting that um Clark Howard uh was a local, uh well not a local you can hear all over the country, but based in Atlanta.

Generally he's about, you know, finding cheap ways to live your life for more economically feasible ways to live your life, that sort of thing. He's a big fan of the Finland system and he actually compares it compares the teacher's freedom in the classroom to their approach to the way an entrepreneur would treat a business. Lots of ability, you know, on the field in the classroom, doing what's best for this environment and making it as as you know, great

a classroom as possible. You know, what's really cool too, is that the teachers do individual assessments of the children throughout the year. So again there's no big test, but what they're doing when they do that is they're looking at the strength and the weaknesses of that one child and then they're figuring out, well, okay, this kid might need more support here in math or reading or so on and so forth, and creating a curriculum that is

geared just for that child. Right, um, so, and now away you do have the homogeneous everybody gets a quality, high quality education. But at the same time you get that everybody gets the support that they need to access that information and to learn it, which is really key. Yeah, and you know a lot of the reason that they can do that is that they spend fewer hours at school each day, and they spend less time in the classrooms than American teachers, and they use the extra time

to build those curriculums and assess their students. So again they're not hamstrung by all of these different uh bits of standardized testing that are handed down. That being said, American schools, at least you've got good football programs. So there's always that now, But the hope here is it's not. You know, the whole reason we did the spot podcast was not to be a little American education. Um. I mean, certainly we're both products of American education. I'm a product

of public schools, um for better and worse. But but but but no, we we want to point out that that this is a system that a lot of people are looking at and they're saying, there's stuff we can learn from here. There's this is not something just some sort of a foreign model that doesn't mesh with our culture or our system. We could easily adopt some of these same principles, apply them to our own educational system, and years from now we could be the success story

that we've had. So many of us feel entitled to well that'll be the interesting thing to see Finland in twenty years because already, you know, their quality of life is pretty high, their economy is doing, you know, fairly well, and then they have this education system to boot support all of the rest of it. So you know, in twenty years will they be a major player. I don't know, but some people will look at this and say, well, you know, they're a smaller country and it's much more feasible.

Well so are their counterparts, Norway and Sweden, and they still with their system, they best them in terms of, you know, how their students are performing. And if you look at the United States, most of the school systems are stay run and you have at least eighteen states that have the same population as Finland. So there are certainly opportunities to to test this model out to see

to what extent it could be used. But of course those takeaways aren't that, you know, we need to have three years of maternity leave in place in order to be successful, which is not as a country going to get to that point yet. Right, there are basic things that Finland has that we won't. But again, this idea of UM raising the profile teachers and having good quality

for every single child. Well, that's the whole theory of you know, when waters rise, all all boats rise, right, um and again, and I want to harken back to what you said to like, we're not trying to take on the American education system. That's a huge, huge topic and it's far more complex and nuanced than we've touched

on here. Um. But I do think that you know, a sense of pride in America and um and wanting it to be a vital contributor to the rest of the World's really important to have an education system in place that can make sure that everybody plays together on a global scale. Yeah. Now to your point about to what extent of Finland may be you know, a major player in in the future. It is again worth the pointing out that it is apparently home to Santa, who

was already a major global player. We don't have Santa. What are we gonna do for me? You know, we don't have Lapland And if holding them back, it's just probably that that massive troll problem they have exactly that. And um, well I depression because of those extremely long days of darkness. Yeah, but you know, you just buy

a lamp, then you're good, that's true. Lamp At. A study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which was highlighted by John Metca for Atlantic Cities, points out that there are a couple of barriers the decent STEM education in the US. I just want to take them off real quick, something for us all to ponder. The first is a

persistent reluctance to embrace the theory of evolution. In states like Ury and Tennessee, learning about Darwin's theory of natural selection is still voluntary in schools um And recently there was a news item, by the way, that came out about UM kids who were taught to creationism and they're really poor science UM skills. Well that's not surprising at all, right, uh So, and uh let me said a cath says, says many standards also in events, a remarkable vagueness in

the goals that they hope to achieve. And math instruction is lacking in many jurisdictions, and teachers don't have enough guidance when it comes to building science instruction into their lesson plans. So again, the support system isn't quite there, all right, So there you have it. Uh again, we just wanted to provide some information about this finished system that a lot of people were talking about. UM. Certainly, do some Google searches, you'll find most of these the

documents we're talking about. There are a lot of news stories without there a lot of blogs discussing the various aspects of this that could be applied to the U S system. Uh. In the meantime, we would love to hear from any teachers out there. Uh. You could be American teachers, maybe your Finish teachers, anyone who has actual firsthand experience with the Finnish system. That would be great to hear from you to get your two cents on

all this. Uh. Oh, and I did want to just just to underline it, um, my cat and lamp solution to depression. I'm only talking about seasonal effective disorder, and I'm doing so right kind of flippantly. Uh, But not to get into the much deeper subject of depression, which we may may discussed in the future podcast. Indeed, that is for another topic. And UM, yeah, we would love

to hear from you guys. And I also would love to hear any success stories as a student or a teacher, um, And what sort of models you may have experience that works for because I think this is really honestly a fascinating topic. You can't say that we're not all interested in some level. We all support good education, right yeah, yeah,

I mean it would be madness, not too so. How you can how you can find us, how you can get in touch with us, How you can see what we're up to, various blogs, podcasts, eos, holograms, whatever we're doing in the weeks ahead. You can find us at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is the mothership, that is where all content begins or ends. It's the center of our universe. And uh, you can also find us on social media. We're on Facebook We're stuff to

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