Boston.com: "Learning from Finland"...

[YvonneCa]

...

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/12/27/learning_from_finland/?camp=localsearch:on:twit:rtbutton

[Igel]

1. That's a problem with op-ed as news.

What you get isn't real understanding, it's just the facts and portions of facts necessary to buttress an already-existing opinion.

Finland also starts kids in school at age 7, has a more educated population overall than the US, is culturally homogeneous (at this point), and makes sure that the kids that don't do well in academics go to vocational programs even though they don't track within programs. They lack the abrupt transitions between schools that we have in the US, keep kids with the same teacher for longer periods of time and have special tutoring arrangements.

None of this matters, of course, to an op-ed writer for whom the only pertinent bit of Finland is what is grist for a domestic opinion piece. In fact, the more skewed the impression you take away from the op-ed piece, the more convinced you are that the primary or even sole reasons for Finland's success are the points mentioned and that simply importing these practices to the US would make US schools great and we'd even have bunnies floating through the air, the more effective it is as a piece of rhetoric.

[Fumesucker]

2. Finland is also a *lot* less religious than the USA..

Obviously we can't learn anything from a bunch of godless socialists, our divine support system would fail and we would be vulnerable to attack from any and all direction.