Why Finland Schools Rank #1 In the World, and the USA Flounders

originally posted by: jellyrev

If culture does not matter explain why asians, whites, hispanics, and blacks all score different? You are going to have problems explaining asian americans.
White americans are right in line with Europe, coming in at about the same score as Germany. Scores fell when the mainstream culture lost consensus.

I see what you are driving at now.

I think home environments are extremely important, but I'm not exactly sure that constitutes culture, but rather poverty/chaos in a black, or hispanic area.

The education system is suppose to be similar across the board, in the USA, for all children and many poverty stricken areas produce some brilliant children, in spite of the chaos they live in.

What I'm saying is a outside culture may influence an educational system, but public educational systems are in theory suppose to stand independent from the culture, and are put in place so children can rise up from the #ty culture/area they may live in.

The reason children do better in wealthier areas is because of the proactive parents that may be involved in helping out, example (PTA), fund-raisers, etc. this is example of the culture interacting with the system, but not the standing education system by itself, hence why publicly funded school systems do better in certain areas.

I'm guessing in the last 20 years Finland hasn't had tens of thousands of illegal citizens daily cross the border and flood the education system, healthcare system, welfare system, etc.

originally posted by: TatTvamAsi
a reply to: Realtruth


I am from Finland. Sure, we rank tops in the educational system along with some Asian countries. Please explain then why the same countries also rank highest in suicide rates? Is there a correlation between the amount of brainwashing done? I have no answer to this other than the question I just posed.

Good question I don't have an answer to that but here are the top 25 suicide rates related to countries worldwide, with explanations.

list25.com...

a reply to: Spider879

In much of the school systems liberal arts is considered a waste, I guess because the term "Liberal" seemed too political?? .

Spider you appear to be a cool guy to have some drinks with, but your bias and myopic view of politics is strong my friend.

.look who is the pick for education, a lady who had never taught a day in her life, failed at her hearing so badly that two Reps crossed party lines, and this lady is anti- public school to boot...it's bad because it's in someone financial interest to make them fail.

You are aware that both the republicans and democrats have had their chance to fix the system and have hired SO called qualified candidates in the past and they have only made things worse, right.

I not going to claim she is qualified or that she even deserves the job, but sometimes having somebody that is from outside the system looking in is not automatically a bad thing.Especially when the system is already a mess,corrupted, and full of team players.

I'm not saying she will do a good job, but I wouldn't automatically write off because she has no experience in the industry.

Now the likely hood for not doing a good job is high but has nothing todo with her experience or party, but rather special interest that effects both party.

The democrats and the republicans have both destroyed the education system in the US for special interest.

a reply to: Realtruth

Government cannot be independent from culture, it is created of people who have culture. Culture have beliefs, these beliefs lead to voting for people who support policies which are influenced by culture.

I knew the poverty would be blamed hence why I included asian americans, which was ignored. Even if many asian americans are affluent, they were not always affluent. what do they do differently, even outscoring their white counterparts who should have had an advantage?

Lastly what I am really pointing out is that the american education system is working, in fact for whites and asian americans it is one of the best systems in the world.
It is failing 2 large minority groups as you note. What can cure their problems? An easy start would be fathers in the home. The ses outcomes of fatherless homes are tragic.

Washington D.C. spends 30K per student and over 80% of students in 8th grade are not proficient in reading and math. It is not a function of school spending within the states.

I just recently spoke with a teacher about common core , which every teacher appears to hate.

I asked her what the hell was wrong with the system we had previously that put men in the Moon and helped create all the technology we have today?

I also don't care for John Oliver too much but he did do a segment about the education system and Pearson books which is the main school supplier of books and was one of the big reason for it being a F up.

He had a school principle that has several masters degrees, teaches 6 six different universities and was curious why some kids were doing so horrible with the tests. He took the test and if I recall correctly scored poorly.




The conclusion was the Pearson books care more about selling books than kids education (Shocker, I know) . Pearson was also involved in the creation of some of the test. The kicker was that the test were purposely designed for kids to fail them , unless they used pearson materials as study guides.

Its disgusting what we accept from our elected officials and its idiotic of the American public to think we will fix anything such as the education system ,healthcare, or all the F up industry where the public loses and the Corporations win until we only focus on Issues such as these :
1. Congregational term limits

2. campaign financing reform.

3. Lobbying reform

4. doing away with super-pacs

5. Revolving door between gov't and private sector

6. Transparency

originally posted by: jellyrev
Finnish people did not implode their culture. A culture molds the government via voting and then synergizes with civic culture.

Want to be like Finland? Have your citizens adopt finnish culture.
Want to be like another country adopt that culture.

We're supposed to be the great melting pot. Why can't we adopt that part of their culture that makes their education system work?

originally posted by: jellyrev
a reply to: Realtruth


It is failing 2 large minority groups as you note. What can cure their problems? An easy start would be fathers in the home. The ses outcomes of fatherless homes are tragic.

Not sure how we can solve that problem, fatherless/motherless homes is definitely an issue, but with the divorce ratio being extremely high, and an extreme divide between men and women these days that number is going up fast.

I'm not sure fatherless homes are synonymous to blacks and hispanics, however the numbers may be higher for sure.

The problems culturally are the growing intolerance between men/women and the ability to work together in harmony for a strong core family unit. When I say family I'm not referring to marriage, but rather the ideal of focusing on the best interests of the children, because this can be accomplished without marriage.

Personally I think we are moving to fast focusing on bling, and things that actually do not matter to building a better family unit. The Me, Me, Me generation is gutting family stability and we have seen countless generations of suffer because of it.

Who knows maybe in the future people will have to test, or provide proof so they can procreate and raise their offspring, because the way things are now there is large populace that are not capable.

Thank you for your well thought out input and debate.

a reply to: Realtruth

I'm not a communist (I swear!), nor am I an advocate of "income redistribution", but having a LOT of income inequality and poor contributes a great deal to the poor test scores.

People tend to think the wealthier public school districts score better because of how much money they spend, higher quality teachers, technology, etc. I'm sure that those things help, but I believe the home situation has more to do with it.

A single parent working two jobs does not have enough interaction time with their children before or during their school years to help them excel. More and more kids don't start reading, or even knowing their alphabet before kindergarten, or 1st grade in some cases. It's a lot easier if a parent is home with the kids full time.

It also allows the working parent more interaction time with the kids in the home hours, rather than both parents using their few waking, non-working hours to take care of chores.

Further, the parents of the poor are more likely to be less educated themselves. Children learn from their environment.

originally posted by: dogstar23
a reply to: Realtruth

I'm not a communist (I swear!), nor am I an advocate of "income redistribution", but having a LOT of income inequality and poor contributes a great deal to the poor test scores.

People tend to think the wealthier public school districts score better because of how much money they spend, higher quality teachers, technology, etc. I'm sure that those things help, but I believe the home situation has more to do with it.

A single parent working two jobs does not have enough interaction time with their children before or during their school years to help them excel. More and more kids don't start reading, or even knowing their alphabet before kindergarten, or 1st grade in some cases. It's a lot easier if a parent is home with the kids full time.

It also allows the working parent more interaction time with the kids in the home hours, rather than both parents using their few waking, non-working hours to take care of chores.

Further, the parents of the poor are more likely to be less educated themselves. Children learn from their environment.

You are not communist for your views, in fact, your comments are all 100% accurate.

I think the conundrum these days is that the majority of single parents and lower income homes that actually work are plagued with when exactly do I spend quality time with my children.

I think a cultural awareness and balance are needed, as well as an implementation of self-empowerment. People demonize unions, but the reasons they were established over 200 years ago, in the USA, was to make conditions and pay better for everyone, but within the past 30 years have been gutted due to propaganda by the elite.

If we are going to have a society that is balanced working more than 20 to 30 hours a week is unhealthy for a strong family unit, and when mom/dad are spending most of the time at work, who's raising the kids?

I truly think we need to step back and really get our priorities in order, but time will tell.

Thanks for your great input.

a reply to: Realtruth

So true - it used to be fairly common, not that long ago, for people with "regular" jobs to be single-income families and get by just fine. If the new paradigm is to have nearly everyone working, then 30 hour workweeks should be enough.

I've worked hard to earn an income that affords us to be a single-earner family. We're not rich by any means, but until both kids are in school, my wife isn't going back to work. If I made $20k less/year, we couldn't do it.

I'm really thankful my kids are growing up with mom at home full time, and my time off is full time "family time."