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Monday, April 16, 2012 | HML Blog # 13 |
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The Horace Mann League Blog
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Greetings!
This issue features two articles about Finland's public education system. The third article is about Fareed Zakaria's presentation on CNN about public education.
Your comments and suggestions are always appreciated. Jack McKay, The Horace Mann League. |
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Major Articles Added to the HML Blog
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Four Questions about Finland's Education
by Paul Sahlberg
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Paul Sahlberg
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In brief, public education is basic human right and basic service to all children and their families. One of the key factors behind Finland's good and equitable educational performance in international studies is the strong role of public education.
1. What is the purpose of public education?
2. How does your country measure school success and hold schools accountable for educating students effectively?
3. How do the schools in your country address the impact of poverty on education?
4. How do we educate children to become citizens of a global community instead of merely competitors in a global economy?
There is a Finnish saying: "Real winners don't compete". We believe that what children learn to do together today, they can do alone tomorrow.
To access the complete article, click here.
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What can we learn from educational change in Finland?
Surprisingly, educational change in Finland has been studied more by foreigners than by the Finns themselves. Analysis by Andy Hargreaves, Dennis Shirley, Linda Darling-Hammond, Sam Abrams, Diane Ravitch, Tony Wagner and several international journalists have helped us to understand the nature of whole system reform in Finland. These scholars emphasize the importance of making the entire system work well, not just it's 'output part', e.g. early childhood development, well-being of children in school, and professionalism within education craft.
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Flunking the Test
by Paul Farhi, Washington Post
The American education system has never been better, several important measures show. But you'd never know that from reading overheated media reports about "failing" schools and enthusiastic pieces on unproven "reform" efforts. Fri., March 30, 2012.
Fareed Zakaria is worried about the state of American education. To hear the CNN host and commentator tell it, the nation's schools are broken and must be "fixed" to "restore the American dream." In fact, that was the title of Zakaria's primetime special in January, "Restoring the American Dream: Fixing Education." Zakaria spent an hour thumbing through a catalog of perceived educational woes: high dropout rates, mediocre scores by American students on international tests, inadequate time spent in classrooms, unmotivated teachers and their obstructionist labor unions. "Part of the reason we're in this crisis is that we have slacked off and allowed our education system to get rigid and sclerotic," he declared.
This is odd. By many important measures - high school completion rates, college graduation, overall performance on standardized tests - America's educational attainment has never been higher. Moreover, when it comes to education, sweeping generalizations ("rigid and sclerotic") are more dangerous than usual. How could they not be? With nearly 100,000 public schools, 55 million elementary and secondary students and 2.5 million public school teachers currently at work in large, small, urban, suburban and rural districts, education may be the single most complex endeavor in America.
Click here to access the complete article.
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