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Funny you should say that Finland has a more lax approach to testing, homework; and more free time for students. That's exactly the reverse of what critical politicians in Sweden point towards when juxtaposing Finland's success to Sweden's lackluster and decaying educational results.
Here we think of Finnish education as more disciplined and knowledge-oriented. The argument is that whereas in Sweden teachers mostly let the children do their work for them through flimsy goal oriented grade documents and spend very little time behind the teacher's desk lecturing; in Finland they actually make use of their office hours for teaching as opposed to mostly functioning as "guides" for students working individually and in groups with others.
Of course the Swedish system might be ideal in a world where you've got infinite resources; where you can afford to hire lots of teachers and children have lots of adult role models. But in reality there will be 1 teacher for ~25 children (classes often more croweded). And the individual regard that teachers are supposed to show each and every one of the children remains an idealistic paragraph of a government document. A document that was drafted on ideological grounds. Likely harmless in intent with a school system in the most perfect of perfect worlds in mind. But through the last two decades it has continually increased the gaps between children of different ethnic and educational backgrounds (and it was implemented by the social democrats, whose expectations of the changes always were that the unique regard for every student's individuality would accomplish the opposite -- that in fact immigrants and children whose parents didn't attend higher education would catch up with the entitled through the guidance and regard of their individual needs from teachers).
Another thing the Finns have done well, and another potential explanation to the success of their educational system, is how they've managed to increase the status and regard for the teaching profession. In Sweden everyone knows teachers' pays are shit. Career development and promotions virtually don't exist. Universities and colleges educating future teachers are heavily criticized for their bad quality (exceptions to the rule exist of course) and as sometimes too reliant on group projects (helping weaker students graduate). I'm not sure whether in Finland they require you to have a degree to teach, but I suspect they do as their teaching colleges/universities attract top students and require good grades to attend (whereas in Swe far too many apply because it seems like a convenient and somewhat effortless way to make your living and the grade requirements are low). In Finland the competition is healthy for teaching jobs, whereas in Sweden people without degrees are thrown into classrooms because of there being too big of a demand and too few qualified teachers (slighly exaggerating, but still very common and prevalent).
Perhaps Finland is the Swedish system done right.
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I'm a third year student at a Technical University. The statement in the video about having very little homework is a bit exaggeterated as laguu already mentioned. I have some weeks when there isnt too much to do and then there are some weeks when I'm literally doing nothing else than studying for the exams and getting all the work assignments done.
Food is free till universities, and even then it is only about 2€ / meal. The unis as I've heard and experienced have very diverse curriculum options which you can modify yourself as you will. It also doesn't matter at all if you wish to study few courses on a subject that is completely different from your main and side subjects, it's all for the good.
Talking about pressure, I've never had any pressure until the last night of studying for an exam and realizing that I do not handle most of the things, but for that I can just blame myself  Overall I've been in schools that have very relaxed and non-pressure athmosphere, teachers are usually very willing to help us more than enough.
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As a future high school math teacher, this pretty much makes me salivate.
Finland kicks American ass in math and science. They're pretty much consistently top three in the world when it comes to testing well there.
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On October 04 2011 18:48 jamssi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2011 18:26 AnxiousHippo wrote:
Finland just generally seems like a great place to live. Only if you like 7 months of cold and darkness each year.
can't be worse then garbage louisiana humidity. I go outside and instantly sweat sometimes lol
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United States10501 Posts
How do they have more teachers, smaller class size, better pay and still have it cost less than in US?
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hehe, I really like finnish school system. It gives exactly a lot free-time and little homework... but we use our time very "cost-effectivily". At least in my school, you won't end up having "dark holes" that should be learned since you can ask anything from teachers even after classes. Also classes aren't spent on unnecessary things and education for being teacher is very long so they have great knowledge~~
people saying that some teahcers are trash, thats not true. Usually maybe 1-2 teachers in schools are trash, but I wouldn't consider that too many
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I think that the Swedish school system is getting worse. We're in this "everyone needs to pass" mentality cause if someone gets an IG (equivalent of an F) parents go batshit insane and refuse to realize that it's their child who's lazy.
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Also. Don't think that all finnish 15-25 years old are well-educated, we have a good share of dumbasses also.
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I have a friend in Sweden who described her schooling expirience to me and it definately sounded a lot better than what I had growing up in the USA. The main differences I noticed were, when you reached highschool, you chose a program to go into, like art, theatre etc and you would stay in that program with that group of people throughout your highschool career. Also she said she started learning English around 1st grade, and then started Spanish (which she picked from spanish/french/german) in 6th grade, while for me not a single other language was offered until highschool (although I do understand that as a native English speaker it is a little different of a situation). Any other differences were small and since I haven't been to every USA school or know all the Swedish schools I can't really say if it's just a difference in the school or a difference in the system.
Anyway, since I can't watch the video (at school right now, haha :D) is this a similar system as what they have in Finland? A couple of posts above me someone compared Sweden vs Finland but he didn't mention anything like this.
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On October 04 2011 18:03 Jienny wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Well, more or less. Our schools make learning so that when you're motivated, you will learn stuff yourself rather than shoving those books to our throats. Thus making students learn lot by them self and wanting that information. Knowing yourself, that without proper education. You will end up in cleaning or similar crappy job. That makes you study harder and learn stuff. I recall my self at 7th grade when our guidance counselor asked "What you want to do when you are old?", and I just shrugged at that moment. Then she just showed me cleaner at halls and said, "that's pretty much what you're going to do if you don't study enough for what you desire". And I got really fast what I wanted to do, and what grades to aim for. + Show Spoiler +Also teachers being quite highly educated helps, does smooth out all the misconceptions and wrong information on our studies.
Somewhat our society has changed in past years and its going to bit wrong way in all honesty. 10~ years ago, when someone got bad grade from test, usually parents scolded the kid. Now they call our teachers, and start yelling to them for giving their children bad grade. So it can turn to worse at our ranking to be honest, if this keeps up.
It's funny, that's exactly what Asian parents emphasize to their children so we all become Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Accountants. Yet, we are the ones that are criticized for instilling "the wrong" values in our children.
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Here, take my 3000 
I didn't do homework once since I left primary school and was absent the maximum possible time.
Made it into university without any extra testing.
I know plenty of similar people. The problems I have now when I have to learn something by myself (and it's even something that I'm not particularly interested in because I'm in the wrong branch..)
is that I have absolutely no tools to study or motivate myself.
So while I think that the basis is really good the system is too uniform. A lot of potential goes to waste, you can just guess how frustrating it is to go to a school for 6-7 years and learn next to nothing or be ever faced with a real challenge.
I'm from a rural area though so there might be more options in some cities that I haven't heard of but as far as I know it's pretty much the same.
I guess the teachers are better than in most places because from all the way from Kindergarten teachers they are university educated people.
English starts for 9-10 year olds, swedish 13-14, 12 year olds can choose to study atleast German or French (those are the options I had to choose from).
Any more languages later on are certainly possible but schedules start to overlap after those.
I feel there's way too little mandatory physics, chemistry and PE.
On October 05 2011 00:51 Rustymike wrote:
Also. Don't think that all finnish 15-25 years old are well-educated, we have a good share of dumbasses also.
This. The "success" of the educational system certainly doesn't show in the general population.
On October 05 2011 00:12 BlackJack wrote:
How do they have more teachers, smaller class size, better pay and still have it cost less than in US?
There's probably a big difference in the way the costs are calculated.
The pay is also definitely not good for teachers. Atleast not when compared to other university educated people.
e. ghost! :D
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On October 04 2011 18:48 jamssi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2011 18:26 AnxiousHippo wrote:
Finland just generally seems like a great place to live. Only if you like 7 months of cold and darkness each year.
I do - I moved from California :D
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On October 04 2011 18:09 Kukaracha wrote:
Sounds like a dream.
Here in France, you start working from 8 AM to 5 PM every working day of the week (except Wednesday, which starts at 8 and ends at 1 PM) at the age of 6. There is homework everyday and it's common to have an hour of homework everyday if you're a serious student.
But it's always more relaxed than Korea though.
Or so I thought... our government cut the public school budgets and now every teacher is under severe depression and stress.
1-hour of homework everyday really isn't a lot...
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On October 04 2011 21:08 FreshVegetables wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2011 20:04 Sotamursu wrote:
The school system is generally pretty good, but it does have its problems. Also some teachers are just so fucking bad you learn absolutely nothing. The good part is that you can complain about them and get them fired.
It's true that there's pretty much no pressure until you apply to a university and even then if you did well on the matriculation and the entrance exams, you'll get in easily. This system does sort of promote laziness. I pretty much never studied to a single exam and yet I'm in one of the best schools in my country. You can complain and get them fired, really? Also about the getting in to unis and other schools easily it all depends a lot on what branch your looking to study in. Your also implying that the system promotes laziness? How exactly because I have to strongly disagree. Your post was quite misleading and subjective imo Also I would like to know about these "fucking bad teachers", care to elaborate?
I'm speaking completely from personal experiences. We had a few bad teachers over the years we complained about and they got fired (different schools). These teachers sucked simply because they couldn't teach shit and they had absolutely no authority over the classroom. One had a nervous breakdown mid-classm, because no one was listening to her. etc. A large number of complaints from the students and their parents is at least going to have some effect, even if it didn't get the teacher fired.
To give you a specific example, our database course teachers method of teaching was to read his pdfs aloud and ignore any questions asked. He would also randomly stop speaking and go for a coffee break, only to return 30 minutes later and continuing like nothing had happened. We all had to study the things required ourselves, because the teacher was clueless.
The whole system is pretty easy and you can sail through it with minimal effort and still get mediocre grades. If you want to be better, you study a bit. It doesn't directly promote laziness, but it doesn't really challenge the students either. Of course getting into med schools etc. is still going to be hard.
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United States10501 Posts
On October 05 2011 01:30 HwangjaeTerran wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 00:12 BlackJack wrote:
How do they have more teachers, smaller class size, better pay and still have it cost less than in US? There's probably a big difference in the way the costs are calculated. The pay is also definitely not good for teachers. Atleast not when compared to other university educated people. e. ghost! :D
Yeah, I googled around and I think the salary is more or less the same. The difference is probably that Finland has a lot of the perks like universal healthcare and pensions as part of their national system so that cost isn't calculated as going towards education but instead going towards healthcare/social security. In the states those perks for teachers are probably recorded as going towards education spending.
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On October 05 2011 02:29 CharlieBrownsc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2011 18:09 Kukaracha wrote:
Sounds like a dream.
Here in France, you start working from 8 AM to 5 PM every working day of the week (except Wednesday, which starts at 8 and ends at 1 PM) at the age of 6. There is homework everyday and it's common to have an hour of homework everyday if you're a serious student.
But it's always more relaxed than Korea though.
Or so I thought... our government cut the public school budgets and now every teacher is under severe depression and stress. 1-hour of homework everyday really isn't a lot...
I think that when you're 6 years old it's quite a fair amount of time to be spent sitting in a chair, in silence...
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United States24680 Posts
On October 04 2011 19:44 Soleron wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2011 19:09 micronesia wrote:On October 04 2011 18:03 Jienny wrote:
Somewhat our society has changed in past years and its going to bit wrong way in all honesty. 10~ years ago, when someone got bad grade from test, usually parents scolded the kid. Now they call our teachers, and start yelling to them for giving their children bad grade. So it can turn to worse at our ranking to be honest, if this keeps up. Haha that's just like schools in the US. Only difference is it's been happening here for more than 10 years... I don't understand why you don't have national government-set exams. Letting schools set their own grades sounds unfair and hugely open to abuse, especially for university entrance. In the UK you just get three A grades on the national tests and you get a top 10 university place regardless of anything else you do, extracurricular or otherwise. There's not even more applicants than places for people with those grades.
Well it's hard to get every state on the same page in terms of curricula... our country is a lot bigger than the UK, for example.
We do have some exams which are useful for college entrance including the PSAT, SATI, SATIIs, ACT, etc.
We don't have specific federal government mandated exams at the high school level but we do at the lower levels. Also, there are federal government mandates for there to be uniform exams in high schools at the state level etc... just not the federal level.
On October 05 2011 04:21 Sotamursu wrote:
To give you a specific example, our database course teachers method of teaching was to read his pdfs aloud and ignore any questions asked. He would also randomly stop speaking and go for a coffee break, only to return 30 minutes later and continuing like nothing had happened. We all had to study the things required ourselves, because the teacher was clueless.
Oh I could have sworn that only happened in the USA!!! XD
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Idk how much I trust this because while their average test scores are better, their top students might be suffering more than in US or China.
Looking at recent International Olympiads (be it Math, Linguistics, Physics, Bio, etc.), the Finnish seem to be doing quite poorly at them. Meanwhile, USA actually tops the list in most of them.
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On October 05 2011 11:00 ghrur wrote:
Idk how much I trust this because while their average test scores are better, their top students might be suffering more than in US or China.
Looking at recent International Olympiads (be it Math, Linguistics, Physics, Bio, etc.), the Finnish seem to be doing quite poorly at them. Meanwhile, USA actually tops the list in most of them.
I would guess the 300 million population difference between the US and Finland had something to do with that
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On October 05 2011 13:21 DNB wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 11:00 ghrur wrote:
Idk how much I trust this because while their average test scores are better, their top students might be suffering more than in US or China.
Looking at recent International Olympiads (be it Math, Linguistics, Physics, Bio, etc.), the Finnish seem to be doing quite poorly at them. Meanwhile, USA actually tops the list in most of them. I would guess the 300 million population difference between the US and Finland had something to do with that
Not really because Singapore does quite well on these with an equal population and India doesn't do well despite having an enormous population.
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EPT
