My Finland soliloquy….
Finland, Finland, Finland. We keep hearing and seeing it as the model with high marks in testing and book after book being written how to be like a Finn when teaching. And let me say- okay the hype is not wrong. I mean a school system that allows learning through play and doesn’t push academics until around age 7 and even then its in a gentle and a model that focuses on what we would call Universal Design- I mean that’s pretty fab. Additionally, kids are getting this education in their local schools down the street. Oh, and the best part- teachers are all highly qualified and respected-its like hey when can I immigrate over right?
So we read our books and look how can we be more Finnish in our teaching. Again I think that is an awesome thought- we should all be looking to have our child-centered lessons that allow multiple means for learning and approaching understandings of concepts. Where it gets all tricky, specifically for US-based teachers, is that most of us not in Finland or Norway or the likes are lacking some of the basic foundations that make the model a success.
It would be pretty sweet to have teachers be a highly respected position AND it would be amazing to know our students have their basic needs met when they show up to school- and by this I mean food, shelter, and a safe home. So with that first sentence, I already know that many teachers (at least in the US) are not starting with something that is common in Finland. We have students coming into the room with food insecurity, possible homelessness, and in some areas a great deal of trauma. I’ll also throw in that educators often do not feel respected and often I’d argue can feel undervalued and disrespected. So when striving for Finland test scores we need to take these VERY big differences into account upfront.
Did you know for example, in Milwaukee public schools a great deal of the funding at the beginning of the year went to ensuring that children would be fed during the pandemic because a good chunk of the children attending Title 1 schools get two of their meals at school? With school closed those children would possibly not eat at all. There was outroar and upset that the school spent so much funding on a portion of the students when they should have been prepared with their budgets to spend on distance learning. They did of course do a catch-up and get devices to houses that needed it and help set up hotspots for students in their houses but again a good part of that funding went to where it was needed. Therefore crisis learning models and catch-up in an attempt to have some equity during a pandemic left some of the wealthier schools feeling they were being punished to have their funds go to the basic needs of others in less wealthy districts.
In Finnish schools, the citizens send their children to the school down the street. This is because the schools are equitably funded and the teachers are highly qualified in all the schools. You must have an M.Ed to be a teacher there. There was an interesting video I stumbled upon from Youtube creator Christine McCartney below. She discusses the different paths the educational systems of the US and Finland took and how the business model of education has had an impact on our educational structures. She also touches on a great deal of research paralelled by Pasi Sahlberg, which you can find discussed here. We can see how funding in the US was cut to students with the greatest needs and how it gets cut based on political will at different times and PD for teachers is cut in the US when budgets get tight. Whereas tests are the center of US schools, students and teachers are the center in Finland.
All of this is to say- that I would LOVE to focus on Finland's style of learning but I’d also like to suggest we start being a bit more vocal on the equity of our school system and if we are to embrace this style of teaching we need to also start asking for the system that helps it thrive and consider the importance of success in all schools rather than vouchers and escape for a lucky few.
