What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
The whole society is based on leveling differences. The week ones drop out and the good ones are held back but on the average everything looks good. It is also very rare to be self-employed. If you want to accomplish something out of ordinary you have to leave the country; think of Linus Torvalds for example.
About history: Finland has been part of Sweden and Russian and we are still been constantly reminded about it. For example, our current president Tarja Halonen refuses answer questions about democracy in Russia. I think the whole country needs a psychotherapy about the Russia issue.
You should think a Finn as passive-aggressive, risk-avoiding, self-loathing, highly educated native with inferiority complex. Those qualities with the lack of courage to speak up makes us the ultimate slave race.
I wonder if you would detect the "passive-aggressive" temperament you mention in this joke? It could be described that way, though it strikes me more as a kind of shrewdness, based in long experience of managing much more powerful neighbors. (I didn't know that Finland had gotten it from both sides.)
This article strikes me as politically correct cargo-cultism. The features of Finnish schools that it talks about wouldn't work in just any society.
I'm a Finn and I don't think introversion has much to do with why our educational system works as well as it does.
Us being introvert doesn't translate to all children sitting quietly in classrooms, absorbing information. There are .. problematic kids too.
I'd say it's more about the good foundation, as the article seems to imply. The curriculum is pretty solid too.
Finnish social customs are certainly way too uptight though.
Being stupid is certainly not cool, but not exactly frowned upon in the retard-circles either :p
Our social customs are a problem because somehow the whole nation feels like it's not "normal" to strike up a casual conversation with someone you don't already know.
I think that's part of why we seem so introvert. When we get to know others, we can then behave like normal people :)
It's just that getting there is needlessly difficult.
As far as I know, Finnish and Japanese people and societies share quite a few traits.
Some degree of introversion seems to be common to both, but based on two trips to Tokyo, I'd say that the Japanese are still considerably more relaxed than Finns are.
I can't comment on Switzerland or Germany, and I don't know much about the Japanese educational system, other than that they don't seem to be teaching English too well :p
I'm afraid that I'd need a more specific question to be able to offer some insight.
There are many things to ask; I just wondered if you had a general impression about the comparison. You said they share quite a few traits -- for example?
Both countries have a relatively high suicide-rate.
Both societies frown upon someone who changes jobs frequently, and being unemployed is considered shameful and terrible in general.
The way we travel in public transports seems to be the same too. Everyone just sits there in silence :)
On a happier note, our languages often sound surprisingly similar.
- For example there are words in the Finnish language that happen to sound like words in the Japanese language.
The meanings are different of course, but at least to me, saying the word "sato" sounds exactly the same in both languages. In Finnish it means "crop" (as in what you reap), and in Japanese it means "village".
There are probably quite a few others like that.
I've been told that Finns most resemble the people in Hokkaido, the northmost area in Japan where the climate is supposedly like (southern?) Finland.
Germany? Maybe they're as methodological in Japan?
I studied German for about 5 years at school (voluntarily even), but nowadays I can probably make it through more sentences in Japanese without breaking any.
As far as I remember, we didn't hear much about their culture..
They had a fun way of wishing good luck though: "Hals- und Beinbruch!", which means something like "Neck- and leg-fractures!", as in "Break a leg!" :)
Well, you guys do belong in the same family of languages after all..
In Finland we just settle for saying "Onnea!" as in "Luck!".
The high suicide rate is an interesting fact. Checking on http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicider... Finland and Japan are indeed right next to each other. But on http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murde... Finland's murder rate is closer to USA (#30 vs #24) than Japan's #60.
The parallels between Germans and Japanese were indeed about being methodological. I am unsure how this idea really holds though, as the education systems are, AFAIK, very different. There's still much to find out...
This kind of thing happens almost exclusively in the Finnish countryside.
It's strange, but it's better than lunatics killing random people on the streets.
I'd say that random killings are extremely rare, maybe unlike America, and that this is still a relatively safe place.
But lately we've had our share of totally incomprehensible violence too..
Interesting. I remember when I began using IRC at the age of 10. The rate that I read at increased considerably within several months. It's unfortunate that many kids today watch TV without subtitles and SMS each other unintelligibly. If they're on the internet, they're probably looking at pictures of cats on Digg.
How the hell are kids supposed to learn how to read these days?
http://www.roflcat.com/images/cats/270915355_c8b9ae48e6.jpg
Edumacation
Learn me a book
Finland has a great educational system. It's that simple. And that hard too. It takes decades to create a good educational system, and you can't do it with handing out more money or new laws.
Anyway, our educational system is pretty much uniformly great all the way to the end of upper-secondary school.
After that though, there are only a handful of good universities to attend.
It seems that among colleges etc, there are lots of really good choices in America.
For example I went to a polytechnic, "majored" in IT, and learned next to nothing about programming there.
Now I'm relatively far from being a Real Programmer (tm), but trying to slowly make my way towards being one.
They want a "supportive atmosphere" which means little criticism (of ideas). This is not unusual. Pretty much no one is philosophically serious about parenting or education, today.
Feel free to email me at curi@curi.us for more details or reply here.
Edit: sigh, Alfie had the major relevant thread on his forum deleted from archive.org, all I seem to have are some partial quotes in AIM logs.
"Part of the problem here, some argue, is a lack of clarity or transparency in those posts, such that people whose views closely correspond to TCS generally don’t identify themselves as such." -- Alfie Kohn
He wanted TCS people to wear identifying stars, if you know what I mean.
I would chock it up to finland being a more homogenous society. Many of those small european countries have top notch education systems, but they are small and everybody is well off. I personally think that the US needs to find its best way to educate, not somebody else's.
They also have free college. I'm jealous.