I like your comment. You probably are not German, but if, you would like the texts of Reinhard Kahl (http://reinhardkahl.de/). His texts are basically about the question 'What kind of school works', and actually 'What do we mean by "school works"'. Among others he tried hard to demystifiying the success of the finnish school system in the first PISA test, argueing against just copying blindly some aspects that _seemed_ important (e.g. like you, he pointed out that 'education' was socially highly respected in Finnland, unlike in most other european countries). He constantly writes about (german) schools that achieve very good results in tests like PISA, highlighting what they do differently. It is quite interesting that he often finds methods or techniques in these schools that fit really well a lot of findings in neuroscience and psychology (without the teachers at these school knowing anything about these findings!). So what are some things he advocates: (i) no longer teach in a fixed classroom setting, instead, every student should learn by himself, according to weekly/monthly/yearly plans that are setup together with his teacher(s) [main reason for this: every human is special, our brains do not develop at the same speed at the same time] (ii) do not kill the researcher in the children, instead foster playfulness in live and study and show that effort is something deeply satisfying (iii) Authentic teachers, authentic parents, authentic grown-ups (iv) Bring the 'real' live/world into the school (vi) open the school up to the 'real' live, schools should be centers in our society, (vii) at school you don't teach subjects, you teach human beings (viii) there is no school to rule them all and many more aspects. I like his stuff so much because he shows and describes places that really work, and also manages to write about philosophical aspects of these questions (he often connects to writings from Hannah Arendt about eduction).

PS: I'm aware that I can't give justice to the stuff Kahl writes, what I have written is quite incomplete. But one has to read it on its own. I'm also aware that some of this stuff is only relevant for german schools, yet I think the broader questions is relevant for all countries.

PPS: Refrain from calling me a hippy, a dreamer, a communist or any other stereotype _you_ think is negative. I went through the normal (german) school and university system and it gradually became clear to me, that things as they were and are working are not as good as we want to think, actually, things are rather bad. I'm looking for new ways and possible solutions, trying to find the right questions.