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I'll have a stab at an explanation.

I'm Danish, and I suspect that the Danish school system is similar to the Finnish. It also seems that Danes are held in some regard internationally - so an explanation rooted in the Danish educational system is probably not much off.

The Danish scchool system doesn't only teach you answers, it also teaches you which questions to ask. Schoolkids are encouraged to come up with their own ideas and explanations - and to be able to argue their validity. This ingrains a different kind of knowledge: Instead of kids that are able to recite the periodic table you get kids that are able to explain why it is put together the way it is. I think this is the pivotal point.

I don't think Danish, or Finnish, kids are smarter per se, but they are better at holistic thinking, reasoning and abstract thought because they learn from a young age to ask interesting questions and demand coherent answers.

> It also seems that Danes are held in some regard internationally

We're actually just flattering you so you won't come pillage our coasts anymore. ;-)

There are almost no other activities, no special classes, no school sports (only p.e. for everybody), no advanced classes and teaching is mostly done with books, paper and board.

Maybe this is good.

When I read that part I immediately thought of your essay "Why Nerds are Unpopular."

Maybe there's a bit of psychology at play here. There might be a lower out casting of nerds if the popularity gap is smaller. Going off the essay, maybe it's far more acceptable to become more intelligent (both intellectually and scholastically) in this type of environment.

If that's the case, it sounds like a school full of nerds who are cool with nerds--sign me up!

True. We don't have any athlete superpower or fierce popularity contests. I don't even remember that if anyone had been bullied over being good at school. Of course some kids are more popular than others, and there are always few tough guys, which are mostly regarded kind of sad cases.

But still for a half-nerd like myself, school was not a very intresting place to be. I was more interested in the real world and computers. School is like mundane job where you go because you have to, you have no control over it and nothing is real. Equal minds is great thing to have, but it means that you can't have so many best minds.

While our education may excel in PISA, still even our schools are not very inspirational places, which I think they should be.

As another Dane I can say that a lot of the things that Paul laments in his essays do not exist in our schools. Honestly we grimace at the notion of a 'prom queen' or a 'homecoming' celebration of a sports team.

I think in part we feel it absurd in the extreme to focus so overtly on physical prowess in an educational context, and another part of it is that it just goes against our very egalitarian culture.

Ironically, where the higher focus on actual study works in favor of a nerd, the egalitarianism works against him. Lets just say I became a crack pencil artist courtesy of countless and countless hours spent waiting for the class to catch up.

agree except the sports part.

most of the discussion are of low quality and can be done with a smarter audience on HN or some other newsgroups.

But sports teams are good. it really encourages self-discipline, work ethics, and a competitive spirit.

"Teachers maybe still care little bit about there students and think the main difference is that we are expected to learn and know more from the start. I started learning a second language when I was on first grade and third language on fifth grade."

I've heard people speculate that learning more than one language early on encourages a certain "flexibility" of mind that helps with knowledge acquisition in general.

Sounds like education in East Asia as well, except classical musical instrument lessons being the only extracurricular activities, which are almost as demanding as schoolworks.

Could you explain why having a classmate that didn't speak Finnish natively is helpful for keeping up the bar?

Suppose you have an excellent transfer student who could do everything you did, but not in Finnish. Wouldn't your interaction be some kind of training for effective communication? Assuming again that said student is excellent, you would expect them to pick up the language in about a year, and wouldn't expect they become a hindrance during, would you?

I was thinking more about elementary education. I also excluded exchange students since they probably don't take the test. You are right. It could be helpful in other ways, but probably not in the scoring of PISA.

I would assume that learning won't get any easier when you don't know the language. If you get bad start early on, it can hurt you later on or even frustrade you. So even it might be small aspect, it seems that PISA-test rewards for homogenous.

"Assuming again that said student is excellent"

That's a pretty big assumption. Realistically, they'll be about average. If you have significant numbers of immigrants, many of them will be below average (and many will be above)

Besides, that's still a year in which the teacher has to repeat parts of the lesson for the student, clarify words, and generally move somewhat more slowly to help the new student comprehend what's going on.

I agree with you. The issues involved seem way more complicated than either of our posts cover. Now I am wondering whether exchange student programs are all that useful in the long run, in terms of GDP or some other national metric. In terms of national testing averages, I don't see a quick answer to whether non-native speaking students affect the average at all.

I'm curious about competitiveness: Are your grades public? Do people know how much other people scored in tests, etc.?

No. We only have one nation wide test, which is a marticular exam(consisting of atleast four subjects: math, natural/social sciences, Finnish, English) in end of the high school. Even there they only publish(with your permission) if you passed or failed. At the ceremony where you get your final report and certificate, they usually state in loud if you scored Laudatur(10) or Eximia(9)(in scale of 4-10) and thats about public at it gets.

In elementary you only get grades at the end of the school year, and for first years you only get stated that if you're good or not so good in some subjects. At junior high to high school you usually get grades(4-10) on single courses which are then averaged and rounded to annual grades. So particular exam scores are not so important. If you're a good and active student, a one bad exam won't affect your annual grade so much or even at all.

So grades aren't public, but usually other students and teachers know who is doing well and who isn't.

And I would add that none of our exams are multiple choice. In social sciences they are mostly essays and open questions, in languages vocabularity, listening, grammar, and writing tasks, math is math, and natural sciences are math and essays/open questions. So you cannot probably even fully compare your answers since sometimes there are more than one right answer and a way to answer it.