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Comment by niklasl | Hacker News Reader

> The article pretty clearly stated that focus on equity might be something to try.

That is bound to fail because it would be a wild goose chase, there are a thousand variables, and the temptation is strong to try to isolate the ones that lies close to one's own ideological prejudices and ignore the rest, Note for example the focus on equality here and not on the fact that Finland's schools are more disciplinarian than schools in the rest of Western Europe. If you dig up the statistics you can see how little Finland's pupils are enjoying school, more akin to Japan than the rest of Western Europe, but the results are better than the rest of Europe (which certainly doesn't lag Finland in equality).

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By that argument, everything is bound to fail because there are a thousand variables in a society and a school system.

And yet another sidetrack not based on facts to add to my list:

* No, Finland's schools are not more disciplinarian than elsewhere. The reason Finnish pupils are not enjoying school is because they lack motivation: watching TV and hanging out with friends etc. is more fun than studying and everybody gets a good education for free anyway.

And no, the rest of Europe definitely doesn't match Finland in equality (income equality, gender equality, whatever you mean), let alone their schools doing that.

Interestingly, the German state of Saxonia does nearly as well as Finland in the PISA tests.

No-one is claiming the Finnish system is the only way to get high PISA scores. Although, the PISA scores aren't the thing to strive for anyway. How about a school system that is relatively cheap, comparatively equal, produces great learning results as measured by multiple studies, takes up relatively little of the students' time etc.?

I don't think Finland is trying to force it on anyone but it could give some people ideas about what's allegedly "just not possible" and what to possibly concentrate on. The success of Saxonia can be another interesting data point along Finland, Singapore, Japan etc.

Yes, indeed. Also comparison with a number of countries, instead of just Finland, can give you a better idea of what works and what is just an accidental feature.

For example, in Germany pupils who fail two (or so) classes, have to repeat the entire year. That ends up costing the economy way more than giving those weak students special attention, and extra teacher time, to get them up to speed again. Also the German school system segregates people into university-bound and not university-bound at age ten. Switching between tracks later is possible, but hard.

The reason Finnish pupils are not enjoying school is because they lack motivation

In fairness though, I'm sure the same applies to pupils in other European countries, yet the point you were replying to said that Finnish pupils are enjoying school less than pupils in other European countries. That is not explained away by your response.

That said, it's kind of obvious that a competitive environment, especially one that is stressfully though, is going to be problematic for intellectual achievement, and a focus on equity can help. There are plenty of studies that demonstrate that stress impairs lateral thinking etc.

Please don't confuse discipline with not enjoying school. The point I was replying to said:

the fact that Finland's schools are more disciplinarian than schools in the rest of Western Europe

This is not a fact. Instead, the opposite is the fact: I looked up an OECD study and Japan and Finland are on the opposite ends of the scale with Japan having the most school discipline.

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