Why my children were lucky to get accepted to a Finnish school in Qatar | Hacker News Reader

Why my children were lucky to get accepted to a Finnish school in Qatar

theglobeandmail.com

51 pointssampo69 comments

> In the past decade, it has channelled some of its staggering wealth into realizing its outsized ambitions: the World Cup in 2022

Very ambitious: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117818/qatar-2022-world-c... ("The documentary estimates that, at the current rate, more than 4,000 migrant workers will die by the time Qatar puts on the 2022 World Cup.")

I wonder how slaves figure into the denominator of their "world’s highest per-capita income". Is the country rich enough to count them as 1 person each? 3/5ths of a person? Do they omit them entirely?

Obviously they are evil irrespective of statistical games, but I want to know if they are evil and successful (in that they could have prosperity for everyone if they wanted) or if the success is a lie too.

Quatar does not consider their slaves to be a part of the population of Quatar - they are essentially migrant workers who have had their passports confiscated.

The fact that the Qatar World Cup was mentioned as a positive thing invalidates anything else this person might have to say about Qatar. :( The death toll is the most tragic element, but so many aspects of that whole situation (blatant corruption, incompetence, etc.) are unambiguously horrific and reflect very poorly upon the country. FIFA should be held responsible as well, of course.

Maybe I am giving in to what I read on the internet too much,but I wouldn't want to work in Qatar no matter how much they paid me. And the last thing I would want to be doing is bringing my daughters there. I feel the same way about Saudi Arabia.

Agreed. Even if it's one of the richest economies or the most developed Middle Eastern country, they're still Wahhabi, they still ban alcohol for Muslims (but allow it for tourists, because money), gay men can be imprisoned for five years and/or flogged, religions other than Islam are discouraged, there's no freedom of speech, slavery is legal and accepted, and women tourists have to be reminded that shorts, leggings, short skirts, and tight clothing is not acceptable to wear in public.

Sounds like a great place to raise your daughters. Even a great education system can't overcome the oppression they will likely see in the streets on a daily basis.

> they still ban alcohol for Muslims (but allow it for tourists, because money)

They allow it for non-Muslim foreigners (who must, however, obtain permits to purchase it -- or pork, which is apparently covered by the same permit), which isn't the same as "tourists" -- the vast majority of Qatar's resident population is foreigners (pop > 2M, citizens < 300K), and a fairly sizable share of them are non-Muslim (largely Christian and Hindu.)

they still ban alcohol for Muslims (but allow it for tourists, because money)

I don't see what's wrong with this one. If Muslims don't drink alcohol, yet don't try to stop other people from drinking it- well, that's how it should be IMO.

The way I understand it, Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol, even if they want to - i.e. the government stops certain other people (the Muslims) from drinking it, but not other other people *tourists).

> *tourists).

Actually "non-Muslim foreigners". Which isn't just tourists; its something between a quarter and a third of the resident population of Qatar.

Oh, interesting. Now, I wonder, is that ethically wrong? I mean, if you chose to identify as Muslim, is someone holding you to the Muslim belief system wrong?

> I mean, if you chose to identify as Muslim, is someone holding you to the Muslim belief system wrong?

If I choose to identify as a Christian, is someone else forcibly holding me accountable to their interpretation of proper Christian behavior wrong? Consider, for instance, if that interpretation includes a prohibition (violations of which are punishable by death) on ever renouncing Christianity? [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam#Qatar

Honestly, I think exposure to a country in which the population lacks rights that most Western populations enjoy has a value of its own. It makes it much harder to take those rights for granted.

Why stop there? Why not go to a place that also lacks basic infrastructure?

I do agree that most of the people I've met would do well to actually go see the absolute hopelessness that much of the world lives in. To meet people whose entire existence will consist of scraping by in the mud until they die from some minor injury or trivially curable disease. That the "cute" things they do, like carrying water in a jug on their head miles, is because they have no other choice. That preserving their "culture" means forcing women to repeatedly get pregnant, despite an abysmal survival rate. That they see enough children die, to the point where they delay naming their child so as to not get too attached to soon.

But exposure is different than living in such a place. While I want my daughters to realise the shitty reality of nature, I don't want them to have to experience it too closely.

Ok lets compare to the US...

Alcohol is banned in many places in the US. In the US you can be executed with out trial by jury. If you're a cab driver you can be sent to a torture camp. Police routinely execute citizens with out fear of punishment. Up until 2007 it was illegal to be gay in many states. Religions other than christianity are discouraged. And women can be imprisoned for wearing the same clothes as men. (topless). You can be imprisoned for life for stealing a pack of cigarettes, or smoking a joint. The government operates near slave labour camps where people are paid 25 cents an hour.

Sounds like a great place to raise your daughters. Even a shitty education system can't overcome the oppression they will likely see in the streets on a daily basis.

>In Finland, students aren’t subjected to standardized tests

This is incorrect, but seems to be repeated in most of these articles about the Finnish education system.

>nor is it possible to fail a grade.

I don't know about the current state of affairs, but at least it was possible to "fail a grade", even if it was really rare.

>In Finland, teaching is a highly prestigious profession, equivalent to medicine or law.

I'd say that is exaggerated.

>The school days are shorter and students are almost never given homework.

I'd say homework is more frequent than that.

For me there was only 2 or 3 sets of standardized tests during 12 years of school.

'No failing grades' isn't really considered a valuable aspect of the system. It's more like a side effect.

Finnish teachers are paid better (relative to other jobs) compared to US. They also have a ridiculous long summer vacation. There is no shortage of highly qualified teachers. But doctors they are not.

Is it really a vacation, I know in my part of Canada it isn't : they don't work but they aren't paid either.

In Finland the school teachers teach from mid-August to end of May. They are paid 12 months. How much they spend time on preparations, administration, whatnot, during the summer months is their own business.

Also the Xmas holiday is about 2 weeks, and then in Finland we a this "skiing holiday", 1 week in February.

>In Finland, students aren’t subjected to standardized tests

This is incorrect, but seems to be repeated in most of these articles about the Finnish education system.

What are you referring to? I'm Finnish and I don't recall doing any standardized tests (except the very final one, the high school graduation exam).

Ironic that the main reason people keep writing about how great the schools are in Finland is their performance on a standardized test (PISA).

PISA is different kind of standardized test than usually meant when talking about them in education context. Not every student participate in PISA and (from what I know) it is not used to actually grade anyone. In Finland, the only nationwide test is the matriculation examination at the end of the high school.

Right, I was just saying it is funny that the people who are championing the non-standardized test based education in Finland use a standardized test as the evidence of success.

The idea is that you find what you measure. Standardised tests are highly informative, but should be kept to a minimum to avoid warping the process. Incidentally, one of the major criticisms leveled against PISA is regarding the inconsistent sampling process.

> the people who are championing the non-standardized test based education in Finland use a standardized test as the evidence of success.

No we don't. When the first splendid PISA results were published in 2003 and 2006, the common theme in Finnish media was to wonder what is wrong with the methodology of those tests, because Finnish school system cannot be world class, no way.

It took years and years of foreign media publicity and foreign interest, before we in Finland slowly started to believe that maybe our schools are, maybe, kind of good, because the rest of the world seems to believe so. And the rest of the world cannot probably be wrong.

I may have worded my comment ambiguously, I am talking about the writers in the US who discovered Finland after noticing the low US scores. I am not talking about any thoughts or opinions or the reality inside of Finland. The entire basis of the attention Finland gets for its schools in the US is the PISA scores.

Why are you just picking sentences which go against your opinion instead of actually writing down your knowledge of the subject?

I actually picked sentences which were wrong.

> > In Finland, students aren’t subjected to standardized tests

> This is incorrect

Apparently there are national standardized tests every three years (near the ends of 3rd, 6th, 9th grades).

But their main purpose is for the government to collect statistics, the grades of individual students are still left for their teachers to decide, the grades do not mechanically follow from the performance in these tests.

Then for the ca. 50% of population who go to gymnasium [1] ("high school"), at the end of 12th grade there are national standardized finals with nationally evaluated grades.

Source: I'm Finnish, just googled these in Finnish.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_%28school%29

Do the tests play into the decision of whether the student goes into a vocational or academic track, or is it an individual choice?

It's individual choice, though higher education institutes do have entrance exams that can occasionally be waived by high grades.

From the article:

"The final paradox of Finnish education only dawned on me when I received the girls’ school calendars. At first, it looked a little thin. School began at 7:30 every morning and ended at 1 p.m. No lesson appeared to last longer than 45 minutes, after which 15 minutes was given for a break. The Finns appeared to have several names for this down time. Besides “break” there was “lunch,” “long break,” “breakies,” “mini break,” “extracurricular activities” and (my personal favourite) “Golden time.”

The theory is that children learn just as much during unstructured play as they do inside a formal classroom setting – arguably more. The Finnish system flies in the face of the logic that poor student performance can be somehow cured by increasing class time. In Finland, students don’t begin school until the age of 7. The school days are shorter and students are almost never given homework."

Here's few real timetable examples from Finland:

Grades 1-2 (4-5 hours per day): http://www.kopunkoulu.fi/lukujarjestys/luokka_1-2/

Grades 5-6 (5-6 hours per day): http://www.kopunkoulu.fi/lukujarjestys/luokka_5-6/

Grades 7-9 typically last 6-8 hours per day (I couldn't find examples)

Abbreviations: AI=Finnish language, MA=math, YL=natural sciences, LI=sports, KS-ASK=handicrafts, US=religion, EN=english, KU=drawing, MU=music, BIMA=biology/geography, FYKE=physics/chemistry, HI=history, TS=textile works, päivänavaus=start of day, lounas=lunch

Every lesson is 45 mins and then there is a 15 min break. During the break children go out and usually play some games by themselves, to relax and to be prepared for the next lesson. During winter, if it gets below -15'C (5'F) children can stay in (depends on school and grade). Also, during grades 1-6, all lessons typically take place in the same classroom, so no need to carry books or rush to another classroom.

Schools also have optional activities for children during afternoons, so they don't have to go home alone. But that is really optional.

These breaks seem incredibly important to me. My kids come home from school exhausted and stressed out.

My kids have 4 minutes to get between classes, which are sometimes on a different floor and several hundred yards apart. This means they have to carry their books all day long because they don't have time for lockers, and barely have time to visit a restroom. The teachers only give 3 bathroom passes a quarter, so if your kid has a nervous bladder and takes a bit of time to pee you have to get a doctor's note. For lunch they only have 20 minutes total - which includes standing in line for their food, eating lunch, and then more time standing in line to dump their trays. If they're late to the following class then they get a tardy slip and detention after school on Friday.

The current schedule for schools in the US has more in common with prisons than any real workplace environment.

Yikes, is this policy set by school districts or states? Is any input accepted from parents?

Seems to be pretty consistent for public schools, but the current school district is the worst so far. The last one (in another state) was 5 minutes between classes instead of 4 minutes, and 30 minutes for lunch instead of 20.

Parent input does have some effect - the lunch time at the previous school had been 20 minutes as well, but parents complained because the kids needed more time to eat the new healthier lunches. (It takes longer to chew fresh produce than canned.)

The school's argument against longer breaks between classes has been that more time leads to more drama and problems in the hallways, and there isn't enough staff to monitor all of them.

> It takes longer to chew fresh produce than canned

That's a 50% improvement in time for unscripted mindful awareness, thanks to the physics of chewing fresh produce.

Parents need a centralized site where "winning arguments" are aggregated, to improve the liquidity of decentralized debate with bureacracy.

>students are almost never given homework.

I've always wondered where this misconception comes from.

-- A Finn

I finished US high school on a Friday, left for the US Air Force on Monday. We learned more in Basic Training than any year of public school. Maybe more than some two year periods. The difference was planning, training of our drill instructors, and, most of all, expectations. The result was astounding.

As someone who has been through basic training (Army, not AF) and public HS within the US I have to say you must have gone to a really, really bad school system. I don't see how a 2 month course where the main focus is on mental toughness is the equivalent amount of learning as a year of HS coursework.

The main focus wasn't on toughness. We spent about 8 hours per day in classrooms learning. There was a fair bit of the mental toughness stuff, but not the main focus. There's a reason the Army calls the AF the "Chairforce".

I can see it. Self discipline and meeting your commitments is what its all about.

Well, I'd say that's a difference between training selected people for a single purpose, versus trying to educate everyone from all backgrounds for all possible things...

...and the fact that the people doing the teaching have actual legal authority over the students, not that I would advocate that for general education. :) It doesn't get much more apples and oranges than this.

That legal authority never came up. The threat was that we'd be booted out if we didn't work out tails off. They made it clear it was an honor to be there, not a right or obligation.

Herein lies a major reason why early Finnish academic results are so uniform:

"“To be honest, we are not interested in a child’s academic skills at all. From our perspective that would be silly,” she said. The motor skills tests, by contrast, “show us a lot and help us diagnose any learning disabilities,” she explained. If a learning deficit was detected, it didn’t count against the child or banish her to a different classroom."

The article describes advanced methods of diagnosing learning decifits. Early interventions pay off big time. When a kid is found to have some sort of a problem, he/she will receive extra help within the normal classroom (e.g. teacher's aide). That prevents the social circles from breaking up and usually the better students learn even more by helping others. Few extra months of early help to make troubled students into average performers is reflected well in the PISA results. It has also societal effects (equality/equity). Best students might not benefit nearly as much from extra attention than worst, but in the western sphere gifted students are the main focus of attention. Finnish school system makes everyone average, for better or worse. But is not a bad thing when your average is still world class.

It's all about selection bias. This particular person went to a foreign school that probably selected for a certain type of student just by being there.

Here in the US, I actually worked as a teacher before changing careers. Most of the students were good, could learn and wanted to learn. The lack of any real authority to discipline the 5% problem kids or the resources to deal with the xyz% ADD kids is what brings the whole class down. You end up teaching to the bottom and simply assigning busy work to the rest.

So I'm not surprised that a small school with certain location bias might be lucky enough to escape a full normal distribution of an American classroom.

Why on earth does the school have to start at 7.30 in the morning, especially if they aren't intended to have organised activities all afternoon?

The answer is easy - so that the schoolday is over by 1 PM and the children can indulge in activities not organized by the school in the afternoon. One might go to the public library, play sports in a sports club, or - God prevent! - socialize with friends.

This is important. The mindset is that it isn't the school that is running the students' lives, it is the students and the students' families. Unlike in America, life for school-age children does not revolve around the school.

But the school is running their lives, by making everyone be up, dressed, breakfasted and at school by a horrifically early time of day. When I was in elementary school in Australia (9am-3.30pm) I managed to do plenty of sports, public library visits and time running around the street with friends, while also getting to wake up at a reasonable hour (7am) and have a leisurely breakfast and some play time before leaving for school at 8.30am.

That seems like it would make it difficult to be a working parent, unless they provide for after-school programs. For a household with no stay-at-home parent, a long school day isn't just about education; it's about not having to sacrifice a career for you child's education.

That's the "school as daycare" model, requiring all children to be in "daycare" all day to meet the needs of some parents. They should be separate (compulsory school times, surrounded by available and convenient daycare at the same location).

Regardless of what you call it, parents who don't have the luxury (or desire) to stay at home all day need a way to take care of their children. That's a pressing real-world problem for millions of parents, not just "some". And it makes perfect sense to entrust the schools with that responsibility (in part, if not in whole): they do it anyway, for some amount of the day, and they have great resources for children (sports teams and equipment, books, musical instruments, knowledgeable teachers, etc).

So you're arguing that daycare should be compulsory, even for kids who don't need it.

No; I'm arguing that access to daycare should be available to those who need it. And parenthetically stating that that is not a bad thing :)

ok - so I think we actually agree mostly. The system I grew up in had daycare available at the school, starting around 8am and going to 6pm. School itself only went from 9am to 3.30pm - so kids who had supervision available at home, or friends houses, etc, only had to be there at those hours. It sounds like you'd agree that system would meet parents needs without putting excessive restrictions on families that didn't need the care?

When does work typically start there? I think you'd want school to start before that. You'd want enough gap to allow parents who transport their kids to school to drop the kids off just before school start time, and still have time to make it to their work. You'd want the gap short enough so that parents whose kids take a school or bus or similar aren't out the door so much earlier than the parents leave for work that the parents have an awkward gap in their daily schedule.

In my opinion that's what before school care is for - kids whose parents need to be rid of them early drop them off whenever they like, kids who don't need to can start at a reasonable hour. This is also a much more flexible system so it works for people who start work at any time.

I'm about to read the article, but maybe roasting weather in Qatar has something to do with it. I will ask my Finnish friends to see if it is something usual, though.

It is unusual. 8-10 AM is normal, depending on grade and curriculum. 7:30 is probably due to the climate or the logistics in Quatar (the school is located in an education zone, after all).

> Why on earth does the school have to start at 7.30 in the morning, especially if they aren't intended to have organised activities all afternoon?

Its Qatar. I think there is a good climatic reason to not have school run into mid-afternoon.

It may have to do with daylight hours in the north. But don't young children wake up that early anyway?

Anecdotally, my four-year-old daughter wakes up that early on weekends, but will happily sleep to 9AM or later if there's school that day.

So would her husband also be under the kafala system?

I couldn't even finish reading this article because it was waaaaay too uppity and full of first world problems. Please spare us the angst of some rich mom who can't bear the thought of her little ankle biters not being in the most elite school possible.

It's funny, beyond a few points in the first paragraph, I didn't get that at all. Reading the entire way through, it's a pretty good review of the Finnish school system and the way they view education in the country. Absolutely nothing to do with Qatar or even how prestigious a school is, other than a little background into the author's frame of mind going into the school, it's all about the Finnish education system.

The parent was concerned that schools shouldn't crush her kids. That's a concern of parents everywhere.

It sounds more like she was concerned that the schools wouldn't crush her kids.

It seems that this school is still being built. I wonder if they will have finished construction and if the workers are getting paid.

Despite of all the efforts from Supreme Education Council and our school administration we haven't been able to prepare our school to the point where I would feel comfortable as a principal to invite your children to begin their school year on Sun 7.9.2014. The safety of children in our school is of paramount importance and unfortunately we are not able guarantee that because of ongoing construction work and missing ministry level documentation for school insurance. We will postpone the beginning of school till Tue 9.9.2014. Our staff is still available for you at school and you are more than welcome to meet them. Looking forward to starting a safe school year with you. I am truly sorry for this inconvenience.

Mr Juha Repo, Principal, Qatar-Finland International School

http://qatarfinlandschool.com/

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