Posted on 04/25/2015 6:27:38 AM PDT by Republicanprofessor
When I left my 7th grade math classroom for my Fulbright research assignment in Finland I thought I would come back from this experience with more inspiring, engaging, innovative lessons. I expected to have great new ideas on how to teach my mathematics curriculum and I would revamp my lessons so that I could include more curriculum, more math and get students to think more, talk more and do more math.
This drive to do more and More and MORE is a state of existence for most teachers in the US….it is engrained in us from day one. There is a constant pressure to push our students to the next level to have them do bigger and better things. The lessons have to be more exciting, more engaging and cover more content. This phenomena is driven by data, or parents, or administrators or simply by our work-centric society where we gauge our success as a human being by how busy we are and how burnt out we feel at the end of the day. We measure our worth with completed lists and we criminalize down time. We teach this “work till you drop” mentality to our students who either simply give up somewhere along the way or become as burnt out as we find ourselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at fillingmymap.com ...
I didn’t see any mention of a teacher union in Finland or how long it takes to fire a bad teacher or of racial quotas.
Finland is a small and and very homogeneous country with common shared values. That is the foundation of the trust that he mentions at the end and that he claims to be the basis of its success.
Lots of formerly commie countries near the top of the WHO list. I think it’s fair to point out that Russia, for instance, has been renowned for heavy drinking for some centuries now.
Ethnicity is not the determining factor regarding trust - rather it is values.
Only to the extent that different ethnic groups have different values, does ethnicity become a factor.
Values are our core beliefs - it’s what we follow whether someone is watching or not. If all I know about you is your values I would know more or less how you would act in various situations - which constitutes the basis of trust.
Sorry, while you are correct in theory, in practice you’re not.
If I know you and your values, I could not care less about your race or ethnicity.
I don’t know random people on the street, so I’m forced to make judgments about their value system based on the groups to which they visibly belong.
All relevant studies indicate that as ethnic diversity increases, trust goes down, for the simple reason that those ethnic groups have diverse value systems.
For instance, most groups around the world, have an in-group based value system. It applies to others in their group, but not to others outside the group. It’s not “wrong” to lie, cheat or kill outsiders, though it may be wise not to do so if it will create problems for you.
Western Civ, AFAIK, is the only culture built on the notion of universal values, however poorly implemented that value system has been.
It should be noted this value system has seeped out into many other cultures, again however poorly implemented.
The only thing that will save US education is to get government out of it at all levels, but that will not happen. People love their subsidized daycare.
What? I have to write my name? Why can’t you just scan da name in?
Finland lacks diversity, which is the primary predictor of failure.
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