Misrepresenting Finland: Seeing What We Want to See, Saying What We Want to Say
EducationDec 11, 2011With the publication of Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons, the education reform debate in the U.S. is moving into a second round of Finnish envy—the first being the corporate reformers’ distorted claims about international comparisons and the new being calls to examine the full and complex picture of why Finland has achieved both social and education reform that has pushed them to the forefront of education quality.
This second round, however, appears to be exposing a nonpartisan failure among all concerned with public education moreso than the needed turn away from corporate education agendas and toward democratic ideals seeking social justice and human agency.
Education Week recently reprinted Erin Richards’ piece (Milwaukee Journal