DECEMBER 14, 2011
December 12, 2011; Source: New York Times | One of the problems plaguing school reform here in the United States is that it can’t get out of its own way in terms of blowing up some basic assumptions. Longer school days? Less play time, art, and music? More testing? And then here comes Finland—which does not start formal education before the age of 7, believing that it violates children’s rights to be children, and does not implement testing or homework until well into puberty. Gadzooks! Do they not care about their children’s achievement?
This flies in the face of the ever more compulsive testing done in the United States to assure ourselves that our system is still underperforming. But Finland has scored close to the top of the OECD, a well-respected test measuring education systems across 28