What Can We Learn from Educational Change in Finland? (Pasi Sahlberg)
For the past few years, U.S. policymakers and pundits have conducted a love affair with the Finnish education system. This not the first time that policy elites have looked abroad for ways of transforming U.S. schools into jet-powered engines promoting economic growth. Remember how Japanese schools (and later Singapore and Korea) were praised for their performance in creating “Asian Tigers” in the 1980s. This passion for seeing the future in other nation’s schools–once it was even Soviet schools–now has fixed upon Finnish schools.
Pasi Sahlberg is director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? He posted this sensible way of borrowing from another nation on his blog November 5, 2011.
“I think the first lesson that Finland offers to other educational reformers is that whole-system reform can be successful only if it is inspiring to all involved and thereby energizes people to work together for intended
