Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle: In Finland, Education is a Basic Civil Right | Diane Ravitch's blog

Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle: In Finland, Education is a Basic Civil Right | Diane Ravitch's blog

Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle: In Finland, Education is a Basic Civil Right

In this post, Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle respond to a recent article that pitted civil rights groups against advocates for the Finnish model of education. They found the dichotomy puzzling. They wrote this article for this blog.

They write:

Two decades ago, Finland made big news in international education circles. Against all odds it became a top-performer in OECD’s first PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study that compared 15-year-olds’ knowledge and skills in reading, mathematical and scientific literacies. Since about 2010 education experts and pundits in the United States have debated whether there is anything at all that American school systems could learn from that small Nordic nation’s school system. Ten years on and these debates still go on.

In their March 15, 2021 essay “Finland Meets Civil Rights”, Professor Jal Mehta and co-author Krista Galleberg make good points, including “we can draw on CONTINUE READING: Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle: In Finland, Education is a Basic Civil Right | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

Teacher Tom: What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Economic Forum, and Unicef (and according to the dubious measurement of standardized test scores) Finland has the best schools in the world. They have achieved this status by building their educational system on evidence. The US languishes around the middle of the pack, often falling into the bottom half according to some measures. We have achieved this lack of success by relying upon the busy-body guesswork of policy makers, billionaire dilettantes, and administrators who listen to them.

It shouldn't be surprising that the system based on evidence, on research, on reality, would outperform the one based on the fantasies and feelings of people who are not professional educators. In Finland, they do not try to teach kindergarteners to read because the evidence tells us that formal literacy instruction should not start until at least the age of seven and that children who are compelled into it too early often suffer emotionally and academically in the long run. In the US we are forcing kindergartners, and even CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

Does the Pandemic Help Us Make Education More Equitable? (Pasi Sahlberg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Does the Pandemic Help Us Make Education More Equitable? (Pasi Sahlberg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Does the Pandemic Help Us Make Education More Equitable? (Pasi Sahlberg)

“Pasi Sahlberg is a Finnish educator who has worked as a schoolteacher, teacher-educator, researcher, and policy advisor in Finland and has studied education systems and advised education leaders around the world..”

I have excerpted Sahlberg’s description of how Finland’s and Australia’s schools responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. For readers who wish to see the entire article, it appeared in Educational Research for Policy and Practice online October 31, 2020.

Australia and Finland, the two homes of mine at the moment, are not just geographically as

distant from each other than possible, but they are also very different societies with distinct

histories, traditions, values and cultures. Australia is sunny and hot. Finland is,many believe,

snowy and cool. The Australians prefer things big and fast. The Finns think small is beautiful.

In other words, Australia is fire, Finland is ice. These cultural distinctions make CONTINUE READING: Does the Pandemic Help Us Make Education More Equitable? (Pasi Sahlberg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice