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WE HUMANS

WE HUMANS

What the best

education systems
are doing right
Sep 4, 2014 / Amy S. Choi

In South
Korea and
Finland,
it’s not
about
finding the Advertisement
“right”
:
 school.
Fifty years
ago, both
South Korea
and Finland
had terrible
education
systems.
Finland was at
risk of
becoming the
economic
stepchild of
Europe. South
Korea was
ravaged by
civil war. Yet
over the past
half century,
both South
Korea and
Finland have
turned their
schools
around — and
now both
countries are

[Link]
hailed internationally
for their
Ideas change everything
extremely
high
educational
outcomes.
What can
:
 other
countries learn
from these
two
successful,
but diametrically
opposed,
educational
models?
Here’s an
overview of
what South
Korea and
Finland are
doing right.

The Korean
model: Grit
and hard,
hard, hard
work.

For millennia,
in some parts
of Asia, the
only way to
climb the
socioeconomic
ladder and
find secure
work was to
take an
examination —
in which the
proctor was a
:
 proxy for the
emperor, says
Marc Tucker,
president and
CEO of the
National
Center on
Education and
the Economy.
Those
examinations
required a
thorough
command of
knowledge,
and
taking them
was a grueling
rite of
passage.
Today, many in
the Confucian
countries
still respect
the kind of
educational
achievement
that is
promoted by
an exam
culture.
:
 “The
Koreans
have
achieved
a
remarkable
feat:
the
country
is
100
percent
literate.
But
success
comes
with
a
price.
:
 Among these
countries,
South Korea
stands apart
as the most
extreme, and
arguably, most
successful.
The Koreans
have achieved
a remarkable
feat: the
country is 100
percent
literate, and at
the forefront
of
international
comparative
tests of
achievement,
including tests
of critical
thinking and
analysis. But
this
success comes
with a price:
Students are
under
enormous,
unrelenting
pressure to
perform.
:
 Talent is not a
consideration
— because the
culture
believes in
hard work and
diligence
above all,
there is no
excuse for
failure.
Children study
year-round,
both in-school
and with
tutors. If you
study hard
enough, you
can be smart
enough.

South Korea
women pray for
their children’s
success in the
annual college
entrance
examination.
Photo by Chung
Sung-
Jun/Thinkstock.

“Koreans
basically
:
 believe that I
have to get
through this
really tough
period to have
a great
future,” says
Andreas
Schleicher,
director of
education and
skills at PISA
and special
advisor on
education
policy at the
OECD. “It’s a
question of
short-term
unhappiness
and long-term
happiness.” It’s
not just the
parents
pressuring
their kids.
Because this
culture
traditionally
celebrates
conformity
and order,
pressure from
other
:
 students can
also heighten
performance
expectations.
This
community
attitude
expresses
itself even in
early-
childhood
education,
says Joe
Tobin,
professor of
early
childhood
education at
the University
of Georgia
who
specializes in
comparative
international
research. In
Korea, as in
other Asian
countries,
class sizes are
very large —
which would
be extremely
undesirable
for, say, an
:
 American
parent. But in
Korea, the
goal is for the
teacher to
lead the class
as a
community,
and for peer
relationships
to develop. In
American
preschools,
the focus for
teachers is on
developing
individual
relationships
with students,
and
intervening
regularly in
peer
relationships.

“I think it is
clear there are
better and
worse way to
educate our
children,” says
Amanda
Ripley, author
of The
Smartest Kids
:
 in the World:
And How They
Got That Way.
“At the same
time, if I had
to choose
between an
average US
education and
an average
Korean
education for
my own kid, I
would choose,
very
reluctantly,
the Korean
model. The
reality is, in
the modern
world the kid
is going to
have to know
how to learn,
how to work
hard and how
to persist
after failure.
The Korean
model teaches
that.”

The Finnish
model:
Extracurricular
:
 choice, intrinsic motivation.

In Finland, on
the other
hand,
students are
learning the
benefits of
both rigor and
flexibility. The
Finnish model,
say educators,
is utopia.

“
Finland
has a
short
school
day
rich
with
school-
sponsored
extracurriculars,
because
:
 Finns
believe
important
learning
happens
outside
the
classroom.
In Finland,
school is the
center of the
community,
notes
Schleicher.
School
provides not
just
educational
services, but
social
services.
Education is
about creating
identity.

Finnish
culture values
intrinsic
:
 motivation
and the
pursuit of
personal
interest. It has
a relatively
short school
day rich with
school-
sponsored
extracurriculars,
because
culturally,
Finns believe
important
learning
happens
outside of the
classroom. (An
exception?
Sports, which
are not
sponsored by
schools, but
by towns.) A
third of the
classes that
students take
in high school
are electives,
and they can
even choose
which
matriculation
:
 exams they
are going to
take. It’s a low-
stress culture,
and it values a
wide variety of
learning
experiences.

But that does

not except it
from
academic
rigor,
motivated by
the country’s
history
trapped
between
European
superpowers,
says Pasi
Sahlberg,
Finnish
educator and
author of
Finnish
Lessons: What
the World Can
Learn From
Educational
Change in
Finland.
:
 “
Teachers
in
Finland
teach
600
hours
a
year,
spending
the
rest
of
time
in
professional
development.
In
the
U.S.,
:
 teachers
are
in
the
classroom
1,100
hours
a
year,
with
little
time
for
feedback.
“A key to that
is education.
Finns do not
really exist
outside of
Finland,” says
Sahlberg.
“This drives
people to take
:
 education
more
seriously. For
example,
nobody
speaks this
funny
language that
we do. Finland
is bilingual,
and every
student learns
both Finnish
and Swedish.
And every Finn
who wants to
be successful
has to master
at least one
other
language,
often English,
but she also
typically
learns
German,
French,
Russian and
many others.
Even the
smallest
children
understand
that nobody
:
 else speaks
Finnish, and if
they want to
do anything
else in life,
they need to
learn
languages.”

Children in a
Finnish school
choir perform a
song called
“The Time Is Now”
on their Climate
Action Day. Photo
by Aapo-Lassi
Kankaala/Flickr.

Finns share
one thing with
South
Koreans:
a deep
respect for
teachers and
their
academic
accomplishments.
In Finland,
only one in ten
applicants to
teaching
programs is
:
 admitted.
After a mass
closure of 80
percent of
teacher
colleges in the
1970s, only the
best university
training
programs
remained,
elevating the
status of
educators in
the country.
Teachers in
Finland teach
600 hours a
year, spending
the rest of
time in
professional
development,
meeting with
colleagues,
students and
families. In the
U.S., teachers
are in the
classroom
1,100 hours a
year, with little
time for
collaboration,
:
 feedback or
professional
development.

How
Americans
can change
education
culture

As TED
speaker Sir
Ken Robinson
noted in his
2013 talk
(How to
escape
education’s
death valley),
when it
comes to
current
American
education
woes “the
dropout crisis
is just the tip
of an iceberg.
What it
doesn’t count
are all the kids
who are in
school but
being
disengaged
:
 from it, who
don’t enjoy it,
who don’t get
any real
benefit from
it.” But it
doesn’t have
to be this way.

Notes Amanda
Ripley, “culture
is a thing that
changes. It’s
more
malleable than
we think.
Culture is like
this ether that
has all kinds of
things swirling
around in it,
some of which
are activated
and some of
which are
latent. Given
an economic
imperative or
change in
leadership or
accident of
history, those
things get
activated.”
The good
:
 news is, “We
Americans
have a lot of
things in our
culture which
would support
a very strong
education
system, such
as a
longstanding
rhetoric about
the equality of
opportunity
and a strong
and legitimate
meritocracy,”
says Ripley.

One reason we
haven’t made
much
progress
academically
over the past
50 years is
because it
hasn’t been
economically crucial for
American kids
to master
sophisticated
problem-
solving and
critical-
:
 thinking skills
in order to
survive. But
that’s not true
anymore.
“There’s a lag
for cultures to
catch up with
economic
realities, and
right now
we’re living in
that lag,” says
Ripley. “So our
kids aren’t
growing up
with the kind
of skills or grit
to make it in
the global
economy.”

An American
classroom ca.
1899: students
studying the
landing of the
Pilgrims at
Plymouth, Mass.
Photo via The
Library of
Congress.
:
 “We are
prisoners of
the pictures
and
experiences
of education
that we had,”
says Tony
Wagner,
expert-in-
residence at
Harvard’s
educational
innovation
center and
author of The
Global
Achievement
Gap. “We want
schools for
our kids that
mirror our own
experience, or
what we
thought we
wanted. That
severely limits
our ability to
think
creatively of a
different kind
of education.
But there’s no
way that
:
 tweaking that
assembly line
will meet the
21st-century
world. We
need a major
overhaul.”

Indeed. Today,
the American
culture of
choice puts
the onus on
parents to find
the “right”
schools for
our kids,
rather than
trusting that
all schools are
capable of
preparing our
children for
adulthood. Our
obsession
with talent
puts the onus
on students to
be “smart,”
rather than
on adults’ ability
to teach
them. And our
antiquated
system for
:
 funding
schools makes
property
values the
arbiter of
spending per
student, not
actual values.

But what will

American
education
culture look
like
tomorrow? In
the most
successful
education
cultures in the
world, it is the
system that is
responsible
for the
success of the
student, says
Schleicher —
not solely the
parent, not
solely the
student, not
solely the
teacher. The
culture
creates the
system. The
:
 hope is that
Americans
can find the
grit and will to
change their
own culture —
one parent,
student and
teacher at a
time.

Featured
image via
iStock.

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Amy S. Choi is a
freelance
journalist, writer
and editor based
in Brooklyn, N.Y.
She is the co-
founder and
editorial director
of The Mash-Up
Americans, a
media and
consulting
company that
examines
multidimensional
modern life in the
U.S.
:
 Amy S. Choi
blog
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