Finland . . . that’s where Nokia cell phones are made, right? Well, Finland also happens to produce some of the very best students in the world. I’m not a huge fan of standardized tests, but Finnish kids are consistently leading the international pack in at least one of them, the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, in short. In the Wall Street Journal post , “What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?“, Ellen Gamerman explores a few rationals for their scholastic success. She writes:

“High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.”

Clearly, Finnish schools differ from their American counterparts in a number of ways; any one of which may have the most impact on the students boosted test-scores. I’m interested in the “half an our of homework a night” part.

American students take this test as well, and consistently score in the middle of the road. But that’s strange, because we assign so much more homework . . . By all rights, our students should be the front runners, shouldn’t they? Apparently not. Part of the problem may be that American teachers are forced into designing, ahem, excuse me, implementing lessons and curriculum that are jam-packed with homework. The fact of the matter is, teachers in most American schools don’t have a great deal of creative licence when it comes to how and what they want to teach. Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000, put things into perspective:

“In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs.”

I concur with that sentiment. If Finnish teachers have the freedom to choose books and curriculum that fit their own academic agendas (involving much less homework) and American teachers must act more like robots programmed to mold sheet metal through some assembly line, it’s no wonder their students are coming out ahead of the game.

I’d also like to consider the Finnish system of children not entering school until the age of seven years old. American kids begin their scholastic experience at age five, two years ahead of Finnish kids, shouldn’t the test results reflect that? Well, they do, just not in the way you’d traditionally expect them to. Here’s the rub; while American kids are shipped of to the factory–oops–I mean school, Finnish kids are placed in a high-quality government-funded preschool program. An Open Education blog-post titled, “Several Lessons to Be Learned from the Finnish School System”, examines the matter in further detail:

“As opposed to a focus on getting a jump academically, [Finnish] early-childhood programs focus on self-reflection and social behavior. It is interesting to note that one of the most notable attributes of Finnish children is their level of personal responsibility.”

It stands to reason that if kids are being asked to complete tasks before they are developmentally ready, not only will those “lessons” be lost on them, but they might instill a background of distaste for the entire educational system. Finland’s notion of the developmental needs and capabilities of their young children flies in the face of that misguided ideology.

“[By teaching students to better manage their emotions through the practice of empathy, caring, and cooperation, there will not only be an improved social climate in the classroom, student academic achievement levels also improve in the process.”

In allowing kids to be kids, Finland is allowing them to build the foundational requirements that lead to excellent students.

Gamerman, Ellen. “What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?” The Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2008

Open Education Blog. “Several Lessons to Be Learned from the Finnish School System“