Lauding the Finnish education system is certainly nothing new but something that I came across last week has really stuck with me and I thought it was worth sharing. Morgan Spurlock (the Supersize Me guy) has a new series on CNN called Inside Man and last week he went inside the education system. He spent half of the show visiting a Finnish school and talking to various administrators, teachers, and students. At one point he asked an administrator what he thought about the American obsession with testing. The admin smirked and replied:
“Accountability is what you have left when you remove responsibility from the equation.”
It was clear that this wasn’t just a random statement but a philosophy embodied by everyone involved. Trust in teachers to be the professionals that they are and for students to focus on what they needed to do is the lynchpin of their system. There is no magic formula and in fact their lessons don't look remarkably different than those in a typical American classroom. The difference is simply a trust in the fulfillment of responsibilities. It also doesn’t hurt that their schools are inspiring and modern buildings whereas ours tend to look like (and are often run like) minimum security prisons.
Spurlock spent the second half of the show in American classroom. Unfortunately, it was in a NYC charter school and not representative of the quality of education or what happens in American schools overall. The lesson planning and management protocol looked pretty gimmicky and low level to me and I would argue that in this case they are subtracting dignity to get accountability.
Update 8/5/13: Check out the EduShyster's much better written take on the charter school piece:
A Second is a Terrible Thing to Waste
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