Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, cut your hours and spend some time with your kids. Be a mom. They and you will appreciate it.

Love the judgmental crazies on this site

Anonymous wrote:PP, cut your hours and spend some time with your kids. Be a mom. They and you will appreciate it.

Anonymous wrote:I've said this before on previous Finnish education threads here, but I'll say it again. This comes from some experience, as DW lived in Helsinki and I visited her often.

Don't look at PISA scores, look at the end outcome. What type of innovations come out of Finland? The only successful companies are Rovio (Angry Birds game), Supercell (Clash of Clans - also a game), and formerly Nokia which would be bankrupt already if not for Microsoft's huge cash injection last year. I suppose Marimekko is a Finnish "success" depending on who you talk to.

Yes, Finland has a small population, but even when scaled for that, why do we see so much more innovation coming out of the US? How can the US children, so poorly educated according to PISA scores, end up producing so many innovations compared to their counterparts in Europe and Asia? Why does the US dominate in terms of top universities and Nobel prize winners?

My theory (and it's a theory) is that PISA scores do measure one aspect of ability (math/science), but school systems who focus too much on it fail to teach creativity and teamwork skills.

Is there a problem in the US education? For sure. The kids at the lower levels of the socioeconomic scale lose out, and the teacher's unions put the best interests of the teachers and not their pupils as the priority. There is definitely room for reform, but the Finnish model is not necessarily the goal.

Anonymous wrote:I've said this before on previous Finnish education threads here, but I'll say it again. This comes from some experience, as DW lived in Helsinki and I visited her often.

Don't look at PISA scores, look at the end outcome. What type of innovations come out of Finland? The only successful companies are Rovio (Angry Birds game), Supercell (Clash of Clans - also a game), and formerly Nokia which would be bankrupt already if not for Microsoft's huge cash injection last year. I suppose Marimekko is a Finnish "success" depending on who you talk to.

Yes, Finland has a small population, but even when scaled for that, why do we see so much more innovation coming out of the US? How can the US children, so poorly educated according to PISA scores, end up producing so many innovations compared to their counterparts in Europe and Asia? Why does the US dominate in terms of top universities and Nobel prize winners?

My theory (and it's a theory) is that PISA scores do measure one aspect of ability (math/science), but school systems who focus too much on it fail to teach creativity and teamwork skills.

Is there a problem in the US education? For sure. The kids at the lower levels of the socioeconomic scale lose out, and the teacher's unions put the best interests of the teachers and not their pupils as the priority. There is definitely room for reform, but the Finnish model is not necessarily the goal.

Anonymous wrote:PP, cut your hours and spend some time with your kids. Be a mom. They and you will appreciate it.

Anonymous wrote:And by full day, I'm looking for preschools that care for children a full 10 hours. There are a half dozen private preschools near us open for 8-9 hours which just doesn't cut it for working parents.

Anonymous wrote:Which preschool in N Arlington is game based?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course, some of it is funny...

"Finnish schools vary so little because the schools have the same curriculum".

ummmm--maybe it is also because the Finnish socio-economic/language population also varies so little from school-to-school.

The rest is pretty interesting though. I have heard over and over about play-based learning in the early years. Second child is going that route. First child was in a more academic setting.

yes, finland is not exactly a melting pot of diversity. There are a bunch of white, Finnish people there and that's it. They don't deal with the massive diversity that is great but also is challenging to the UNited States school systems.

Is "diversity" the new code word for the poor masses of inner city blacks and Hispanics that are dragging down the test score averages? I do not think diversity on its own is "great", why is that automatically assumed? Finland and South Korea lead the list of successful schools, I hardly think they would prefer to change their homogenous population to one of "diversity" if it acts to diminish the success of the educational system. Where exactly did the term come from as there have been multi-cultures here for centuries-- but all of a sudden this is a the new "pc" code word to describe the lowest socioeconomic races in the country.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course, some of it is funny...

"Finnish schools vary so little because the schools have the same curriculum".

ummmm--maybe it is also because the Finnish socio-economic/language population also varies so little from school-to-school.

The rest is pretty interesting though. I have heard over and over about play-based learning in the early years. Second child is going that route. First child was in a more academic setting.

yes, finland is not exactly a melting pot of diversity. There are a bunch of white, Finnish people there and that's it. They don't deal with the massive diversity that is great but also is challenging to the UNited States school systems.