http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2009/09/finnish-education-system-rocks-why.html

The key is that they VALUE education whereas the US values only one thing and that is MONEY. Now as an educator in the US I know what we are doing is not working and the philosophy of every child should be college bound is not realistic. I have 18 year old students who are still in the 9th grade not doing anything but disrupting the learning of those who want to learn. I believe kids should start school at age 7. I also think in the US, because of our diversities, students should be given choice to at the age of 16 (which is the age of the students who are in grade 9 in Finland) if they want to continue on a college bound track or start learning a trade to be productive citizens in our society. This would better prepare our students for college who want to be college bound and those who want to learn a trade and start working. Plenty more research needs to be done on what is working and why.

“ECEC-system consists of municipal and private services.
Municipalities must offer day care in the official
languages of Finland: Finnish, Swedish and Sàmi. Day
care should also support the language and culture of
speakers of Romany and children of immigrant background.”

In the two-cycle degree system students first complete the Bachelor’s degree, after which they may go for the higher, Master’s degree. As a rule, students are admitted to study for the higher degree. Universities also arrange separate Master’s programmes with separate student selection, to which the entry requirement is a Bachelor’s level degree or corresponding studies.

Studies are quantified as credits (ECTS). One year of full-time study corresponds to 60 credits. The extent of the Bachelor’s level degree is 180 credits and takes three years. The Master’s degree is 120 credits, which means two years of full-time study on top of the lower degree. In some fields, such as Medicine, the degrees are more extensive and take longer to complete.

The system of personal study plans will facilitate the planning of studies and the monitoring of progress in studies and support student guidance and counselling.

University postgraduate education aims at a doctoral degree. In addition to the required studies, doctoral students prepare a dissertation, which they defend in public. The requirement for postgraduate studies is a Master’s or corresponding degree.

Universities select their students independently and entrance examinations are an important part of the selection process.

An admitted student may only accept one student place in degree education in a given academic year. The aim is to simplify student selection procedures by means of a joint universities application system to be introduced in the 2008/2009 academic year.

Universities also offer fee-charging continuing education and open university instruction, which do not lead to qualifications but can be included in a undergraduate or postgraduate degree.

You’ve stated that teachers who don’t do their job effectively should be fired – well, I completely agree. But as a parent whose children have, collectively, attended 16 years of public school in the U.S., I can tell you that it is rare for this to happen. I have literally dozens of examples, but in one instance, my child had a teacher that would HIT students on top of the head with her pointer! This was in a public school in Ojai, CA. She also did things like leave the kids unattended for long periods of times (these were 6 year olds), which is also illegal in CA. Many, many complaints later, she still had her job. And like I said, this is just one example where a teacher we dealt with should have been fired – it simply doesn’t happen when it should.

We eventually resorted to homeschooling our children. I’ve studied the Finnish core curriculum and common practices and can say from personal experience that their model is similar to what we feel makes our own homeschool so successful. Clearly, you know very little about homeschooling, or you would not promote the idea that it is illegal in many countries “for good reason”. Actually, the main reason homeschooling is illegal in some countries is very much about governmental control, and not education at all.

Know what you are talking about before insulting others.

Donald: The US has by far the lowest social mobility of western countries. Enough said.

NCLB is not at all about the students. It is there to intentionally try to break up the largest union in the country. The NEA. Look at the facts. What happens to a school that does not meet or exceed on state standardized tests(which supposedly by 2012 must be 100% of all students)? After a couple of year of “failure” the Feds can come in and fire everyone and start over. Anyone that understands tenure knows that even the administrators in a school have a difficult time letting go of a tenured teacher who slipped through the system even if they are horrible at the job. Why? The Union will support them no matter what.

Responsibility is also a great factor here. Americans have become a nation of people who cannot take responsibility for their own actions. We are all “sue happy”. If someone falls down on the sidewalk in front of my house I somehow become responsible. I didn’t push them down. They were not paying attention. Take responsibility. Having worked in the public school system for the last 12 years, I have seen this lack of personal responsibility over and over again. It is never the student or parents fault something happens. It is always someone else s fault. This is also why we are depriving our students of using technology in the classrooms. We are afraid that a student might cyber bully another student and the school will be held accountable. Why isn’t the student who did the bullying held accountable? I do not believe that European schools face this problem because they teach personal responsibility early on.

I think it is brilliant that they don’t start academics until kids are 7. I think that a child’s dislike of school comes from the fact that at 5 we are insisting that they become fluent readers. Kindergarten is the new 1st grade in this country. It is a researched fact that some kids will read very early while some will not fully get it until the end of second grade or early third. In American schools by that time they are tagged and labeled as slow or learning disabled and thus “left behind”. And finally, as someone above commented no education is free. However, giving people a chance to educate themselves without going into massive debt will also increase the number of people that are actually contributing to society and paying taxes. People are always complaining about where there tax money is going. This is an example of how that money would be useful and in turn create more money that would help the country.