The thing is, many European countries and especially the Nordic ones are relatively homogeneous and hold similar cultural values and emphasis on education. The white protestant culture, the hispanic catholic culture, the confucianist asian culture, etc. all have varying views on such. Our entire CULTURE has to be united when it comes to education for something like Finland's system to work.
This relates a good deal back to the potential role of NASA. Back in the 60s, every kid and their dog wanted to be an astronaut or scientist; but with our current lack of projects TO GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE, why would they want to study math or science when all those do is make an I-phone with a slightly bigger screen?
Those things are hard and boorrrrrinnnnggg, I wanna be the next American Idol!
If NASA's budget were its original 5% of the federal budget instead of its current 0.48%, you can damn well bet kids would be paying attention in science class.
This so much. Also India scores higher than we do, and they are much more diverse. Despite them all being "Indian", there are many diffrent kinds of Indian. Seeing as how a united and independant India has existed for approximatly the same time as the EU, it would be like looking at half the EU (or 2/3, whichever area equals out ot the size of India) and calling them all the same because they are all white people. I don't think cultural homogenity factors so much into a succesful education system.
The Finnish system has a minimum requirement of a Masters degree, but a lot of thse Masters degrees are actually in Education, which has a natural progression into teaching (pretty much how it works over here for anyone with a B.Ed or M.Ed. There are also requirements of a 35 week placement in subject knowledge and in teaching methods, no different to how it works in the rest of the EU, save for the Masters requirement. Thanks to its good reputation, there is a positive feedback loop going on in Finland - a good sector attracts good people.
Than clearly the US needs to replicate this.
Also as per the cost of building new schools, new classrooms and insuring they have proper support staff, you wouldn't go up to a tac payer and say "We need to raise your taxes to pay for more janitors at X school" you would go and say "We need to raise your taxes in order to provide a better learning environment for YOUR CHILDREN at X school through (list of things that sound better than hiring more janitors, improving teacher quality, renovating the classrooms etc.)".
Also even if increasing the standards for teachers, by requiring them to have a masters degree, and increasing the standards a masters degree entails, only raises a students grade by 10% over 30 years, I think it would be worth it. (This is assuming that what you mean by that is 30 years after he gets the degree, then his student's grade are 10%, if it is a cumulative 10% over 30 years than I don't think it is worth it.)
Also when it comes to old teachers handeling kids in a class room, I think it has much more to do with teacher temperment than age. My Englsih teacher (who was great and retired to Florida [how sterotypical] this year) was 68 and she kept all of us under control. Whereas my history teacher was ~55 is leaving this year and could not control any of his classes. Whenever we acted out in English, she would just send one of us to the principal, yet even though we acted out much more in history, I think kids were only sent out once or twice in the year, versus my teacher sending kids out at least 3 or 4 times in the last quarter alone.
Although you are right, they would likley be better spent teaching younger teachers. If Ms. Carel knew how lax Mr. Stanly was, she would have fixed that in an instant. Also this was in a class with only 15 kids (all the same kids, since at my school you go to the same history and english classes), so I admit that this is not the case in general. Also besides just ages in general Ms. Carel had been teaching for ~30 years, verus 2 for Mr. Stanly.
I second what scriver said.
..."Norse", you say?
* scriver watches Aklyon get hunted down and lynched by a mob of infuriated Finnish nationalists.
* Palau "Aren't they norse though"?
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Topic: Is America being "conservative" good? (Read 26042 times)