Author: Gretchen Rubin / Source: Big Think
- Finland’s success on international student assessment tests have left many wondering if the United States should adopt its education policies.
- However, Finland’s educational system developed from a culture that maintains education as a fundamental right; the United States lacks such an acknowledgement.
- Unless the United States undergoes a drastic reassessment of its social contract, meaningful education reform will likely remain out of reach.
Can the United States replicate Finland’s educational success? No.
When people triumph Finland’s education system, they enumerate a laundry list of reforms aimed at radically altering the country’s scholastic approach: no homework, no standardized tests, teacher autonomy, and children beginning compulsory school later. Finland’s success should be praised. Its education system should be studied for what empirical data it may yield.
But underlining discusses of Finland’s education system is a subtext that if the U.S. transfers these practices, it too can see its international test scores rise from the middling ranks. This view misses an important point: Finland’s educational success was driven by a culture with a strong, unifying social contract. The United States simply lacks such a social contract.
Finnish educators are among the first to make this point. As education expert Pasi Sahlberg said during a lecture to the Sandford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education:
I’m not trying to convince people that if they follow what Finland is doing, things will be good. All the education issues and reforms are done specifically to the culture and should be done locally. I’m very much aware that America is very different culturally. I’m trying to tell what we’ve been doing and use Finland as real-world evidence.
If the United States is to make education reform, it must first look to reassessing its cultural assumptions and priorities.
Education: a right or a privilege?
In 1919, Finland enshrined educational provisions as a right. Section 16 of the country’s constitution states unequivocally: “Everyone has the right to basic education free of charge” and this right guarantees citizens “the opportunity to develop themselves without being prevented by economic hardship.”
The United States’ constitution does not make such a promise to its citizens. True, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has established some parity within the education system, but this interpretation of the text has been held up in the courts, most famously in Brown v. Board of Education and Plyler v. Doe. It does not specifically name education as a right, nor is such a right listed anywhere else in the Constitution.
Because of this wording, the Supreme Court ruled in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriquez that education is not a fundamental right. America’s public education system persists because of a patchwork of federal and state laws and institutions, not as a cohesive, universal goal for the society.
As Stephen Lurie, former research and policy advisor at the National Network for Safe Communities, writes, “Each of the countries ahead of the U.S. has a fundamental commitment in common, one that the [sic] America doesn’t: a constitutional, or statutory, guarantee of the right to education. By centralizing education as a key focus of the state, these countries establish baseline requirements that set the frame for policy and judicial challenges, as well as contribute to what [a] Pearson report calls a ‘culture’ of education […].”
Lurie further notes that the U.S. has turned a blind eye to such responsibilities internationally, as well. The country has yet to ratified 13 of the 18 International Human Rights Treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which, among other statutes, mandates the right to education.
Funding education
In Finland, educational funding is provided by the government and is distributed much more evenly. It is tied to neither a school’s rank nor its status, but its need.
Contrary to popular belief, there are private schools in Finland, and around 2 percent of students attend one. However, Finnish private schools are a different breed. They may not charge fees, receive state funding comparable to public schools, and are prohibited from selective admissions.
This is not the case in the U.S. Another effect of San Antonio v. Rodriquez was the legal precedent that…
The post Are you wasting time? Ask this question to find out. appeared first on FeedBox.