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The school
calendar debate is about much more than summer vacations, it represents
tremendous pressure on the middle class as well as the poor. With economic
uncertainty and the parental fears for child safety in latch key situations, as
well as ugly reminders in the news of playground bullies and gangs, pedophile
priests and coaches, violent video games with hidden sexual content options, security
is an elusive fantasy for many families in this 24/7 world we inhabit in the
West. I lived in San
Diego in the mid80s. My two children were thrust unexpectantly into 4-track
year round elementary school when our upper middle class community and another
in one of the poorest in town were rushed a year ahead of everyone else as a
working trial run. The poor ethnic community fared better that transitional
year because they had family members for after school childcare, while the
middle class soccer moms of my community were desperate to find child care in mid-November
for 3 weeks and early March when the third mini-break meant not a short family
vacation with shorter ski lift lines, but latched-keyed kids and no after
school programs as they are in summer, which relied heavily on college
students. Strangers called me begging to let their kids stay with me for 3
weeks, their office vacation time depleted. All these years later I find the
situation not much improved, though family finances and pressure are stretched
to breaking points. What do you
think? KwC As more schools open earlier, parents rebel
to reclaim summer “A major impetus for an early start to the
school year is standardized testing. In many states, district officials contend
that shifting starting dates to July or August allows for semester exams before
the Christmas break and for added instruction ahead of statewide tests that are
used to measure progress for the federal No Child Left Behind program. Some have added a
few days of instruction, but most have shifted the academic year, traditionally
from September to June, to July or August to May. Other districts have
stretched the calendar to adopt what is known in some places as a year-round
school year, rotating periods of instruction in 9-to-12-week blocks with
vacation breaks of 3 to 4 weeks. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/06/education/06calendar.html In Finland's Footsteps By Robert G. Kaiser,
Washington Post Outlook, Sunday, August 7, 2005; B01 Life in Finland, one
of the world's best functioning welfare states and least known success stories,
can be complicated. Consider the dilemma confronting parents looking for day
care for a 4-year-old daughter in Kuhmo, a town of 10,000 near the middle of
the country. Should they put their
child into the town nursery school, where she could spend her weekdays from
6:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. with about 40 other children, cared for by a 47-year-old
principal with 20 years' experience, Mirsa Pussinen, as well as four teachers
with master's degrees in preschool education, two teacher's aides and one cook?
The girl would hear books read aloud every day, play games with numbers and the
alphabet, learn some English, dig in the indoor sandbox or run around outside,
sing and perform music, dress up for theatrical games, paint pictures, eat a
hot lunch, take a nap if she wanted one, learn to play and work with others. Or should that
4-year-old spend her days in home care? Most parents in Kuhmo choose this
option, and put their children into the care of women such as Anneli Vaisanen,
who has three or four kids in her home for the day. The 49-year-old Vaisanen
doesn't have a master's, but she has received extensive training, has provided
day care for two decades and has two grown children of her own. The kids in her
charge do most of the things those at the center do, but with less order and
organization. They also bake bread and make cakes. How to decide? There's no financial difference; both
forms of day care cost the parents nothing. There's no difference in the schooling that
will follow day care -- all the kids in Kuhmo (and throughout Finland) will
have essentially identical opportunities in Finnish schools, Europe's best.
There is no "elite" choice, no working-class choice; everyone is
treated equally. It's a dilemma that
American parents don't have a chance to confront. And it's a vivid example of
the difference between what the Finns call a social democracy and our society.
Finland is a leading example of the northern European view that a successful,
competitive society should provide basic social services to all its citizens at
affordable prices or at no cost at all. This isn't controversial in Finland; it
is taken for granted. For a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a
difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can't we
treat our citizens as well as the Finns do? Finns have one of the
world's most generous systems of state-funded educational, medical and welfare
services, from pregnancy to the end of life. They pay nothing for education at
any level, including medical school or law school. Their medical care, which
contributes to an infant mortality rate that is half of ours and a life
expectancy greater than ours, costs relatively little. (Finns devote 7 percent
of gross domestic product to health care; we spend 15 percent.) Finnish senior
citizens are well cared for. Unemployment benefits are good and last, in one
form or another, indefinitely. On the other hand,
Finns live in smaller homes than Americans and consume a lot less. They spend
relatively little on national defense, though they still have universal male
conscription, and it is popular. Their per capita national income is about 30
percent lower than ours. Private consumption of goods and services represents
about 52 percent of Finland's economy, and 71 percent of the United States'.
Finns pay considerably higher taxes -- nearly half their national income is
taken in taxes, while Americans pay about 30 percent on average to federal,
state and local governments. Should we be learning
from Finland? The question occurred
to me repeatedly as I traveled around Finland this summer. Americans could
easily get used to the sense of well-being that Finns get from their welfare
state, which has effectively removed many of the tangible sources of anxiety
that beset our society. But the United States
could not simply turn itself into another Finland. Too much of Finnish reality
depends on uniquely Finnish circumstances. Finland is as big as two Missouris,
but with just 5.2 million residents -- fewer than metropolitan Washington. It
is ethnically and religiously homogeneous. A strong Lutheran work ethic,
combined with a powerful sense of probity, dominates the society. Homogeneity
has led to consensus: Every significant Finnish political party supports the
welfare state and, broadly speaking, the high taxation that makes it possible.
And Finns have extraordinary confidence in their political class and public
officials. Corruption is extremely rare. For all of that,
Finland doesn't feel like an entirely foreign place -- I thought I was on
familiar ground. Finns obviously enjoy things we enjoy, from a good concert
(rock, jazz or classical) and a good ice cream cone to a brisk walk on the
beach. They are practical-minded experimenters and problem solvers. One fundamental
Finnish value sounds a lot like an American principle -- "to provide equal
opportunities in life for everyone," as Pekka Himanen, a 31-year-old
intellectual wunderkind in Helsinki, put it. Himanen, a product of Finnish
schools who got his PhD in philosophy at 21, argues that Finland now does this
much better than the United States, where he lived for several years while
associated with the University of California in Berkeley. In Finland, Himanen
said, opportunity does not depend on "an accident of birth." All
Finns have an equal shot at life, liberty and happiness. Yes, this is supposed
to be an American thing, but many well-traveled younger Finns, who all seem to
speak English, have a Finnish take on American realities. Miapetra Kumpula, a
32-year-old member of Parliament, volunteered this on the American dream:
"Sure, anyone can get rich -- but most won't." Finns are enormously
proud of their egalitarian tradition. They are the only country in Europe that
has never had a king or a home-grown aristocracy. Finland has no private schools
or universities, no snooty clubs, no gated communities or compounds where the
rich can cut themselves off from everyday life. I repeatedly saw signs of a
class structure based on economics and educational attainment, but was also
impressed by the life stories of Finns I met in prominent positions, or who had
made a lot of money. One of the richest
Finns is 39-year-old Risto Siilasmaa, founder and CEO of F-Secure, an Internet
security firm that competes successfully with American giants Symantec and
McAfee. Siilasmaa, a teenage nerd turned self-made tycoon, is worth several
hundred million dollars. His wife, Kaisu, the mother of their three children,
has a decidedly un-tycoonish career: She teaches first and second grade in an
ordinary school. Like every Finn I spoke to about money, Siilasmaa would not
acknowledge any interest in personal wealth. "I'm a competitive person, I
like to win," he said, "but I've had enough money since I was
15." This too seems to be
part of Finnish egalitarianism; most Finns don't boast or conspicuously consume
(except perhaps when they buy fancy cars). Finnish authorities know how much
everyone earns, and they pro-rate traffic fines depending on the wealth of the
malefactor. Last year the 27-year-old heir to a local sausage fortune was fined
170,000 euros, about $204,000 at the time of the fine, for driving at 50 miles
per hour in a 25 mph zone in downtown Helsinki. The Finnish
educational system is the key to the country's successes and that, too, is a
manifestation of egalitarianism. Surprisingly, it is a new system, created over
the last generation by a collective
act of will.
The individual most responsible for it was Erkki Aho, director general of the
National Board of Education from 1972 to 1992. Aho, now 68, was "a little
bit of a radical," he told me with a smile -- a Finnish Social Democrat
who believed in trying to make his country more fair. The early '70s were a
radical time in Finland. Change was in the air. For reformers,
education was the principal arena. The traditional Finnish system was
conservative and divisive: Kids were selected for an academic track at the end
of fourth grade. Those not chosen had no chance at higher education.
Universities were relatively few, and mostly mediocre. Aho and his colleagues
thought schooling should be "comprehensive," keeping all kids
together in the same schools for nine years without tracking them by ability.
Only for "upper secondary," or high school, would academic students
be separated from those with vocational interests. The schools would be
administered by municipal governments, but at the outset, the substance of the
reform would be controlled by the National Board of Education and the
government in Helsinki. The key to reform, Aho and others
believed, was teacher training. Teaching had always been a high-status
profession in Finland, but now it would become even more prestigious. (Today
there are 10 applicants for every place in the universities that train
teachers.)
Teachers would be required to complete master's degrees, six years of
preparation that combined education courses with substantive work in subject
areas. "Of course I faced much criticism," Aho recalled. "Upper
secondary school teachers were very skeptical. Many parents were critical. The
cultural elite said this would mean catastrophe for Finnish schools. The right
thought the comprehensive schools smacked of socialism." But by the end of the
1980s, the new system was broadly popular. It was strengthened by a reform of
higher education that gave Finland numerous new, high-quality universities. A
grave economic recession in the early '90s was a key test, Aho said. "It
was wonderful to see how strong the consensus was" that even in dire
economic straits, Finland had to save this new school system, which had become
"so important to the society," he said. Indeed it had. Finland
in the '90s became a high-tech powerhouse, led by Nokia, now the world's
largest maker of cell phones. Finnish students have become the best in the
world, as measured by an internationally administered exam that assesses the
educational progress of 15-year-olds in all the industrial countries. Aho's time in charge
ended in the early '90s, when Finns turned against excessive centralization.
After he left the Board of Education in 1992, power over the schools reverted to localities and
the schools themselves. Teachers and
headmasters were given the authority to write curricula, choose textbooks and
allocate resources. Apart from the Program for International Student Assessment
(PISA) tests and final exams at the end of high school, Finnish kids take no
standardized tests, a stark contrast to the current test obsession in this
country. I found Finnish
society beguiling on many levels, but in the end concluded that it could not
serve as a blueprint for the United States. National differences matter. The Finns are
special and so are we. Ours is a society driven by money, blessed by huge
private philanthropy, cursed by endemic corruption and saddled with deep
mistrust of government and other public institutions. Finns have none of those
attributes. Nor do they tune in to
American individualism. Groupthink seems to be fine with most Finns; conformity
is the norm, risk-taking is avoided -- a problem now, when entrepreneurs are so
needed. I was bothered by a sense of entitlement among many Finns, especially
younger people. Sirpa Jalkanen, a
distinguished microbiologist and biotech entrepreneur affiliated with Turku
University in that ancient Finnish port city, told me she was discouraged by
"this new generation we have now who love entertainment, the easy
life." She said she wished the government would require every university
student to pay a "significant but affordable" part of the cost of
their education, "just so they'd appreciate it." Today every Finnish
student is assured free tuition and a monthly stipend to live on that they can
receive for 55 months, the length of the six-year courses most still take. But if Finland can't be a blueprint for
us, it can be an inspiration. Education struck me as the area where Americans
could most profit by learning from Finland. Nothing achieved by Aho's reforms
would be beyond the reach of American schools if we really wanted them to
become good. And I think we could
learn from Finns' confidence that they can shape their own fate. Finns speak of
the Finnish National
Project,
an effort involving much of the country, and nearly all of its elites, to make
the country more
educated, more agile and adaptive, more green, more fair and more competitive
in a fast-changing global economy. Manuel Castells, the renowned Spanish sociologist who
teaches at the University of Southern California and has been writing about
Finland for nearly a decade, argues that Finland's ability to remake itself followed from its success
in creating a welfare state that made Finns feel secure. "If you provide
security and it is felt, then you can make reforms," he said in an interview. Of
course you have to agree on what reforms are needed. The complicated
Finnish language includes the word talkoot,
which means, roughly, "doing work together." It's a powerful Finnish tradition, and
reflects a national sense that "we're all in the same boat," as numerous Finns said to me.
This idea has always appealed to Americans, but in this country it has nearly
always been an abstraction. Finns seem to make it real. Robert
Kaiser, associate editor of The Post, recently returned from a three-week trip
to Finland with Post photographer Lucian Perkins. Their earlier reports and
photos can be found online at http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/finlanddiary. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080502015.html?nav=hcmodule |
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