Thanks for the link.

The interpretation I've always heard is that Finland is a more homogeneous society, so has more homogeneous outcomes.  I'm not sure I quite buy this.  But I imagine it's easier to teach to a group when everyone in the group comes from a similar background, socioeconomic status, etc.  It seems like in the US these days every other kid's got an IEP - how does a teacher manage a class when half of them must have individualized lesson plans and accomodations?

If the applicant pool to jobs ratio is 40 to 1, teaching must be a pretty sweet job.  So yeah, good and motivated teachers have got to be a factor.  But I've always heard that the academic research doesn't show much benefit to homework, so I guess I'm not surprised by that part.

My favorite quote was from the US superintendant:

He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.

Good luck with that strategy.

I first moved to Finland in '97 as an exchange student during my senior year of high school and ended up staying for two years of college after that. Finland has an excellent educational system, and I'm not surprised by their test scores.

My husband is a high school physics teacher, and we talk about the difference in education systems around the world quite a lot. One of his pet peeves is students who shouldn't be and don't want to be in high school. Before everyone gets offended, let me explain... Not everyone is cut out for academic life or even a white collar job. You don't necessarily need a  college degree to support yourself and be successful. Brick layers, factory workers, miners, etc make more money than my husband does with his masters degree + 60 something credits. Good for them.  One of the main reasons for working is to provide for yourself, so I don't understand why career choices tend to be so ego driven.

Finns start vocational school if they wish during middle school, and it continues through the high school years. Their votech schools aren't all auto shop and hair salons like I remember our votech in the US used to be. They offer training for careers in nursing, media production, etc. That means that everyone that is in the academic high school is there because they want to be.  

There are no attendance requirements in high school (that I remember) because they believe that if you expect to pass the class, you should probably show up. I loved the freedom.  I have to admit that I spent many sunny afternoons skipping chemistry to have a few beers with my friends by the river, but I valued school that much more because I was given the opportunity to blow off steam when I needed it.

The culture is very different from ours. It's hard to explain. I remember being surprised by how little people talk.  When they say something, they really mean it. They have a hard time understanding small talk. Children are very independent. I used to have to walk under a small bridge on the way home from school, and during the winter (when it's always dark) a small gang of elementary school kids would pummel me with snowballs from the top. I loved it. I'd never see that here. You don't even see kids in their own yards anymore.

I'm so "homesick" now! When I lived there, I wanted to stay forever and raise my kids there. Violence is minimal, the environment is stunning, and the people are so practical. They elected their first woman president before 2000. A single woman with a son who lived with her boyfriend and doesn't belong to the church. Not a problem! She was even re-elected. Can you see why I liked it so much?

There actually is a prom, but it's a little different. The seniors get to take the last 6 weeks or so off from school to study for their exit exams. When that happens, the juniors are officially the oldest kids in school, so they have an "old" dance to celebrate. They wear costumes from the 1800's and dance waltzes and traditional Finnish dances. They have to practice for several weeks beforehand, and there are two performances. One for parents and friends, one for the community. It was fun. My girlfriends and I got our hair done and went shopping for dresses together. As you can imagine, there wasn't really another opportunity to wear them, so they were rented which made it affordable.

I've spent some time trying to learn Finnish; didn't get very far, but hope to continue one day. One of the interesting aspects is that the language has no gender (and uses cases where most other modern languages use prepositions - 20+ of them). I would totally agree with Mena who said:

I remember being surprised by how little people talk.  When they say something, they really mean it. They have a hard time understanding small talk.

Exactly; my experience also.

One of the most moving stories in recent Finnish history is about the evacuees from a part of Finland called Karjala or Karelia. When they were thrown off the land by war, the rest of the Finns took up a collection to buy them new land to farm. A whole generation of Finnish women (now mostly passed away, but their descendants remember) did not have wedding rings or candlesticks or any extra gold stuff to hand down because they donated their valuables to help the evacuees. I don't know what this has to do with schooling but it's an example of how the Finns have a history of pulling together (even though some of them speak Swedish).

I couldn't find online info on the wedding rings specifically in English, but here are some history links: History of Karelia | Karelian page at Virtual Finland

To get back to the topic, it's not clear that ALL the lessons of such a distinctive culture can be applied outside it, but we could TOTALLY give teachers more respect and autonomy; I think that would be a great start.