[chongli]

I thought Finland already had the best schools in the world? Had they not heard the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”?

This sounds terrible. Not everything in life can be achieved purely by intrinsic motivation. Human beings are a social species. We motivate each other through laws, social norms, and economic incentives. Children, who don’t know about any of those things, need direction lest they be caught totally unprepared.

[rgblambda]

>> Had they not heard the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”?

I remember watching an interview with a Finnish teacher where they were asked this very question. Their answer was something like "Being best in the world doesn't mean we can't be better"

When you realise that Finland has little in the way of natural resources and it's economy is very much tied to the skills of the population it makes a lot of sense to be this focused on education.

[chongli]

Of course you can always be better. The question is whether you should flip the table with a radical experiment when you’re already number one. You don’t hear of many sports teams doing this. Businesses that try it risk a shareholder revolt.

[mac01021]

I won't argue that this outcome is not terrible.

But even the best education system we have in the world could well be orders of magnitude worse than some other system that's never been realized before.

It's also possible (I don't know - i'm just admitting the possibility) that a system that focuses on teaches young children self-motivation, goal-formation, critical-thinking, personal-responsibility at the expense of traditional academic knowledge could produce adults that are vastly more capable while at the same time leaving kids far behind on traditional academic abilities until they get older and catch up. _If that were the case_, measuring outcomes by something like a standardized test after a 4 year period would show all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.

[chongli]

young children self-motivation, goal-formation, critical-thinking, personal-responsibility at the expense of traditional academic knowledge

But do those things really require decades of exclusive instruction to form? Or are they mostly something you pick up on the way, as part of your study habits?

If a child reaches adulthood without learning any reading, writing, or arithmetic then it is a terrible tragedy. As a mature student in my mid 30s studying math in university I would not recommend this life to anyone. I’ve lost the better part of two decades of my best working years for building wealth. I’m going to need to do extremely well after graduation if I ever hope to retire.

[eMSF]

>Had they not heard the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”?

Not only that, but the current administration may have vastly overestimated their own influence in the previously great PISA results. Putting all their “smarts” into overhauling the system to improve it might not do anything of the sort.

[pdm55]

>>Had they not heard the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”?

My favourite riposte to the latest directive from the Education Dept was by a fellow teacher who said he always knew when change was coming: it would happen just when he had finally worked out how to implement the present policies.

[AQuantized]

I think this is at odds with how they achieved that result to begin with. To become the best you have to be willing to experiment. It makes sense to keep iterating the process so long as you continue the majority of good practices and return to a previous iteration if it doesn't work out.

[new2628]

You can also become the best accidentally, by some right things happening that you don't even correctly recognize and attribute. Then you can ruin that with experimenting.