In South Korea and Finland, it’s not about finding the “right” school.
Fifty years ago, both South Korea and Finland had terrible education
systems. Finland was at risk of becoming the economic stepchild of
Europe. South Korea was ravaged by civil war. Yet over the past half
century, both South Korea and Finland have turned their schools around —
and now both countries are hailed internationally for their extremely
high educational outcomes. What can other countries learn from these two
successful, but diametrically opposed, educational models? Here’s an
overview of what South Korea and Finland are doing right.
The Korean model: Grit and hard, hard, hard work.
For millennia, in some parts of Asia, the only way to climb
the socioeconomic ladder and find secure work was to take an examination
— in which the proctor was a proxy for the emperor,
says Marc
Tucker, president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the
Economy. Those examinations required a thorough command of knowledge,
and taking them was a grueling rite of passage. Today, many in the
Confucian countries still respect the kind of educational achievement
that is promoted by an exam culture.
The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat: the country is 100 percent literate. But success comes with a price.
Among these countries, South Korea stands apart as the most extreme, and
arguably, most successful. The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat:
the country is 100 percent literate, and at the forefront of
international comparative tests of achievement, including tests of
critical thinking and analysis. But this success comes with a price:
Students are under enormous, unrelenting pressure to perform. Talent is
not a consideration — because the culture believes in hard work and
diligence above all, there is no excuse for failure. Children study
year-round, both in-school and with tutors. If you study hard enough,
you can be smart enough.
“Koreans basically believe that I have to get through this really tough period to have a great future,” says andrew director of education and skills at PISA and special advisor on
education policy at the OECD. “It’s a question of short-term unhappiness
and long-term happiness.” It’s not just the parents pressuring their
kids. Because this culture traditionally celebrates conformity and
order, pressure from other students can also heighten performance
expectations. This community attitude expresses itself even in
early-childhood education, says Joe Tobin, professor of early childhood
education at the University of Georgia who specializes in comparative
international research. In Korea, as in other Asian countries, class
sizes are very large — which would be extremely undesirable for, say, an
American parent. But in Korea, the goal is for the teacher to lead the
class as a community, and for peer relationships to develop. In American
preschools, the focus for teachers is on developing individual
relationships with students, and intervening regularly in peer
relationships.
“I think it is clear there are better and worse way to educate our children,” says Amanda Ripley, author of
The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way.
“At the same time, if I had to choose between an average US education
and an average Korean education for my own kid, I would choose, very
reluctantly, the Korean model. The reality is, in the modern world the
kid is going to have to know how to learn, how to work hard and how to
persist after failure. The Korean model teaches that.”
The Finnish model: Extracurricular choice, intrinsic motivation.
In Finland, on the other hand, students are learning the benefits of both rigor and flexibility. The Finnish model, say educators, is utopia.
Finland has a short school day rich with school-sponsored
extracurriculars, because Finns believe important learning happens
outside the classroom.
In Finland, school is the center of the community, notes Schleicher.
School provides not just educational services, but social services.
Education is about creating identity.
Finnish culture values intrinsic motivation and the pursuit of
personal interest. It has a relatively short school day rich with
school-sponsored extracurriculars, because culturally, Finns believe
important learning happens outside of the classroom. (An exception?
Sports, which are not sponsored by schools, but by towns.) A third of
the classes that students take in high school are electives, and they
can even choose which matriculation exams they are going to take. It’s a
low-stress culture, and it values a wide variety of learning
experiences.
But that does not except it from academic rigor, motivated by the
country’s history trapped between European superpowers, says Pasi
Sahlberg, Finnish educator and author of
Finnish Lessons: What the World Can Learn From Educational Change in Finland.
Teachers in Finland teach 600 hours a year, spending the rest of time in
professional development.
In the U.S., teachers are in the classroom
1,100 hours a year, with little time for feedback.
“A key to that is education. Finns do not really exist outside of
Finland,” says Sahlberg. “This drives people to take education more
seriously. For example, nobody speaks this funny language that we do.
Finland is bilingual, and every student learns both Finnish and Swedish.
And every Finn who wants to be successful has to master at least one
other language, often English, but she also typically learns German,
French, Russian and many others. Even the smallest children understand
that nobody else speaks Finnish, and if they want to do anything else in
life, they need to learn languages.”
Finns share one thing with South Koreans: a deep respect for teachers and their academic accomplishments.
In Finland, only one in ten applicants to teaching programs is
admitted. After a mass closure of 80 percent of teacher colleges in the
1970s, only the best university training programs remained, elevating
the status of educators in the country. Teachers in Finland teach 600
hours a year, spending the rest of time in professional development,
meeting with colleagues, students and families. In the U.S., teachers
are in the classroom 1,100 hours a year, with little time for
collaboration, feedback or professional development.
How Americans can change education culture
As TED speaker Sir Ken Robinson noted in his 2013 talk , when it comes to current American education woes “the dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg.
What it doesn’t count are all the kids who are in school but being
disengaged from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit
from it.” But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Notes Amanda Ripley, “culture is a thing that changes. It’s more
malleable than we think. Culture is like this ether that has all kinds
of things swirling around in it, some of which are activated and some of
which are latent. Given an economic imperative or change in leadership
or accident of history, those things get activated.” The good news is,
“We Americans have a lot of things in our culture which would support a
very strong education system, such as a longstanding rhetoric about the
equality of opportunity and a strong and legitimate meritocracy,” says
Ripley.
One reason we haven’t made much progress academically over the past
50 years is because it hasn’t been economically crucial for American
kids to master sophisticated problem-solving and critical-thinking
skills in order to survive. But that’s not true anymore. “There’s a lag
for cultures to catch up with economic realities, and right now we’re
living in that lag,” says Ripley. “So our kids aren’t growing up with
the kind of skills or grit to make it in the global economy.”
