Educational Reform in America: The Trouble With Numbers

A recent post at The 21st Century Principal blog, "Can US Learn Ed Reform from Finland?", by J. Robinson*, posits that, "[American] education reformers dismiss all of what Finland does because 'that country lacks diversity...'" While I agree with many of Robinson's subsequent points, this particular assertion requires clarification.

Diversity is a valid and relevant discrepancy in any comparison of the U.S. teaching system to the Finnish education system. Having a national population of approximately 5.3 million (http://bit.ly/ggWbZw,) there are only as many Finns in all of Finland as there are citizens in the state of Missouri (http://bit.ly/hO9DUZ,) and Helsinki, the largest of Finland's cities, has a mere 588,000 residents (http://bit.ly/dEQ9WN.)

Even if it were equivalent to the United States in ethnic or class diversity (and it isn't,) the urban population of Helsinki alone contains a staggering 11 percent of the entire country's inhabitants; whereas the largest American urban center, New York City, contains only two percent of all Americans (http://bit.ly/gKbmvx.) When this number is combined with the 8 other U.S. cities of one million or more inhabitants, the sum total still amounts to only 7 percent of the American population (http://bit.ly/gn2T6X.) On this basis alone, it should be clear that the Finnish system has had a distinct advantage towards the facilitation of a streamlined methodology that the U.S. would never be able to match.

This is not to say that every idea or model for systemic change should be dismissed as futile, only that its implementation will always pose a significant challenge to any established institution: the more an infrastructure expands, the less effective it is likely to be.

(Maria H. Andersen's article, "The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning," at the World Future Society's website, addresses this paradox from a different perspective, outside the box, as it were. Worthwhile reading.)


*Robinson's post, in turn, relates an argument by Pasi Sahlberg from an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe.

Carpe noctem?

I suppose I'm overdue for an update; I will be doing that soon, however, now is not the time. Too tired, must sleep!