The Tyee has published my review of a good new book on Finnish education: What If We Truly Put Teachers in Control of Educating? Excerpt:
In Teachers We Trust: The Finnish Way to World-Class Schools By Pasi Sahlberg and Timothy D. Walker W.W. Norton (2021)
A book on improving trust in public education is very timely, precisely when the pandemic has eroded trust in most public institutions — including the schools.
The authors of this book describe how effectively Finnish schools responded to the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago: “On Monday, March 16, the Finnish government decided to close all school buildings and university campuses just two days later. Schools were advised to organize remote learning using alternative methods.… Educators had one full day to make plans so that no child would suffer and be left behind.”
They carried through on the decision, because the government trusted the teachers and the teachers trusted the government. As the authors say, “Trust — in both teachers and students — is a key condition for self-directed learning in Finnish schools.”
Pasi Sahlberg and Tim Walker are dedicated evangelists for Finnish education: Sahlberg has taught in Finnish schools and helped frame policy for them, and he’s written an influential book on what we can learn from Finland. Walker, an American married to a Finn, experienced culture shock when he began teaching in Finland. He soon realized he’d left a system that values stars — individual super-teachers who redeem both their students and their schools — and entered a system that considers educating children as a team effort.
That’s a major difference. North American culture has glorified the star teacher, from Glenn Ford in The Blackboard Jungle to Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, rescuing kids when their schools can’t or won’t. The Finns argue that it takes a whole school to educate each kid, and turn each into an educated and competent person.
Sahlberg and Walker explain that Finland wasn’t trying to create a world-class education system when it reformed its schools 25 years ago. It was just trying to save money in the recession of the early 1990s. Instead of axing programs and increasing class sizes, the Finns looked at the well-paid bureaucrats who’d been running their mediocre system. Why not ditch them and let local teachers decide how to meet national curricular goals?
That was a question few education systems would dare to ask, because in most countries, including Canada, there always seems to be a ready platform for critics portraying teachers as feckless layabouts who must be bullied into “accountability” by education ministries relying on standardized exams to judge student progress.
But the Finns already respected their teachers. So school reform made them as professional as doctors, lawyers or architects: highly trained, taking guidance from one another instead of from government bureaucrats, and trusted to teach and assess their students with little reliance on standardized exams.
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