"Suomea: Tuhansien Järvien ja Mahdollisuuksien Maa"

"Finland: The Land of a Thousand Lakes and Opportunities"

Throughout our end-of-the-year studies, I have noticed that the Scandinavian "outlier," Finland, has been gaining a large deal of momentum in the Gifted and Talented II class.

Toward the beginning of last week, we began reading the second half of a book called, Outliers. Outliers is a piece of literature written about the success stories of exceptional people and extraordinary societies (or "outliers"). We started our journey with a chapter about the cultural legacy of the people living in the South-Eastern parts of Asia. Overall, a cultural legacy is the "lifestyle," for which a society (or a culture) is known. We learned that the cultural legacies of the Asians include an incomparable work ethic, and therefore, an enhanced sense of logical thought. This unsurpassed work ethic has been shown through the Asians' abilities to grow and harvest rice, which is considered to be a strenuous and laborious task. Because of the Asians' strong perseverance and passion for labor, they have, not only the ability, but the work ethic to complete any intellectual task which may stand in their path. Overall, Malcolm Gladwell (the author of the book) describes the Asians as a strong, collective, and intelligent society.

By the time I completed reading that portion of the book, I was a bit upset by the amount of information that Gladwell decided to leave out. For example, Gladwell stated that mostly all Eastern-Asian countries (such as South Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, etc.) defeated all industrialized, Western-world nations (such as the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, etc.) in intellectual subjects. This is partially true. I knew for a fact that Finland crushed the rest of the world when it came to Science and Mathematics. This piece of information was enough for me to begin researching the comparative, statistical 'analyses' between Finland, Eastern-Asian countries, and the rest of the world.

I found what I had speculated (and a bit more).

The OECD is the Organization for  Economic Cooperation and Development. It consists of countires that look at imporivng global economic standards. Every four years, the OECD hosts an international PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) exam, which tests 15 year-olds in their constituent countries on three subjects: Mathematics, Science, and Reading. According to the 2009 OECD-sponsored PISA Exam, Finland ranked number one in both Reading and Science, and number two in Mathematics (right behind South Korea). Although Finland fell slightly behind in Mathematics, the amount of differences in learning experiences between both Western-European countries and Asian countries is incredible.

Let's look at Finland. On a political, social, and economic basis, Finland owns more freedoms than any Asian country does (i.e. communism in China, casteism in India, misogyny in Islam countries, etc.). Therefore, the Finnish people are brought up to be independent and free. This enhanced sense of freedom allows Finnish students to be creative. Fundamentally, not only are Finnish students taught inventiveness at home, but they are taught it in school. In Finland, teachers are treated as professionals. At the average Finnish school, all teachers must have masters degrees in order to teach. Generally, teachers receive their own private offices. Finnish students benefit from this exposure to truly knowledgable teachers and the relaxed work environment (i.e. calling your teacher by his first name, no shoes, creativity, etc.). They also profit from the free health care, free lunches, free transportation (to and from school), free materials, and free "field trips." The truly amazing fact is that children in Finland start school when they are seven years old, and their average time spent in school is a bit more than half of the time that an American child spends learning (F: 660 hours per year for 9 years :: US: 1100 hours per year for 13 years).

And Finland still ranks at the top.

"Suomea on tuhansien järvien, mahdollisuuksien ja koulutuksen maa."