The Language of Educational Success

Recently, I came across this article in the Atlantic on educational reform and the amazing achievements of Finland. The gist of the article (which you should read anyways), is that the key to Finnish success in education is not competition and high-stakes accountability, but exactly the opposite. Finland has virtually no private schools, no standardized tests except a high school exit exam, and no voucher system, school competition, etc. Instead, what the reformers of Finnish education have focused on in the past few decades is equality of educational opportunities for all children! Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish Ministry of Education spokesperson, points out that

There's no word for accountability in Finnish. Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.

This is a radical idea to many Americans, that maybe we don't need accountability and competition as much as cooperation, equality, and responsibility. Yet it makes perfect sense with everything I have experienced as a teacher. The language of vouchers, charter schools, and school choice,  is a language of finding something better than the norm. The problem with this is that most students will still be experiencing the "norm" of public schools.

Imagine all of our children were on a large ocean liner. We want them to have the amazing experiences that we had on that boat decades ago. One day, some people start noticing that the boat is slowly sinking. Do we:

A. Pay a private ship to come rescue just our son or daughter, and continue them on the journey at a costly fee?
B. Demand that the boat be fixed without resources, in fact while simultaneously building "better" boats that aren't big enough for all the kids?
C. Pool our resources and repair or build a better boat for ALL the kids?

To accept competition as the basis for education, you must be willing to accept the outcome that some students will get an inferior education. What Finland has demonstrated is that it is quite possible, with a focused public will, to create a system where every child has an opportunity to succeed!

Language is so important to the way we see the world around us. Acountability implies distrust, reward and punishment. Responsibility implies trust, mutual respect, and working toward a common goal. I know which one I want my son to learn. I know which one works in class. Take it a step further; for most of my career, I spent a lot of time and effort focusing on what I learned in college as "behavior management" or "classroom management". Again, language epitomizes the problems I was facing. When I tried to "manage" my students, I was the one trying to control, and getting frustrated when the students saw no intrinsic reason to cooperate. When I finally realized that I was driving myself and my students crazy, I was able to back up, and start from language like "classroom atmosphere", "respect", "mutual trust", and "self control". I realized that my students had no idea how I wanted them to act in class, unless I showed them not only what I expected, but why it was important to help them learn and succeed. And to do this, I had to first show them that I trusted them and cared about them.

Ten years ago, I would have thought that was all a bunch of feel-good nonsense. I have heard (and agreed with) the argument that we are creating a generation of coddled brats, by always worrying about their self esteem and always being positive. Yet now I see that you can still be realistic, with high expectations and honest assessments, while simultaneously guiding children to trust you and work even harder toward the goals that you jointly set in class.

In my classroom today, things aren't perfect. Students get out of hand. I occasionally have to raise my voice. Yet the classroom atmosphere is one of cooperation and responsibility, where we each take responsibility for our own actions, including me! With this foundation of trust, I can take the class on a journey to things that they otherwise would shy away from, because they are new, strange, or different. And they can return the favor by surprising me with an even better way to proceed than what is written in my lesson plan.

Trust. Cooperation. Respect. Honesty. Fairness. Equality. This is what I want for my students, my classroom, my child, my life. This is what I believe most public school teachers want for themselves (from administrators, parents, the public), and for their students. Shouldn't this be the foundation of the next generation of school reform? Finland proves that the tests are not what matters. It's how you treat the people involved.