# Finland, education, and Music



## Musician (Jul 25, 2013)

I was watching a fascinating TV program that talked about why Finland is holding the record currently for being number 1 in education in the world ( Secular Studies ). Their 'secret' so claimed the Finns is the fact that their students are never tested in what they study. There are no tests. There are no homework. Therefore this stress is out of the question, and that is why the pupils study actually to know and not just to 'pass a test'. It was about 40 minutes program, I found it absolutely remarkable. So I was thinking, is it wise to have all of these 'tests' in music schools and conservatories? do these tests really contribute to the overall musicianship of the students? How about creating a platform that encourages young music students to really love and enjoy music, and study it for real, not because they are afraid to fail the test, but really because they want to be true scholars when it comes to music?

This is the Israeli program, interesting even though you don't understand...
Though there are some passages in English between the teachers and the interviewers...


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Tests are a big deal here in America because there are companies making big money on this stuff. I think the Finns have it right.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Lord knows what the 'authorities' think tests are good for. Primary and secondary school class sizes being what they are, tests may be the only way the teacher can find out if anything is sinking in. There is no real need to publicize the individual results beyond the eventual pass/fail. The student does need to know if he is doing well enough to have a hope of moving on, and parents may or may not be interested.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Humans love categorising people, nothing has changed in that over the centuries. Just hope you are put in one of the higher brackets.


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## Musician (Jul 25, 2013)

Hilltroll,

There are many other factors,

To become a teacher in Finland, its like becoming a doctor, or a lawyer, they give it a high status, which is important.
Only 10 percent of all applicants to teach are accepted.
The teachers must love what they do.
The teacher waits until all the students in the class understand the lesson, no one is left behind.
The atmosphere in the class is relaxing, and stress free, the kids enjoy an hour of play in the morning before they even begin to learn anything. 
The hours of education is lowest in Europe, meaning they study less, but they way the study is of superior nature, quality above quantity. 
The government gives their teachers a free hand to decide how to progress , with new ideas, as a result this cuts down the bureaucracy of the government, and lets teachers do their job.

All these factors add up, and as a result the education is of high quality, and I believe that these ideas can be incorporated in other countries too.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Musician said:


> Hilltroll,
> 
> There are many other factors,
> 
> ...


Looks like a wonderful thing - for the slow learners. Are there separate classes for the quick learners, or do they go insane with boredom. Could this be why there are so many suicides in Finland?


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Well, I have to ask: if there are no tests, how can they tell they are the best in the world? 

That said, I think there is something to be said for informal learning. The most spectacularly successful education system in history was that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors - by the time they reached early adulthood, even the slower ones were balanced, happy human beings with an absolutely vast knowledge of their world in their heads, all of this without a minister of education or formal teachers or curricula or tests or soul searching about the merits of corporal punishment vs. detention.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Well, I have to ask: if there are no tests, how can they tell they are the best in the world?
> 
> That said, I think there is something to be said for informal learning. The most spectacularly successful education system in history was that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors - by the time they reached early adulthood, even the slower ones were balanced, happy human beings with an absolutely vast knowledge of their world in their heads, all of this without a minister of education or formal teachers or curricula or tests or soul searching about the merits of corporal punishment vs. detention.


The myth of Lo, the poor Indian*, and his faithful dog is alive and well! 

*Pope An Essay on Man


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## Musician (Jul 25, 2013)

I think there is comparative studies of students from all countries, and they come up on top. But those tests are out of the everyday events in their schools...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Taggart said:


> The myth of Lo, the poor Indian*, and his faithful dog is alive and well!
> 
> *Pope An Essay on Man


Yep. But there's another myth regarding the 'primitiveness' of many Amerind tribes when the Europeans arrived to stay. They were long established, complicated societies, to the extent that some anthropologists consider them to have been decadent.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> The myth of Lo, the poor Indian*, and his faithful dog is alive and well!
> 
> *Pope An Essay on Man


I fear it's all lost on me. I wouldn't know about Indians, and I have never been able to make head or tails of poetry.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

All those kids must have had very good parents who instilled into them the value of learning for the sake of knowledge itself. Unfortunately not all parents will do that, and then those who do not, blame the teachers for their kids' bad grades.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Interesting.

This isn't what my mom experienced exactly.

Her young days of school in Finland were fine, she said the main thing that helped was the fact they _slowly _introduced schooling to the elementary school kids, as each grade had one more hour of school each day than the grade younger. They also had recess at the end of every hour, so 50 minutes of class, 10 minute recess, repeat 4-5+ times in the day. The schools didn't stress on the arts and literature _(my mom never read a single whole classic novel her whole public schooling, except what she did on her free time)_, but there were sport classes and home economics which my mom loved.

But once these happy days were over, they never returned...

It's not true that they don't use tests in Finland. In fact, their tests are _excruciating_. In high school, the examinations are so hard that those who actually graduate from high school there have the equivalent of perhaps a light American undergraduate degree. In order to just graduate high school, my mom _had _to be quadri-lingual: Swedish (her primary language), Finnish, English, German. There was no going around it. That means write _essays _in all 4 languages proficiently. Actually, what degree in an American public university would force its students to do that? My mom planned to go into medical school in Helsinki, and she had to study for brutal biology/physics/chemistry exams, and in the end her grade was still not good enough because the competition is fierce there. Thus, she came to the US where she was already very competent, even though English wasn't her primary language, and so she got along well with college scholarships and job searching.

I don't think America is ready for that kind of education, and never will be. Only people home-schooled or are put in very advanced private schools would possibly do that, however, Finnish High School is public. When my mom was my age, many Finns didn't go to high school and instead went to technical schools. High school was for people that aspired to very advanced careers, for example to be doctors.

Anyhow, back to original post's subject, if this should be done in music schools. Well, at my school, real tests are done for non-performance classes (theory, history, etc.), but most performance "testing" is just Juries, Concerts and Recitals, and basically they do what they need to do, which is to imitate real-life. Juries have existed for centuries (certainly didn't start in the US), I doubt they are a bad idea. Actually, whenever I do a Jury at my music school, I'm never nervous that I'll "fail", it's simply impossible (although it technically is). Instead, it's a way for me to express myself and be confident about it. Sometimes I record my Jury, because often it's a great performance worth re-listening to, maybe using to apply to things. Considering Juries and live performances in school are pretty accurate to how music is performed in real life (the only exception is auditions which are sometimes entirely unnatural situations), I think musical "testing" is just fine.

I have a hunch why people don't like tests. It's because they don't do _well _at them. People hate what they don't do well on. But I do well in tests 98% of the time, and this counts for my _whole _life, so, what have I to complain about? I'm sure if people didn't do well in non-testing situations, they would complain just as easily and saying "give us something standardized for goodness sake!" and all that. It's what _kinds _of tests people take, and how well the teacher prepares the students for it, not the fact that it is a test in and of itself.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Hilltroll72 said:


> Looks like a wonderful thing - for the slow learners. Are there separate classes for the quick learners, or do they go insane with boredom. Could this be why there are so many suicides in Finland?


No, they definitely study more than the average American. They also drink much more hard-core than Americans. Perhaps that combination leads to self-destructive behavior? You must also blame the dark days of winter, seasonal depression is _very _real there...


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

There are many problems facing Public Education in the US. The most obvious is poverty. Studies from Stanford and other universities have show that US students perform near the top in international rankings... if we eliminate the scores of the poorest students (the poorest 10%). The numbers are even higher when we eliminate the scores of the poorest 20%. 

So why do schools in poorer districts fair so badly? Ultimately it comes down to the inequitable manner by which schools are funded based upon property taxes. Districts where property values have crashed and there are many renters (not paying property taxes) and few businesses obviously suffer. This is exasperated by the fact that students in poorer districts are often more expensive to teach as a result of the high percentage of students needing special services due to malnutrition, drug and alcohol abuse, physical and sexual abuse, etc... Students also struggle as a result of poorly educated parents who aren't supportive of their child's learning. Students also struggle with drugs, alcohol, gangs, and other negative influences. At the same time, Art, Music, Physical Education, wood shop, and various extra-curricular activities are often the first to be slashed during budget cuts... in spite of the fact that these greatly impact student learning and motivation.

Of course it is far easier to blame teachers and teacher's unions than it is to confront the real problems faced by the poorer school districts in the US. Various Conservative groups, including the Koch Brothers have been increasingly successful in manipulating poor scores and graduation rates in the poorest school districts as a means of vilifying teachers and teacher's unions with the goal of privatizing education (in spite of the miserable results of experiments in charter schools). Privatization is seen as not only a huge cash cow, but also a means to control what is taught. Scientific fact could be replaced with Creationism and Religious studies. Efforts to include the contributions of Americans of non-Western Christian European heritage (African, Asian, Jewish, Middle-Eastern, Islamic, Native American, etc...) could be replaced with the old narratives focused almost wholly upon the achievements of White, Christian American males of Western European heritage. Sex education could be eliminated, and social studies/history employed as a means of political indoctrination... eliminating alternative ideas.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

It might work in Finland, with a population of something like 5 million, but when you get to countries with bigger populations I think this method is kind of unrealistic. Everyone talks about how great the Scandinavian countries are in everything, yet they forget they have this economies of scale sort of advantage. Its the same as people saying how great public transport systems Hong Kong and Singapore have. Well yeah, its because they're so small in size and the densities of population you got there. 

Some things work for some sorts of countries or regions, others don't. In terms of education, everyone seems to have some magic bullet which will fix things, and then they try these things and fund them, and then they fall through. I think we need to think holistically and pragmatically about education policy and how to do it rather than these faddish things. But it goes with the territory, it sounds great when pollies are campaigning at elections. So, change this broken system and make it work - but how? That's the big question here, and I am not optimistic about any of the answers.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> There are many problems facing Public Education in the US. The most obvious is poverty.


And add to that the fact that apparently, for the moment, you no longer have a government. 



> Students also struggle as a result of poorly educated parents who aren't supportive of their child's learning.


In my experience, at least here in South Africa, this is the main problem: the parents simply do not care. Not only are they not supportive of their children's school work, they are just not involved in their lives in any way whatever. The kids never learn any basic manners or work ethic or anything besides "having fun". By the time they reach schooling age, they have quite literally sustained a form a brain damage, and there is preciously little that even the best school on the planet can do for kids like that.

In the meantime, parents simply refuse to take any responsibility. They all seem to think the secret to a good education is to find a good school where you can go dump your kid. At the school where I work, some of the parents (I kid you not) do not even know in which grade their kids are. At the same time, any and all forms of discipline have basically been abolished from most of our schools, and a perverse political correctness, in which no one is allowed to either fail or excel, pervades the school culture.

Result: South Africa is the proud world leader when it comes to producing illiterate and innumerate high school graduates. 



> Students also struggle with drugs, alcohol, gangs, and other negative influences. At the same time, Art, Music, Physical Education, wood shop, and various extra-curricular activities are often the first to be slashed during budget cuts... in spite of the fact that these greatly impact student learning and motivation.


Heh, where I work we are now trying to introduce all of these things. The kids absolutely HATE all of it - to them it's just more unpleasant work. They hate any activity that requires any effort whatsoever. See my point above about parents that never taught them manners or work ethic.

We are raising a whole generation of lazy, incompetent, unmannered, uncouth and oh-so-entitled youngsters. Boy, are we going to a pay a price for this in the longer run...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

brianvds said:


> ... no one is allowed to either fail...


That's the big problem here too. There is this obsession with failing a year being a bad thing. But I see it as just making the child repeat a year to learn what is required to pass. This is what was done before and it prevents what we've got now. Everyone passes for fear of things like hurting children's self esteem and we get the situation that basic literacy and numeracy skills are not learnt at primary/grade school level. Then you get a kind of domino effect, they struggle to catch up.

I am all for trying new things and reforming the system but not if it results in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Its the same in many things, some of the old ways of doing things must be kept. They can be modified heavily, but what we have now is the results of decades of fads coming and going. Holistic and pragmatic solutions, I mean that need time and effort to get going, well they fall by the wayside. So you get the usual ideological battles that leave us nowhere (maybe even worse than we started?).

One commentator on education compared it to playing Russian roulette with our children. Pretty sad, isn't it? Who is the winner in all this? Not the children, that's for sure.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

I had just assumed that study would be a popular past-time because the playground is under 20ft of snow


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> I had just assumed that study would be a popular past-time because the playground is under 20ft of snow


Hehehe, yes, that may well also play a role. I have long thought that long, harsh winters may be part of the reason why the countries of the far north excel in such sports as chess and heavy drinking. 

But as someone else also pointed out, the homogeneity of the populations in language and culture probably also helps quite a lot.


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