What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success Anu Partanen | Dec 29, 2011 http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point. The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world. Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best. Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle. Click the link above to continue reading

Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool by Emily Hanford http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-lose-the-lecture-as-teaching-tool?sc=tw The lecture is one of the oldest forms of education there is. "Before printing someone would read the books to everybody who would copy them down," says Joe Redish, a physics professor at the University of Maryland. But lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique and now that information is everywhere, some say it's a waste of time. Indeed, physicists have the data to prove it. Click the link to continue reading

Want kids to do better in school? Give them recess updated 1/4/2012 1:06:47 PM ET http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45869434/ns/today-today_health/t/want-kids-do-better-school-give-them-recess/#.TwdWKfk3yWZ Children who get more exercise also tend to do better in school, whether the exercise comes as recess, physical education classes or getting exercise on the way to school, according to an international study. The findings, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, come as U.S. schools in general cut physical activity time in favor of more academic test preparation. Amika Singh, who worked on the study, said the findings meant that schools should prioritize both academics and exercise and that families could have the same attitude at home. Click the link above to continue reading

"They Shot Him, Papa!": Finding Smarter Ways to Talk to Kids About Diversity David Valdes Greenwood Teaching children about diversity can be a tricky proposition. In the "No Child Left Behind" era, so much time is devoted to preparing students for test-taking that old school subjects like good citizenship, social behavior, and community values may get short shrift. (There is, after all, no standardized test for "plays well with others.") Multiculturalism -- so widely emphasized in the Marlo Thomas 70's -- often ends up limited to theme days and special projects. When my daughter was in Kindergarten, the subject of diversity did not arise in her class until Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This is how we found out that they were talking about race: over dinner, she announced that Martin Luther King Jr. wanted people with white skin and brown skin to be friends but people got mad so they shot him. While that is not an inaccurate summary of the history involved, it does pretty much foreground the assassination and diminish the rest of his accomplishments. It's a little depressing to think that the legacy of Dr. King's life could be boiled down into "Equality will get you killed." Obviously, race murder was not the subject we'd expected to be discussing when we asked "How was school, honey?" so we probed to find out what else she had learned. All she could remember was that people have different skin colors and that some people really don't like people with brown skin. As a mixed race girl in a school 95% white, this was not a small thing to ponder. This theme continued all week at school, with her classmates making paints to match their own skin colors, which I assume was meant to be empowering, but which only cemented the notion of pigment being key. I was volunteering in class that week and was asked to make a rainbow using the skin colors labeled by student name; I counter-proposed and suggested a collage, with all the colors mixed. Both ideas are ways of saying "we're all in this together" but the second approach moved away from any kind of spectrum in which similar colors would be closest to each other. Click the link to continue reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-valdes-greenwood/talking-to-kids-about-diversity_b_1193801.html?ncid=webmail11