BETTER SCHOOLS IN FINLAND

Today I heard Madeleine Brand on NPR's Pasadena, CA, station, KPCC-FM, talking about how much better Finnish schools are than those in the USA.

In Finnish schools, kids start later, at age 7, spend less time in school and do less homework. They do more creative play. Yet they do better.

Why is that? See this article in the Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

I have been a teacher off and on for 40 years, mostly part-time and mostly at junior colleges, universities, extension schools, and one adult school, since I got my master's degree in 1972, so I know a little about teaching. I hold a lifetime junior-college CA teaching credential and renewable adult-school credential.

There is so much baloney in the U.S. about education. Most of the reform ideas are ridiculous. In my opinion, good teaching requires four things:

1. Teachers who care about the students and want them to succeed. (Many don't.)
2. Teachers who are passionate about their subject matter and know it well. (Ditto.)
3. Teachers who constantly engage students, so the students are awake and alive and involved while they learn. No passive learning. Learning should be fun.
4. Students who are well fed, rested, prepared by previous experience and able to learn.

Most of the rest is hokum.

Why is the good old USA plagued with such silly ideas in so many areas--foreign policy, health care, drug policy, education, politics, visual art? I don't know. Good question.

We seem incapable of using common sense and basing our policies on logic and facts.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

UNEXPECTED BRILLIANCE

This morning I was thinking about my favorite students from the adult school where I taught for five years: Alex, Guadalupe, Salvador, Wendy, Yaquelin, Wilmer....

And Zakhar the Russian kid, and the girl who had a boyfriend in Sacramento, and the girl from Mongolia, and the AP student from Uni High, and the three girls from Korea who were FOBs, "fresh off the boat," and on and on, many more.  

I loved these kids. The skateboarders, bicycle riders, budding artists. Teenage parents.

(I got laid off last November, along with thousands of other teachers across this great country, which prattles on and on about education but doesn't really support it. The USA rewards wealth, fame, looks, ignorance, and stupidity, not integrity, moral values, intelligence and knowledge. But that is another can of worms. If we spent half as much money as we spend on the military....)

I remember big Javier, not very big, but he was called that to avoid confusion with little Javier, who was a skinny skateboarder who liked to draw.

Big Javier had long black hair and a full black beard, so he looked like Johnny Depp as a pirate, or every gringo's idea of a Latino thug. If I were casting a movie, he'd be perfect as a hitman. Or a Latino Jesus.

But he was the sweetest guy, and one of my smartest students. His friends called him Jay-vee-er, the gringo way to say it, not Hahveeair, the Spanish way. He could be anything he wanted to be when he grows up. He's so smart.

I miss the kids.

What is going to happen to these kids? Are they going to grow up and become like their parents? No, probably not.

Most of the their parents had menial jobs, working hard and long hours for little money. Typical immigrant story.

One of my writing assignments was to compare and contrast the life you want with that of your parents. When you grow up, do you want to do what your mother or father does for a living? Most of them said no, and I could see why.

I had taught at UCI, part of the University of California system, which takes the top 7% of high school grads, or something like that. The best of the best.

Those UCI kids were mostly from upper class families and very bright. As one of the other teaching associates said, you couldn't cook up an assignment hard enough to make them fail.

But, surprisingly enough, my kids at LA Community Adult School, almost all children of immigrants and almost all inner-city kids, were just as smart, in terms of native intelligence.

Thank God for the laws that force us to educate these kids. Otherwise, we could have a disaster on our hands. I just wish we could do better by them. Provide them with a better education and set them up for a better future.

Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle