What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

I'm Finnish and I would say "I don't know". Article paints quite a rosy picture which isn't necessary true. Finnish schools(elementary to high school) are very boring. There are almost no other activities, no special classes, no school sports(only p.e. for everybody), no advanced classes and teaching is mostly done with books, paper and board.<p>Teachers maybe still care little bit about there students and think the main difference is that we are expected to learn and know more from the start. I started learning a second language when I was on first grade and third language on fifth grade. The bar is set high for everyone.<p>Getting to a college through admission test is quite a pain in the ass if you want to study medicine, law, economics or engineering in a decent city(and there is like three). You need about 6months of study and probably a training course for the test.<p>Edit: And I would say that low immigration helps. Over 12years of schooling, I didn't have a single classmate that didn't speak Finnish as native language.

Part of the reason surely has to do with the economy. In Finland, two sectors are highly subsidized via R&#38;D: Information Technology (Nokia) and Forestry (which is highly scientific).<p>Interesting article: <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071127.rmtimber1127/BNStory/robColumnsBlogs/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071127....</a><p>These two drivers for the economy surely reinforce the importance of science and math in school. Students are more focused on areas of study with practical applications (jobs) in their own country - hence high math and science scores. And where you have more competition you have a positive feedback look (Kenyan Runners: <a href="http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2007/11/kenyan-runners.html" rel="nofollow">http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2007/11/kenyan-runne...</a>)<p>My two cents anyways.

Interesting article, I think that while America has a long way to improve our education system, Americans sell themselves short. America has sprawling metropolises with a lot of urban poor. Trying to improve their education by throwing a couple of books their way is dismissive of the large problem at hand.<p>But also on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have a lot of the brightest minds in the world. Most of the top universities in the world are based in the United States, and our top students obviously do well in the global arena.

"... one of the lowest percentages of immigrants of any Western European country: only two percent of its 5.2 million residents.<p>And a substantial fraction of Finland's immigrants consist of spouses of Finns, Finnish-speaking citizens of Russia (there are pockets of Finnish-speakers throughout the forests of northern Russia), Estonians, whose Uralic language is closest to Finnish, and Swedes (Swedish is the second official language). Third World immigrants make up less than one percent of the population."<p><a href="http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070319_diversity.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070319_diversity.htm</a>

The climate is pretty bad in the US for teachers.<p><a href="http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html</a><p>...not every school is like that obviously, but particularily chaotic institutions will drag down the average.

There's probably a correlation with being a "happy" country: <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24371878/" rel="nofollow">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24371878/</a>

Remarkable... I wish the US system were more like that but I can't see it happening. My high school was nothing like that. Montessori schools seem to lean in that direction though. Can anyone with first-hand Montessori experience comment on that?

This PISA test is ridiculous as a standard to measure the general intelligence. 400,000 is not a very big sample size in certain countries. It seems that this method measures more of the homogeneity of the education level of a country rather than the smartness of its students.<p>I'm curious about the sampling method of this test, it's really hard to select a representative sample among diversity such as U.S.<p>That being said, I do agree with the way a lot of classes are taught in American public schools. Especially the projects where students "glue things on a poster for an hour", mindless things like that really waste time and energy better used in something else.<p>And I cant help but think that Finnish kids really dont have much to do compared to people at other countries? They might as well do really well in their studies!

Then why is the US the most innovative country in the world? I am not saying the others aren’t, but overall the US is the most innovative regardless of the poor schools. Maybe it doesn’t really matter who earns the top scores, it is what you accomplish with it.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably has something to do with culture. a culture that promotes a education is going to churn out more curious, creative people. And i don't mean "stay in school kids" commercials, I mean in all the unspoken assumptions about the world that are communicated from parents and other authority figures from a young age. You can't fake enthusiasm about education. The U.S. currently does not have it, so of course kids are smart enough to pick up on this and place education further down their priority list.

This might do it:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126617" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126617</a><p>Television educates you even when you watch Beverly Hills 90210.

Hackers, please. Let's get real here. Why are Finns so smart? It probably has very little to do with culture, teaching methods, or economics. These can all be limitations (I suspect oppressive teaching hinders Japanese kids), but Finland's secret is not related to any of these. It's related to biology. Finland's secret is brain size.<p>Mother nature doesn't fuck around. If your brain and its activity costs you anywhere from a fifth to a third of your metabolic energy, it's for a reason. This essentially amounts to all the discretionary spending your body has. That brain had better pull its weight, and it does. Skull size correlates with brain weight; brain weight determines surface area; surface area determines processor power.<p>Again, if your brain could be a smaller part of your metabolism, it would be. Mother nature squeezes every calorie for all it's worth. So there is an advantage in having a larger brain. And that advantage translates to being smarter. "Smarter" isn't a particularly mysterious quality either; in biology, it's basically how good you are at deciding what to do with your muscles. In the scheme of things, balance doesn't require much processing power; neither does homeostasis. What is really resource intensive is good old thinking. Writing requires forming markov chains. Memorizing is hard too. Understanding physics is also hard. Thinking--just plain old thinking--is very resource intensive.<p>So, why are Finnish kids so smart? Well, the PISA test doesn't convince me they're that smart. They strike me as being about as smart as white American kids. Thing is, the intelligence of Finns is not averaged out with the intelligence of people of other ethnic groups, who, regrettably, have smaller brains.<p>And before you call me racist, keep this in mind that the argument for different intelligence levels across races is borne out by a data set comprising millions of standardized test-score results, tens of thousands of autopsies, across many different countries, spanning centuries. The correlations have R-values in the .8 and above range. Don't call me racist; call Reality racist.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain#Brain_energy_consumption" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain#Brain_energy_consumption</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson#Statement_claiming_links_between_race_and_intelligence" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson#Statement_claim...</a> <a href="http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/africanfailure.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/africanfailure.html</a>

This was posted earlier on Hacker News: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126608" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126608</a>