Why the Finnish Model of Education Will Not Work in the US (part one)

I'm not yet halfway through "Finnish Lessons" by Pasi Sahlberg, but there are so many points that resonate with me as an educator and unfortunately those exact lessons will not be accepted by most Americans.

Given in no particular order, here are my observations:

1. Americans embrace competition to a fault.

We love cheering on our favorite sports teams, some more emphatically than others.  Corporations are constantly devising new ways to stay ahead of their peers.  Parents scoff when every child is provided a trophy in the youth soccer league.  Our culture tells us that someone has to be Number One and everyone else is ranked accordingly.

Interestingly enough, for the day-to-day practices of education, research has shown that certain types of competition does nothing to improve learning and may even be detrimental. (* I have no sources to cite at this moment, but they are out there; feel free to post supporting evidence on this.)  Grades or gold stars are an external motivator that does not lead to a long-term desire to learn.  I learned this lesson my freshman year in college when a friend of mine bluntly questioned why I had to ask everyone what they received on the recent test.  It was then that I learned I didn't need to try to be better than everyone else; I needed to learn to the best of my ability and try to improve my own skills.

I hope that at least some of you reading are nodding your head, in an I-agree-with-this-notion-of-learning way.  If you are not, ask yourself how you define learning.

IF we can all agree that true learning for students is achieved best by intrinsic motivators, and not extrinsic, then why are we as a country so adamant that competition at the professional-level in teaching is the answer?  If giving rewards or punishing students does not lead to excellent learning, then why do we think that it will work for the teaching profession or the ranking of schools?

Competition is a deeply-rooted cultural mindset in our country.  Education needs more collaboration and cooperation, which is difficult for people that are not intimately involved in education to understand.  Even educators find this hard to do, when external pressures are measuring them with the promise of either being labeled as "low-performing" or they might be revealing their secrets that make them better than the rest.  This is exactly the environment we have cultivated and who does it really hurt???

More observations to come: teacher preparation, respect for the profession, equity...

Part 2 - Equity