Helsinki, S. Korea

Louis Menand recently offered an interesting analysis about education and a society's expectations of what its own education system is and should be doing.  His point isn't to answer this question, but it could have been:

Why are critics and reformers always holding up Finland (the first place finisher in international comparisons of student performance), but you never hear about S. Korea (which came in second place)?

Menand points out that society's create the education system that they want, and that reinforces their social and cultural values.  Nobody in the United States wants S. Korea-style 'cram schools,' where students get extra help late into the night (past 10 PM).  Nor does anybody want to send 90% of primary students for extra tutoring (as S. Koreans do). And certainly nobody wants S. Korea's teenagers, who are reportedly the most unhappy in all the world.

If we acknowledge that social expectations and needs also factor into the assessment of what our schools are doing, and we decide that S. Korea isn't for us, this also requires that we face the way that Finland doesn't necessarily serve as a model whose replication will generate similar outcomes for us.

Are we, then, content to live with the fiction that schools are the great equalizer in American life? 
To rest on the notion--but only the notion, not the reality--that everybody has the opportunity to advance, irrespective of background, family circumstances, and personal developmental history?

Too many people seem to want schools to overcome a child's difficult material or social circumstances.  Schools have been tasked with erasing the deficits of children who arrive far less prepared than their colleagues. 

It's fine if we tell ourselves this is possible, as long as we don't really blame the institution (school) or people (staff) who can't realistically accomplish this task in any enduring way. 

Something of a lie....We do it all the time in politics.

Thought Experiment

I wonder, has an adult ever had wallet, purse, or just money stolen by a student at school?

I ask because adults are allowed to carry these items to school; these are items of great importance, which adults are motivated to protect and even take measures to secure; but they are items sometimes forgotten, neglected, improperly cared for; and, consequently, they sometimes find themselves stolen by students.

I am, of course, analogizing to guns.  I think it's foolish of us to assume that somehow an adult gun would be secure and safe at all times in a school.  I know of responsible gun owners who have made small, honest oversights (mind you, nothing happened in these occasional instances) so I cannot pretend it would never happen at school.

But should it happen at school, and a kid got the gun, and somebody got shot....