Even though US schools are on some sort of massive purchasing binge for computer equipment and bandwidth right now, evidence from Finland suggests a world-class education can be achieved without all the computers and electronic devices, Politico reports. Caitlin Emma writes:
Finnish students and teachers didn’t need laptops and iPads to get to the top of international education rankings, said Krista Kiuru, minister of education and science at the Finnish Parliament. And officials say they aren’t interested in using them to stay there.
School districts in the US are hopping on board the digital train. Many, including Baltimore County, Md., are spending millions to put laptops or other electronic devices in the hands of every student. In Baltimore County, the school board approved a $205 million contract in March that will provide each student with a laptop computer, the Baltimore Sun reported.
We didn’t cover the story at the time, because we’ve always known that 1-to-1 programs, like the one planned in Baltimore County, have a track record of over-promising and under-delivering.
Maryland Public Schools asked the General Assembly for about $100 million in funds across the state back in January in order to bring high-speed broadband access to schools. We wonder if there might be a better way to spend the money or, at least, if the marketing tactics schools used—saying we need to compete with countries like Finland, Singapore, China, and so on—might be misleading.
The power of technology
The Politico report emphasized that students in Finland own electronic devices, and their teachers might occasionally ask them to bring their devices to school. So, yes, Finnish students do look stuff up on the Internet and play games that promote learning. It’s just that, in school, they are not as high-tech as we Americans, who tend to believe technology will solve all our problems, might think.
Finland is very different from the US, of course. But if we can compare test scores from the US to those of Finland, it seems other differences are fair game.
First, its population is close to that of Minnesota’s. Second, public education, through the university level, is essentially free, and the only actual standardized test taken by all students is in high school. Passing that test gives students admission to public universities in Finland.
But the biggest difference comes from the way Finns view education: not as a competition but as a way of bettering oneself instead of besting others. Finnish culture pay no regard to beating Asian countries that recently pulled ahead of Finland in global rankings. Most Finnish educators think Asian-style education wouldn’t work well in the Nordic country.
“Education isn’t a competition,” Politico quoted Kristiina Volmari, counselor of education and head of statistics and international affairs at the Finnish National Board of Education, as saying. “This is a quality assurance mechanism, and it’s quality assurance for ourselves.”
We have printed, several times, that adding technology to our schools won’t really solve any problems the schools have, if they have any problems at all. The reason technology won’t solve any problems is that the absence or shortage of technology was never the cause of those problems in the first place.
