While America’s education system is failing, ranked only as “average” last year, Finland’s is standing above the rest. Although Finland did fall behind countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong, the country still boasts one of the most successful school systems in the world – one that often entices the U.S. elite to either send their children abroad for schooling or to hire Finnish tutors.

So what can the U.S. system take away from the Finnish school system? While there are dozens of other lessons, a few stand out the most:

No Assessments

One of the biggest problems with education in America today is the use of standardized testing. We test our kids at a young age and do so throughout their public education career. If students don’t achieve high scores, then their teachers and schools suffer the consequences of losing their contracts or funding.

While this may seem like an acceptable system to keep educational standards high in America, it is actually hurting our kids. By implementing these tests and by allowing so much to ride on them, they force teachers to establish entire curriculum around the tests – reducing the amount of discovery learning which often promotes the hands on experiments involved with getting kids interested in science – a field that the U.S. is currently struggling to find enough professionals to fill the positions.

Students aren’t even measured in Finland until they have completed at least 6 years of education, and there is only one mandatory test and it occurs when children are 16. Otherwise, teachers are left to their own devices and simply follow a country mandated curriculum that serves more like guidelines than a rigid structure.

Equality Reigns Supreme

The U.S. education system thrives on segregation. Students from wealthy families are able to attend private schools with the best teachers and reputations, more affluent suburbs have better schools than poorer urban school districts, and alternative schools and schools for disabilities remove those who don’t quite fit in with the rest. Even classrooms within schools are separated. Those deemed to be of higher intelligence take AP or IB classes, while those of average intelligence are stuck in classes with average expectations.

In Finland, there is no private education or separate classrooms for those that may be falling behind. Every teacher has high expectations for each of their students, and the school system as a whole strives to keep every student on the same level. So if U.S. teachers want to get leaders out of their students, instead of putting a label on every student that walks through the door, they should perhaps keep high expectations of them all, and focus on giving more after school attention to those falling behind as opposed to moving them to another classroom where they are immediately labeled as average and have lowered expectations.

Collaboration is Key

If a student fails in America, one teacher is generally to blame; in Finland if a student fails, the whole school is to blame. Finland experiences such a high success rate with its students because teachers collaborate. If one teacher finds that their methods aren’t working with a student, they consult other teachers to find other methods that may work better. They don’t abandon the student.

For teachers in the U.S., a move toward collaborative teaching may be in the students’ best interest, but may take too long to fully integrate to help students now in the system. If U.S. teachers are struggling to find alternative teaching methods that may better help their students now, they can always turn to online resources – collaboration doesn’t just have to be face to face, especially with our ever growing level of connectivity. Online sites such as the Bill Gates endorsed Khan Academy or YouTube EDU provide thousands of different lessons in unique formats with lessons ranging anywhere from physics to organic chemistry to art history to prep work for radiography courses or other tests such as the SAT or ACT.

If America wants to stay a leading world power and driving economic force, it needs to start getting its students excited about math, physics, engineering, and science. The careers of the future will be in these fields and will require innovative minds – ones that are often snuffed out by America’s current educational practices. So if you are working with struggling or bored students, take a lesson or two from Finland’s educational practices.

Here’s a 30-second overview of Macbeth on CliffsNotes Films:

Freerice – Freerice quizzes you in various subject areas—such as English vocabulary, geography, or chemistry–at various levels.  The more that you answer questions correctly, the more the site’s sponsors donate rice to the United Nations World Food Programme.  The site is the source of hundreds of millions of grains of rice each month to hungry people all over the world.

Khan Academy – Khan Academy contains thousands of free educational video lessons in math and science.  More lessons are being added for all kinds of learners.

Open Yale Courses – Open Yale Courses include 35 courses in video and audio form.  Listeners can download each on their phones or iPods for convenient learning sessions.

Smarthistory -  Smarthistory is a textbook site that focuses on art history.  It includes videos and discussions about particular artists or their works.  It’s also available with an iPhone app called “Rome: A First Look.”

Starfall – Starfall is a popular website that teaches children from preschool to second grade to read using phonics.  Your child’s teacher may have been using Starfall with your child, but most children enjoy repeating the lessons.

The result of this exercise?  The men regressed to some “boyish” behavior and reverted to “smart-aleck teammates” on the defensive—precisely what boys do in the classroom!

It’s that realization that prompts Lipsyte to suggest several things that parents and teachers should consider to reconnect teenage boys to reading:

• Boys should “be approached individually with books about their fears, choices, possibilities and relationships—the kind of reading that will prick their dormant empathy, involve them with fictional characters and lead them into deeper engagement with their own lives.  That’s what turns boys into readers.
• “Boys gravitate toward nonfiction.”  Since classic fiction is taught often in schools, boys are usually disinterested.
• “Because the majority of adults involved in kids’ reading are women, boys might not see reading as a masculine activity.”   Parents can be very helpful here; make sure that boys see men reading.
• “…today’s books for boys — supernatural space-and-sword epics that read like video game manuals and sports novels with preachy moral messages — often seem like cynical appeals to the lowest common denominator.”  The author suggests that these books don’t have the edgy story lines that allow boys to reflect on their own lives.

So, if you are looking for a way to get the teenage boys in your life to connect to literature, consider these reflections.  For more ideas of what might appeal to them, go to the Guys Read website:  http://guysread.com/

Of course, this is helpful for parents or guardians of small children, but older children will need help for weak number sense. The one-to-one attention from online math tutoring can help with that.

I’m not the only one who suggests this. Author James Patterson suggested the same thing on AOL recently:

The message: Start a required daily reading time right now and continue it throughout the year.

Because online courses are generally more difficult than face-to-face courses, he proposes a test of some kind that would help to determine if a student is a good candidate for online courses. He mentions some student attributes that would make a potential candidate for online courses:

• A fairly good reader since that is a large component of online courses
• Tremendous self-discipline
• Considerable academic ability
• Competence on computer and its applications

Several institutions, like Washington Online Virtual Campus, have created online quizzes to help students to determine if they are good candidates for online courses: http://www.waol.org/prospective_students/isonline4me_n.asp

We believe in online learning, but online courses are not for everyone; however, all of the issues listed above can be addressed and overcome through online tutoring. If your child is not a good reader, a reading tutor is in order. Because of its newness, most online tutors have to teach their clients how to interface with their tutoring applications, and academic improvement will come if an online tutor addresses the deficits. Finally, with consistent, timely tutoring, students acquire self-discipline that will stand them in good stead in various aspects of their futures—both academic and employment. Fortunately, personal, one-to-one online tutors can offer the best of both the need for interaction with a teacher and the convenience of online courses.