There has been much talk about how Finland plummeted from its traditional top spot in the PISA scores, but:
- Finland was always only tops in white countries. Some Northeast Asians would typically beat the Finns.
- Finland is still #1 in white countries if you weight Math (519 for Finland), Science (545), and Reading (524) equally, for an overall score of 529, ahead of runner-up Estonia (526). This go-round of PISA emphasized Math, on which Finland came in fifth among white countries behind Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Estonia.
Overall, though, across all three subjects, Finland was still #1 in Europe and its diaspora.
In contrast, the Scandinavian countries did not excel in 2012, with overall means of 498 for Denmark, 496 for oil-rich Norway, and 482 for Sweden. Among members of the OECD, the rich countries' club, Sweden beat only Israel, Slovakia, Greece, Turkey, Chile, and Mexico. (Some of those countries that Sweden edged out are in the rich countries' club only for "courtesy" or "aspirational" reasons.)
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52 comments:
Some northeast Asians can best the Finns. You mean like the over 1 billion of them in China, Korea, Japan?
Lol I see what you tried there Steve.
“I see what you tried there Steve.”
Steve didn‘t ”try” anything there. The reason he said “some Northeast Asians” is because, for example, last time the Finns beat Japan in every category.
The only reason you as a Chinese person care about these test results is because of your inferiority complex deriving from western countries being obviously superior to China. Japanese people don‘t care nor do they have an inferiority complex, because everyone knows Japan is an excellent country at least on par with the west.
1/ Finnish children don't start school until they are 7.
2/They rarely do exams or have homework until they are in their teens.
3/ All kids, regardless of brains are taught in the same classroom.
4/ They get 75 minutes/day of recess.
5/ No private schools.
6/ All teachers have masters degrees and are selected from the top 10% of students.
7/ No merit pay for teachers.
source: Business Insider
(that 7 year old to start factoid has many sources)
I can you understand why Estonia is close to Finland's performance. The two countries are ethnically and genetically closer to each other than they are to any other nation.
Japanese people don‘t care nor do they have an inferiority complex, because everyone knows Japan is an excellent country at least on par with the west.
Excellent point. It would be funny if one year the science test was just "How do you fight ED?" The absence of elephant tusks as an answer would have a lot of Chinese bubbling E.
As I saw some years ago on a visit to their beautiful headquarters outside Helsinki, Nokia hired people from all over Europe. That must've been their undoing.
Are Finns white?
"The only reason you as a Chinese person care about these test results is because of your inferiority complex deriving from western countries being obviously superior to China. Japanese people don‘t care nor do they have an inferiority complex, because everyone knows Japan is an excellent country at least on par with the west."
The grape is still sour. I do not want it.
Harold
Are Finns white?
Beat me to it. Didn't the first race realists consider Finns and all Ugric speakers to be "Mongoloids"? The US even tried to deport Finns based on that belief.
http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/Finnish-Americans.html
"The only reason you as a Chinese person care about these test results is because of your inferiority complex deriving from western countries being obviously superior to China. "
Western countries obviously superior to China? Lol. China is the only surviving civilization that has been lasted for almost 5000 years. In the 18 out of last 20 centuries, China was the biggest economy in the world.
However, i believe most chinese will agree that western industrialized countries are indeed more technologically advanced than China now, that's why they admire western technology, but only technology. How long do you think this scenario could last, given that chinese kids are doing better math and science than western kids, and yet american kids are learning creationism at school? As a matter of fact, Chinese by and large think western countries are socially and culturally backward and the only reason the west dominates the world in the last 200 years is because of science and technology.
"Japan is an excellent country at least on par with the west."
Historically, China is indisputable the cultural center of east asia that surrouding countries such as Japan, Korea, Vietnam etc derived their "core" culture from. As you said, if Japan is at least on par with the west, what do you think China will be in the future, with its 1.3 billion bright people (more than 10 times of japan)? History makes the best prediction.
1/ Finnish children don't start school until they are 7.
Yeah, though most go to preschool at age 6 nowadays.
2/They rarely do exams or have homework until they are in their teens.
Not true. Many schools have exams and homework from the first grade on, and all of them have them well before the kids are teens.
3/ All kids, regardless of brains are taught in the same classroom.
Well, special ed kids usually are not. At age 15, half of the cohort goes to academic high schools, the other half to vocational schools. No one in Finland thinks that everybody is college material.
4/ They get 75 minutes/day of recess.
Most schools have a 15 minute recess every 45 minutes, or a 30 minute recess every 90 minutes, but shorter ones are possible, too. The school day often ends at noon for the smallest kids.
6/ All teachers have masters degrees and are selected from the top 10% of students.
Not really. Tenured teachers must have master's degrees, yes, and the ed schools are highly selective, but they don't generally get the top applicants nor is the selection based strictly on academic ability.
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I can you understand why Estonia is close to Finland's performance. The two countries are ethnically and genetically closer to each other than they are to any other nation.
Strictly speaking, Estonians are genetically more similar to the other two Baltic nations, Lithuania and Latvia.
"They rarely do exams or have homework until they are in their teens."
Totally untrue. I'm amazed at how widely this total falsity has been circulated.
Kids take exams regularly. And I'd say it's pretty rare not to get homework.
"Finnish children don't start school until they are 7."
Most kids start preschool at age 6.
BTW, immigrant performance was also studied here in Finland. Below are the results for math and reading:
MATH:
Finns: 523 points
1st generation immigrants: 425 points
2nd generation immigrants: 453 points
READING:
Finns: 529 points
1st generation immigrants: 413 points
2nd generation immigrants: 465 points
I'm not sure if the group "Finns" ("Syntyperäiset suomalaiset" was the original term) includes Finland-Swedes, who apparently scored lower (at least in reading and science). I guess they are included because of the following definitions:
1st generation immigrants were defined to be students who were born in abroad.
2nd generation immigrants were defined to be students who were born in Finland, but whose parents were born abroad.
I didn't include the results for science, because apparently there was a mistake in the source publication (http://www.okm.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/Julkaisut/2013/liitteet/okm20.pdf?lang=fi)
"Some northeast Asians can best the Finns. You mean like the over 1 billion of them in China, Korea, Japan? "
"China/Shanghai" really means "Shanghai", which doesn't have a billion people.
At least India is honest and dropped out entirely.
Equating the Shanghai PISA results with "China" is like equating lower Manhattan PISA results with "America".
"How long do you think this scenario could last, given that chinese kids are doing better math and science than western kids, and yet american kids are learning creationism at school?"
As far as i know, the only schools that have substituted creationism for math and science are in Williamsburg, Monsey, Kiryas Joel and Bnei Brak.
But then again they date their calendars from the Biblical Creation. Today is not December 04, 2013, it is Tevet 1, 5774.
Finns and Estonians - and all the East Asians doing well on Pisa - are highly introverted. Sure, they are also more intelligent, but the Finnish IQ is estimated at 101 which isn't very striking.
Winton wrote
“Western countries obviously superior to China? Lol.”
China’s GDP per capita $9,828. Lol.
“China is the only surviving civilization that has been lasted for almost 5000 years. In the 18 out of last 20 centuries, China was the biggest economy in the world.”
Bringing up a glorious past is a sign of an inferiority complex. That‘s why muslims do it.
“However, i believe most chinese will agree that western industrialized countries are indeed more technologically advanced than China now, that's why they admire western technology”
Mighty decent of them to admit the obvious.
“As a matter of fact, Chinese by and large think western countries are socially and culturally backward and the only reason the west dominates the world in the last 200 years is because of science and technology.”
People with an inferiority complex always try to convince themselves that they are in some way superior to those they feel inferior to. Muslims, in comparing themselves to the west, like to think they are more moral, or less depraved etc.
“…what do you think China will be in the future, with its 1.3 billion bright people (more than 10 times of japan)?”
Dreaming of a time to come when ones group is the dominant world power is a sign of an inferiority complex. Muslims are fond of this too.
However, I acknowledge there is some truth in everything you say. I wouldn’t say the west was socially and culturally ”backward“, but neither would I say the west was socially and culturally healthy. And, as you say, the genetic potential is there for China to rise to the level of Japan and South Korea (at least), and if it does, it will be the world’s dominant power. The sooner it does so the better, in my opinion.
”The grape is still sour. I do not want it.“
I don‘t know how this relates to anything I said.
On the off chance our anonymous Asian friend is Yan Shen (although I don’t think Yan was ever that moronic), I will say this: It is never going to happen that whites believe that they do worse than Asians because whites are comparitively stupid and lazy, while also believing that they do better than blacks because whites are racist oppressors. That is too much masochism even for whites.
Finish people are much less creative than other Europeans.
Compare 5 million Finns to 5 million Danes.
Denmark produced 6 billionaires while Finland can only claim 2.
Danish scientists have won many Nobel prizes but has Finland produced a winner in the sciences?
Finland is a rich country but sig. poorer than Denmark or Sweden (maybe 20% per capita).
It's an interesting question that doesn't even seemed to get noticed. Why are the Finns so much less creative, innovative, etc.?
Winston the only reason the west dominates the world in the last 200 years is because of science and technology
Lol! That´s got to be the understatement of the year!
Indeed, Westerners are little better than Papuans... except they´re so brilliant at science and technology... throw in music and anthropology too, and -come to tink of it- literature and plastic arts and, well, pretty much every human endeavour under the sun, and apart from that, they wouldn´t be worth mentioning.Not a bit.
I looked it up. Fnland has 5,400,000 people. Absurd to compare it with the US in any way, shape or form, including education.
6/ All teachers have masters degrees and are selected from the top 10% of students.
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Really? Sounds like rage against nature to me.
In Korea, teachers suck.
Maybe Finns aren't all that.
Korean students have to push against an inefficient system. The Finns have the wind at their backs.
The Korean system seems more natural to me. More African. SE Asian. The world, if not exactly against you, is a struggle.
I find Scandies to be sickly sweet, generally speaking.
If Finns are similar to NE Asians, then it's not a surprise they should turn out to be as relatively uncreative as the Asians. Perhaps the ideal combination is a mix of smarts and extroversion, with a touch of testosterone-addled psychopathy.
It's an interesting question that doesn't even seemed to get noticed. Why are the Finns so much less creative, innovative, etc.?
Finns are known for being very introverted, even among the Scandinavian/Nordic European countries, which are generally regarded as more introverted than the European average. I imagine introversion may influence creativity.
How do we know Finns are uncreative? Eero Saarinen? Sibelius?
They were almost all backwoodsmen until the 20th Century. Suddenly, they have a modern country. I'm impressed.
In general, theorizing about creativity tends to lack clarity.
Re: the poster comparing Danes to Finns. I'm not Finnish, but I do take some interest in the country. Maybe an actual Finn can confirm or deny my ideas.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't our current image of Finland as a prosperous, advanced country based on relatively recent (last 40 years) developments. I was always under the impression that for most of its history, Finland was the poorest, most backward country in Scandinavia, which may well have affected its ability to produce world class scientists. If you look at the Danish scientists who received Nobels, all but two or three of them were born prior to 1900. And one of the remaining, Ben Mottelson, immigrated to Denmark after receiving all of his education in the US. Finally, one Finn has won a science Nobel (chemistry-1945), and one Finn has also won the Fields Medal, which no Dane has ever done.
Harold, it's not that the Chinese have inferior complex, but likely that you have blindfolded superior complex.
The Chinese were doing better most of the time in history, and now they are doing better. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume they will also do better?
It's an interesting question that doesn't even seemed to get noticed. Why are the Finns so much less creative, innovative, etc.?
Pay attention, we're already past that. Mongoloids.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't our current image of Finland as a prosperous, advanced country based on relatively recent (last 40 years) developments."
Yes. Finland used to be a pretty piss poor and backwards country. We were under Swedish imperialist rule for hundreds of years, then under Russian rule for over a 100 years. We gained our independence in 1917, then fought two bloody wars against the Soviet Union in 1939-1944. We had to pay big war reparations to the Soviet Union after the wars. I'd say those things impeded our progress to a great extent relative to our western neighbors (in addition to us occupying a more remote location in Europe).
BTW, now that I mentioned our independence: our independence day is two days from now. :)
Harold, it's not that the Chinese have inferior complex, but likely that you have blindfolded superior complex.
The Chinese were doing better most of the time in history, and now they are doing better. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume they will also do better?
I hate reading this crap. This gets brought up frequently and nobody ever agrees or says anything new. Well, here's my theory and I'm Asian. Not the same Asian who's been bantering with Harold.
Whites fly high and crash. White civilizations reach a pinnacle unmatched by other races and then self-destruct. Self destruct to the point of illiteracy. They're more variable. Seems to happen about every 1500 years. Dark Ages, Greek Dark Ages... ...Atlantis? It's also in your mythology. You get the point. The same eccentricities that may fuel creative innovation that is the source of so much pride, may also retard pragmatism to the point of civilizational collapse. It's happening right now.
Thoughts?
Finns are not lacking in creativity, but they have been held back by being a small country dominated by powerful neighbors.
They have writers like Väina Linna and Tove Jansson, architect Alvar Aalto filmmakers Aki Kaurismäki and Renny Harlin. Home of Nokia and they usually rank very high on technological innovation. And let's not forget Angry Birds : )
anon
"Thoughts?"
I think
1) latitude - East Asians and Europeans started with the same advantage here.
2) agriculture -> higher population density -> more complex society -> more scope for cognitive competition
East Asians (and middle easterners) had a long advantage here so middle easterners matched the European latitude advantage and East Asians moved past Europeans.
This was the case for a long time.
3)NW Euros developed a set of cultural behaviors around marriage which were accidentally extremely eugenic. This peaked in the Newton-Franklin era (imo) just before (and was responsible for) the industrial revolution.
In that period NW Euros overtook East Asians.
4) The industrial revolution gradually knocked down the eugenic culture that Europeans had stumbled upon so Europeans went into reverse.
On top of that unintended reversal there has also been the effect of actively malign attacks on European culture by internationalists of both left and right.
so
1) Europeans and East Asians start out neck and neck due to latitude.
2) East Asians draw ahead for a long time as a result of having better agricultural conditions.
3) Europeans catch up and overtake due to the arrival of high density agriculture combined with the development of a very eugenic marriage culture (ultimately leading to the industrial revolution).
4) Europeans go into reverse after losing that eugenic culture as a result of a combination of industrial revolution and active malice.
Previous
"4) Europeans go into reverse after losing that eugenic culture as a result of a combination of industrial revolution and active malice."
should have had
"so East Asians overtake them again."
on the end.
Anonymous at 12/4/13, 11:37 AM: I completely agree with you. I think this has to do with the higher number of geniuses and idiots in White societies. In Asian societies, there are very few stupid people, but also very few geniuses. Life plods along, progress is slow, but society is also more stable over the long run. In addition to having more geniuses, more retards, White societies tend to have more neuro-atypicals. More schizophrenics and more bipolars. People who carry the genes for schizophrenia and bipolar are more likely to make positive creative contributions a la Van Gogh or F Scott Fitzgerald but if a society has too many of them it will cause instability.
I think this has to do with the higher number of geniuses and idiots in White societies. In Asian societies, there are very few stupid people, but also very few geniuses. Life plods along, progress is slow, but society is also more stable over the long run.
I don't disagree with you, but it factors in less prominently in my estimation. I would say that opportunities for socioeconomic mobility is a bigger determinant in how genius is expressed or suppressed in a given society. Asian leadership, throughout history, has always been notoriously heavy handed in the way it rules and the barriers they set up regarding social mobility. Why aren't NKorean scientists as innovative as SKorean scientists? You can extrapolate that to any field. Also, NW Europe didn't really begin to shine until social mobility was allowed.
there are only 5 million people in finland. that's not enough people for finns to do much or have much effect on anything. with nations that small i don't think you can evaluate them all that well. finland is the size of a medium sized US state. you would never grab the data from 1 medium sized US state and plausibly say "That's what Americans can do."
the objection to the test scores is "Oh, Finns never did anything important in any field." yeah true (linus torvalds excluded), but there's only a couple million of them. in this sense their test scores do not really even matter. it's not particularly relevant whether they have high scores, low scores, or anything in between. a nation of only 5 million is barely enough to even engender an indigenous manufacturing industry.
canada (high test scores but relatively low intellectual output) has 30 million people and does not have a single domestic car manufacturer - that's pretty poor production from canada's purported high levels of human capital (canada is actually an all resource, no brains nations going strictly by the economic facts). by comparison, sweden has only 9 million citizens but has 2 vehicle manufacturers.
for even smaller nations the numbers are merely noise, useful only for the nation itself to track it's progress. those estonia test scores can just plain be ignored, as can the results for liechtenstein, luxembourg, macao. they mean nothing in the larger scheme of things. it wouldn't matter if the mean score in those nations was 600. none of those guys are ever doing anything. there just aren't enough of them.
when doing this same kind of country to country comparison but with GDP instead of test scores, i ignore all nations with less than 1 million citizens. then i apply some weight to the remaining numbers - it matters a lot more what the GDP per capita is of a nation with 50 million people than a nation with 5 million people. those small nations are subject to too many circumstantial and unique factors to get a good grip on what their broad economy is like, because they don't have a broad economy.
for these reasons i'll continue to consider the koreans and japanese to be the standard, and i'll mostly disregard the chinese until they start putting up results which are meant to represent something on the order of 100 million people instead of 5 million.
FYI: singapore 5 million. hong kong 7 million. not very representative of the chinese. just plain easier to control the academics of that few people. situation is exactly the same as taking the numbers from one single medium size US state and the influence their education department exerts, versus averaging the performance of the students in all 50 states across all 50 state education departments.
The problem we have now is that even the very top students (top10%) in the US are below average in Shanghai. The situation is quite hopeless. Fortunately, we can import smart people.
Estonia's results are interesting. I wonder if there's a split between the Estonian ethnics and the recently imported Russian ethnics.
The split between Estonians and Latvians and Lithuanians stands out, too.
"They have writers like Väina Linna and Tove Jansson, architect Alvar Aalto filmmakers Aki Kaurismäki and Renny Harlin."
Two of those names are non-Finnish. Another two are suspect crypto-Swedish names. Which is not to say they are of 100% foreign/Swedish/German extraction, just that they were quite likely upper class before the 20th century =~ Swedish speaking. Together these kind of names still make up half, if not more, of Finland's smart fraction.
Finns might well be a bit less creative. Swedes and other people in the capital region are certainly much more pushy, that might also make a difference.
"The problem we have now is that even the very top students (top10%) in the US are below average in Shanghai. The situation is quite hopeless. Fortunately, we can import smart people."
The post-60s education system (deliberately) doesn't stretch the brightest so it's not hopeless at all. The only problem the US has is an actively malign ruling class.
Winston wrote,
“it's not that the Chinese have inferior complex, but likely that you have blindfolded superior complex.”
How does my having a superiority complex allow us to infer that the first comment on this post was almost undoubtedly made by a Chinese rather than Japanese or Korean person?
Moreover, you are wrong about me having a superiority complex. White people are allowing themselves to be dissolved by a flood of alien immigrants all because the TV told them it is a wicked sin to consider their racial heritage as anything but irrelevant. It’s hard to have any sense of superiority when you are dying from having been naive and foolish enough to have drunk from a poisoned cup proffered to you by traitors and enemies.
“The Chinese were doing better most of the time in history, and now they are doing better. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume they will also do better?”
They will probably do better than the west, not because they have historically done so, but because the west is destroying itself.
I will also say this: Most of history (as opposed to pre-history) was during the pre-scientific agricultural epoch. Extrapolating from such to today‘s scientific epoch is as ridiculous as extrapolating from the hunter-gatherer epoch to the agricultural epoch. It is only done by people who have no sense of scale. How much mathematics was created per year during the agricultural epoch, how much during the scientific epoch? How many Watt-seconds would a days labour purchase for the average man in the agricultural epoch, how many in the scientific epoch? What was the probability of a child reaching adulthood in the agricultural epoch, what is it in the scientific epoch? How long would it take to send a message a kilometre in the agricultural epoch, how long in the scientific epoch? And on and on and on. We have only just entered the scientific era. Things are still in flux. It would not be reasonable to assume anything about the future.
Josh Yellowfever,
What happens when the West’s decline and China’s rise reaches a point where the children or grandchildren of our imported Chinese decide to move back to China?
Native estonians score about 37 points above non-estonians in Estonia. Considering the 70-75% / 25-30% ratio among children, it would raise the score of native estonians about 28 points or so.
Estonian non-estonians (mostly russians) still scored better in russian language PISA test than their peers in Russia.
http://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudised/eesti/pisa-testi-tulemused-kinnitasid-haridustaseme-erinevust-linnas-ja-maal.d?id=67371670
As to the claim of finnics being mongolian, based on recent Mal'ta results, think again:
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2810/hhx4.png
Estonians have very little light yellow and almost no dark yellow.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2013/11/first-genome-of-upper-paleolithic-human.html
"Native estonians score about 37 points above non-estonians in Estonia. Considering the 70-75% / 25-30% ratio among children, it would raise the score of native estonians about 28 points or so."
Correction.
That would raise native estonian score by about 9 points. Darn, what a mistake :)
"Didn't the first race realists consider Finns and all Ugric speakers to be "Mongoloids"? The US even tried to deport Finns based on that belief."
For some reason that cracked me up. lol
Clearly those early race realists weren't as enamored of mongoloids as today's HBDers are....
"They have writers like Väina Linna and Tove Jansson, architect Alvar Aalto filmmakers Aki Kaurismäki and Renny Harlin."
"Two of those names are non-Finnish. Another two are suspect crypto-Swedish names. Which is not to say they are of 100% foreign/Swedish/German extraction, just that they were quite likely upper class before the 20th century =~ Swedish speaking. Together these kind of names still make up half, if not more, of Finland's smart fraction."
That smart fraction has been interbreeding with regular Finns for centuries - and they scored worse than the rest of the population on the Pisa survey.
@Staffan
Still, any random sample of prominent "finländare" will end up looking like your list.
You're right about Swedish speakers being worse at PISA. And when you look at the kids who scored full points in the maths matriculation exam (a <1% thing) you see a lot more Ur-Finnish and Russian names. (No, I can't find this year's list atm, sorry.)
Happy independence day!
'At age 15, half of the cohort goes to academic high schools, the other half to vocational schools."
Curious... do they give the PISA to the 15 yr Olds who go to vocational school?
This age class in Finland is still in the the compulsory comprehensive school, so the Pisa test takers did not know who will just finish formal education after compulsory school and who will go to vocational schools and who will search higher education. Most of the tested young Finns were on the 9th grade that is last year of comprehensive school, but above 17% of them were only on the 8th grade. I imagine those slower developing young Finns displayed lower scores, but I have not seen analysis about this.
In this article you can find a more detailed explanation of the teen sample in Pisa 2012 study in Finland:
www.soinivaara.fi/2013/12/08/vaikuttiko-näytteen-valinta-pisa-katastrofiin/ . (Sure the lengthy comments are too challenging to read with a google translator).
More data can be found from OECD pages.
If you want to compare for example Sweden and Finland, you should remember that there were no schools for Finnish speaking children until the latter part of the 19th century. Until 1937 it wasn't possible to study at a university completely in Finnish, many of the professors were Swedish speaking. So that made things difficult for the large Finnish speaking majority until after the WWII, when of course we had to recover from the war and pay the huge war debt because we were quilty of being invaded.
So basically, the modern Finnish wealth has come during the past 50 years and from a country with little natural resources. Sweden on the other hand has enjoyed peace for the last 200 years and before that any trade Finns made benefitted mainly Stockholm while Finland supplied the manpower to several wars and was sometimes occupied for years. No wonder some leading Finns started to think we would be better off under the Russian rule, which turned out to be true.
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