Political Goals Of Schooling

Political Goals of Schooling Schools are always influenced by someone, or group’s people, the U.S. and Finland do not escape this aspect either, however there are differences in their political persuasions. The U.S. has a multiple groups of people that help sway legislation of schools, Democrats, Republicans, teacher unions, and other groups. Just as we have such educational policy like No Child Left Behind, Finland also has certain policy that they adhere to. Before Finland was an educational leader they decided to borrow policy in order to attempt to resolve issues swiftly, according to Chung, Atkin and Moore; the policy was MTL or Masters in Teaching and Learning (2012). Although it is unclear in how long this policy will continue to show
The U.S. seems to have struggled with this aspect, while for the most part Finland has succeeded. According to Savolainen Finland has done quite well in many aspects of equality such as, “producing learning outcomes of high quality along with excellent geographical and social equity,” (2009, p. 284). In the U.S. there seems to be gaps between various categories in education, that lead to frustration among teachers, administrators, not to mention students and parents. Savolainen also explains that as to be expected immigrants in Finland struggle with literacy due to language differences, however, “difference in mathematics is relatively small, and the immigrant students’ mathematics results are very close to the OECD average for non-immigrant students and higher than the average for non-immigrant students in the United States,” (2009, p. 284). The fact that immigrants, struggling with language barriers and sometimes culture difficulties are doing better than U.S. students in mathematics is shocking and dismaying. Non-immigrant U.S. students should be scoring better because they should have no culture or language barriers to overcome and focus on the simplicity of the math at
in this aspect of education is almost unfair, because it is very different in comparison. The U.S. is led more federally or nationally, giving little decisions to the state and even less to the individual cities and or districts within the state. Itkonena and Jahnukainen, list Finland also as a “national curriculum,” however it is, “overseen by the Ministry of Education,” and “schooling is based on national goals that guide local decisions” (2007, pp. 10-11). Finland, unlike the U.S. has more local control, which is a factor on why they are so successful in education. Local government, local educational leaders, teachers, parents and other community members are able to make decisions for students, not a group of people that do not know or understand the community’s culture or