| Mnementh said: OK, you talked about demography, but 'abnormally low student to teacher ratio' is no demographic issue but an issue about how much money the country is willing to spend on education, and how this money is spent. I would always argue, that smaller classes is always a way to success, so it comes down to the willingness to spend the money on the teachers. I see your argument about standardized tests as competition+fair comparison on equal grounds. Tell me if I misrepresent it. For competition: I am opposed to standardized tests, not to testing at all. But a test tailored from the teacher to his class is much better than something made for everyone in the country. it still provides ground for competition and personal betterment. You can try to improve your grade in comparison to last year or in comparison to your classmates. The second reason is silly in my opinion. The idea to have grades that can gauge the success of the student on a national scale is ridiculous in my opinion. I am not sure if grades work in that way at all. They are good for competition and helping you to see your personal progress. But universities should ignore grades altogether and have always individual entrance exams to chose the most qualified students. This works much better than grade that are only semicomparable, even with all the tries at standardization. Again, this means bigger investments education as entrance exams need more personell to evaluate. SATs simply are the cheap way. So yes, in my opinion more and better trained educators are great for better results. The other stuff may have effects too, but is not that impactful. |
'Demographics' can mean many things as it relates to statistical data for populations and a low student to teacher ratio is arguably very statistically significant. Finland is also a relatively ethnically homogeneous population as well so that can also distort comparisons as well. It's a multitude of factors that allows Finland's educational system to succeed that can't be easily replicated ...
No, you're right on the point that it's exactly what standardized testing is all about and that is a uniform way to benchmark the students. A test tailored by the teacher isn't fair to the other students in the country because some tests could end up being either easier or harder with other teachers ...
I'm not quite certain what you mean by 'grades' but if you meant the letter grades that are handed out in secondary schools then it is exactly what standardized testing is meant to combat against. Universities should not tolerate grade inflation from secondary schools so there's another argument to be made in favour of standardized testing from this perspective which is why SATs or a gaokao are treated as post-secondary school entrance exams. I can't even fathom why there's so much objection to standardized testing when universities are not so different in this aspect. School wide final examinations are held for the same course in different class sections but on top of it all schools at least want to be decent enough to meet accreditation standards so their testing methodology would have to meet some rigorous intellectual standards ...
For many other countries, using standardized testing as a way to enhance results is not necessarily wrong like we see with East Asia. Finland has their own educational system but that doesn't mean we should construe it to be the only correct model for education because there exists just as viable alternatives ...
