The Conversation: Pasi Sahlberg

[Smiley and West]

		After singing their praises for years, West finally gets to go deep inside Finland’s world-renowned education system with self-described “school improvement activist” Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Finnish Education Ministry’s Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation. Read Pasi Sahlberg’s book Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn about educational change in Finland
Watch a preview of “Children of Labor”, a 1970 documentary about the cooperative culture of Finnish immigrants in America

[Daniel Flynn]

My mother has been a city schools counselor for almost thirty years now. Every night I hear stories from her day on the job at our dinner table, and almost every story involves physical attacks by students against other students, and sometimes teachers. Why do we never hear conversations about the behavior of students? How can a teacher be expected to actually "teach," when it is a constant struggle to maintain control over the classroom? The children my mother works with are hyperactive, severely overweight, come from impoverished backgrounds, broken families (most students have a parent or relative in jail), violent backgrounds, most have emotional problems and are severely lacking in social skills- most notably, restraint and self-control. I have heard stories of children attacking other children because the child rolled their eyes at the other. I have heard stories of children attacking their handicapped classmates because they "smelled bad," or "dropped a tissue on my new nikes." I hear it all, my friends, and yet the blame is almost always directed towards the teachers. The graduation rate in my mother's district is 33%. What can educators do in this country to reach children with severe behavioral problems? Is there anything that can be done? In spite of their circumstances, there are some children who DO manage to succeed. Is it a choice?

[Maureen Bobo]

We live in a micorwave society, kids do not have to wait for anything, they get whatever they want whenever they want it. With this mentality, they do not develop patience or self regulation.  They have NO self-control and react to every emotion or feeling they have, instead of controlling their feelings. They DO NOT have a thought process, without thinking things through one just does and deals with the consequences later. This is very dangerous and leads to many violent outbreaks in kids who don't know how to appropriately communicate verbally. I think if we emphasized literacy more from infancy in families kids will come to school with more thinking power.  The parents would have to increase their reading levels to, this can only help. Also, when we have babies raising babies, we get kids not properly parented, by a mature well adjusted adult, although some adults aren't that well adjusted either.

[Daniel Flynn]

Very insightful comments, Maureen. It's funny you should mention literacy when most highschool seniors in my mom's district graduate with sixth grade reading levels.

Maureen Bobo said:

We live in a micorwave society, kids do not have to wait for anything, they get whatever they want whenever they want it. With this mentality, they do not develop patience or self regulation.  They have NO self-control and react to every emotion or feeling they have, instead of controlling their feelings. They DO NOT have a thought process, without thinking things through one just does and deals with the consequences later. This is very dangerous and leads to many violent outbreaks in kids who don't know how to appropriately communicate verbally. I think if we emphasized literacy more from infancy in families kids will come to school with more thinking power.  The parents would have to increase their reading levels to, this can only help. Also, when we have babies raising babies, we get kids not properly parented, by a mature well adjusted adult, although some adults aren't that well adjusted either,

[Economic Democracy]

Dr. West: Thank you for this interview and for highlighting the war against schools of under-funding, hyper-(standardized)-Testing, and the rest. May I suggest Alfie Kohn and Diane Ravitch as guests? I don't get to catch every show unfortunately, maybe you've had them. Let me strengthen it: How about a Regular Feature (say every other week or at least once a month) which is an _extended_ length commentary by (rotating basis) people like Kohn and Ravitch rather than the slick technocrat corporatized "set" we're so used to hearing about education?

And may I offer a bit of constructive criticism?

You spoke in favor of cooperation; I agree. You also said the U.S. mainstream culture is based on competition. But it's critical we distinguish between ideology and reality. I agree that competition is in the U.S. ideology, but it's not the reality:

1. The U.S. government is forbidden by law from using purchasing power to negotiate the Best Deal on pharmaceutical drugs..because corporations don't want to compete

2. Corporations don't want to compete with less expensive drugs sold in Canada, either

3. They don't want to compete against Generic drugs; "intellectual property" is in fact so often the main type of Protectionism they use (often with crazy WTO rules that the burden of proof is on the accused, so an Indian factory that doesn't have the money to defend itself in court, to prove it created the manufacturing process independently, gives up. And these are just from one sector..

4. In general corporations don't want to compete, they BUY their competitors. That's what large corporations do. That's modern corporate capitalism. Huge company A sees innovation from small company X. Does Competition A try to create something better? No, most often it buys X. They _eliminate_ competition by buying it out. That's not the "capitalism" of Adam Smith (one apple cart vendor seeing the other seller has nicer apples so they buy out that other vendor instead of trying to improve the quality of their own apples. Or what is always this corrupt even back then?) But that's the reality of modern Corporate Capitalism: faced with a choice between competing to create a better product which takes more time energy effort, skill and innovation, versus buying out the competition, what do they do? Which maximizes short-term profits for investors, never mind hurting the public good? The answer is clear.. This is true whether it's Google or Microsoft or Facebook buying smaller companies, or less-reported examples outside the technology sector that have the same dynamic all the same..

5. More broadly still, what is a Corporation itself but a massive Collectivist institution designed to maximize short term profits by externalizing costs (onto the public or other players) while internalizing power, profits, control, and all other benefits?

6. And we haven't even begun discussing the oligopolistic "cooperation" agreements between huge corporations (like the WinTel model of Microsoft Windows collaborating with Intel chips to dominate the market for years)

So "They" who preach to us about competition don't believe a word of it. It's ideology for the masses that if deliberate policies hurt us, then it must be that we didn't do good enough a job of being "competitive" as job seekers, and also the ideology is there to discourage us getting together in civic groups, unions, etc; we're supposed to let the Corporate collectivist groping dominate, but never to "collectively" join together.

Other terms are ideological constructs; we should not say we are "against a right-to-work state law" because the term "right to work state" is itself a euphemism and distorts the union-busting reality. Same with school "accountability", "standards" and "school choice" (continued)

[Candace McCarty]

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Evan Ravitz]

Great interview! Pls get someone from the Sudbury Schools, where democracy, equity and freedom are fundamental and where peer education and non-regimentation mean less staff, books, etc. are necessary so they are less expensive than public schools. Check out this story showing that giving kids this level of responsibility makes them vastly motivated: http://education.change.org/blog/view/simple_math  They say ALL their graduates get into their first choice of college. http://Sudval.org

And there's a movement to bring this level of responsibility to the voters, via a more informed and national ballot initiative process, led by famed former Senator Mike Gravel: http://Vote.org