Personal essays
In education we get what we measure
Finland
I spent part of the afternoon on a walking tour of Helsinki.
The tour started in front of the National Library and ended in front of the newest library in Helsinki.
Along the way the guide talked about education in Finland. It is free and designed to be high quality and available to all students both rural and urban.
Education is built with the student in mind and centered around their needs. This means that teachers look at the students in front of them and determine the best way to teach them. Much of the teaching is experiential. Not all students learn in the same way so they aren’t all taught in the same way.
As a result, a remarkable number graduate from high school and go on to graduate from college.
Oh, and check this out, the top answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up” in Finland is “a teacher.”
Minding the Gaps
A few years ago, one of the big buzzes in education was the achievement gap.
Looking at various populations in schools, were we seeing a gap between what different types of kids were achieving.
Some local school districts in my area decided that one way to address the gap is not to give the lower achieving students more, but to give the higher achieving students less.
Administrators get what they measure and reward - it’s just not always in line with what they meant.
In Finland the solution has been to look at the kids and vary the instruction based on what their interest are and what they need.
The goals are for students to succeed.
This needs to come from the top - we’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t.
China
When Maggie was twelve, I was invited to teach a class on programming in Shanghai.
I accepted and Kim, Maggie, and I spent two weeks in Beijing, Shanghai, and Maggie’s home town of Hefei.
One of the women who had worked with the adoption agency we’d worked through had started a business of arranging for private tours of families visiting China. We arranged for her to pair us with local guides in each of the cities.
In Beijing we did many of the usual touristy things but we also were able to visit a school of children around Maggie’s age followed by lunch at the home of someone who lived nearby.
I remember many things about that visit - but in particular I remember our host showing us pictures of her and her husband when they were younger. They were both bright and educated and so there were part of a lost generation that was sent from their city to the countryside during the cultural revolution.
In the mid-sixties schools in China were closed and the educated youth were sent from cities to rural areas.
As Kathrin Helle quotes in her FT article about China’s ‘sent-down’ youth, Mao insisted that, “It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside and undergo re-education by the poor peasants.”
The educated youth were not sent to the countryside to spread what they had learned. They were sent to be re-educated.
And so the tone was set for how China would view education and it - along with other policies - trickled down surprisingly quickly and took decades to mitigate.
I know a lot of people compare what’s going on in the US to Nazi Germany, but there are antecedents in China as well.
When we let non-scientists make decisions that ignore science, we are sending our educated youth to undergo re-education by those who embrace not-knowing.
Measles
This administration vows to fight “woke” over all else. They measure and reward reactions to woke.
Last week, photos of the Enola Gay airplane were targeted to be removed because of the word “Gay”. When you measure the use of the word “Gay” in documents, you end up making these kinds of errors.
In the scheme of things, those don’t matter.
Measles continues to spread in the United States. It is so far linked to communities where parents have gotten exemptions to vaccinating their children.
We’ve mostly read about the number of cases in Texas, but other US states are seeing a rise.
Florida is seeing an outbreak.
A couple of weeks ago when I was reading up on measles before commenting in this newsletter I saw a story from February about the cases in Florida and how the Florida Surgeon General was not suggesting vaccines or insisting that people keep their sick kids from going to school.
A second look showed me that this article was from two years ago - so I set it aside.
Then last week I saw nearly the same article about the same man in the same situation. It was again from February - but February of this year.
It seems that the Florida Surgeon General is again not worried about a measles outbreak in his state and is not suggesting that children get vaccinated or that the vulnerable or sick stay home.
During the height of COVID I had a whole routine for handling groceries before bringing them into my house. Cans, bottles, and other containers were wiped with a disinfectant and all vegetables and fruits were washed in soap before being dried and refrigerated.
We then found out more about COVID and how it was spread and I haven’t worried about it since.
Measles is different. According to the Washington Post article about the Florida outbreak, “Because measles virus particles can linger in the air and on surfaces for up to two hours after an infected person leaves the area, up to 90 percent of people without immunity will contract measles if exposed.”
Knowing that, the Surgeon general stands pat.
Oh, and meanwhile the outbreak in West Texas continues to grow.
While doctors and people trained in infectious disease recommend vaccines, the head of Health and Human Services in the United States, Robert F Kennedy, Jr. is recommending people use Cod Liver Oil, Steroids, and Antibiotics because he’s heard that doctors are seeing very, very good results of these treatments.
I can’t imagine how it feels to be a doctor being reeducated by this regime.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 259. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe