Why the "F" word is off limits around schools

I was reminded by a jr. high teacher at a relatively recent state wide event for education that when you are around schools or talking about schools the "F" word is off limits.

That is the one word that can't be uttered.

When it does slip out from time to time, we see the reason why. When evoked in public, it often marks a complete point of frustration, something we can't get around; it feels like -- to reanimate a nearly obsolete (thanks Anthony Bourdain) expression -- a "bone in the throat."

So let me just say it: Finland.

"Finland" chokes us up because even with all the national cries for "school reform," cries that are bouncing around the head of Governor Snyder and creating the Scrooge McDuck-like dollar signs in his eyes at the thought of putting public education up for sale to software vendors, it is, rather strangely, a real answer to what is otherwise a staged or phony debate about education. 

The debate, we know, goes something like this: American public education lags behind other developed countries. Therefore, to reform public education, we should do what other countries are doing!

Now, if we take all questions of size and our disturbing poverty levels out the equation we can, for a moment, assume this has some explanatory power. Let us look at other countries (without indulging too much in, on the one hand, fear of rising "BRIC" economies and, on the other hand, nostalgia for a postwar Europe that saw, however briefly, a glorious moment where an elitist Oxbridge educational system combined with a newly inspired meritocratic ethos).

When the first PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) results came out in December of 2001, however, the USA was dealing with the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and still ensconced in the economic house of cards now known as the housing bubble, and we missed, more or less, the surprise of the "Finnish miracle."

Of all places, Finland was taking top educational honors.

As, then, our national school reform or "germ" started spreading wholehog after 2007, we went -- rather noticeably -- in the opposite direction of Finland.

The bone in the throat: even as we cried for international models, we turned in the opposite direction from the best, unable to say, perhaps, what was wanted and needed.

At the center of the Finnish model, you see, is the thorough professionalizing of teaching as occupation. The Finns cultivated carefully a system of respect, admiration, and trust for teachers, providing high quality education and autonomy for the profession.

Get this. Young people actually want to become teachers in Finland, much in the way you might still want to become a college or university professor in the states. Word to the wise on the latter: check the job market and the globally competitive job market before starting the Phd program.

Here?

People flee K-12 teaching if they can. Students avoid that track -- I can't in good faith suggest to my own kids they go that route in this environment. Retirees are thinking and sometimes saying, "I am glad I got out when I did!" Folks are scrambling to finish graduate degrees to try to get safe work in administration (good luck). Educators who have brilliantly incorporated technology in their classrooms for years are told repeatedly they need to get away from traditional chalkboards. The Oakland Press, whose digital face looks distinctly 1993 to me, with enough pop ups circulating to strangle any desktop, rather comically ran just such an editorial today to try to salvage the Governor's OxfordPefaskunks. Resistance is "histrionic," they say, which is always Mackinac Center speak for supporting teachers, where the workforce is still 80% female.

Pasi Sahlberg, one of the many architects of Finnish education today and something of a Sting-like rockstar in certain circles, tries in his book -- Finish Lessons: What can the world learn from Educational change in Finland? (2011) -- to compare what is happening with us to his own experience. Unintentionally, he describes perfectly the situation in Michigan created in large part by Governor Snyder:

"The current culture of accountability in the public sector as it is employed in England, North America . . . often threatens school and community social capital; it damages trust rather than supports it. As a consequence, teachers and school leaders are no longer trusted; there is a crisis of suspicion . . . . Although the pursuit of transparency and accountability provides parents with more information, it also builds suspicion, low morale, and professional cynicism" (127).

Why can't we say the "F" word around schools? It tends to tell us too much about how we got here -- and who we are right now.