In the United States, we take great pride in our national education system. The folks in charge mandate that everyone from coast to coast get a little knowledge before taking on the tasks of adulthood. Unfortunately, our educational system could use just a little bit of work. The nation routinely scores outside the top ten year after year. Though the most lauded educational systems in the world have a tendency to shuffle around a bit, there’s one name that’s consistently at or near the top of the list: Finland. That wasn’t always the case, but thanks to the implementation of one of the most wildly liberal school schedules in the world, the Finns are doing book learning right. Here’s how they did it.
1. The Way Finnish Schools Used to Be
For the last several decades, the Finnish school system had been considered fairly abysmal. For most of the twentieth century, the Finns were considered not only the worst educational system in Scandinavia, but one of the worst in Europe. Then, the powers that be switched things up. As a result, the Finnish school system has been ranked number one in the world four times since 2012. But how did they do it?
