Gracy Olmstead explains Why Finland’s Educational Model Is More Conservative Than Ours:
Advocates of education reform have pointed to Finland consistently over the past few years, urging the U.S. to take note of its educational success. The country has “consistently performed among the top nations on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA),” writes Atlantic contributor Christine Gross-Loh, yet their system “break[s] a lot of the rules we take for granted.”
Olmstead’s headings:
- Encouraging the principle of subsidiarity
- Focusing on the human element, rather than the numbers
- Making teaching both profitable and reputable
- Focusing on equality
- Prizing students above profit
What jumped out at me (okay, maybe I was free-associating) is that maybe we have the system we have, and Finland has the system it has, because “deep down inside” we value different attributes and are preparing students for different cultures.
I think I’ve suggested before that what we value, and what we tacitly strive to produce, is consumers. I haven’t abandoned that notion.
Oh, wow! Microsoft has invented this amazing “Me Too” product called, uh, let my try to remember. It sounds a lot like Evernote.
Oh, never mind.
In the estimation of this writer, Vladimir Putin is a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethnonationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern. Consider the world Putin saw, from his vantage point, when he took power after the Boris Yeltsin decade. He saw a Mother Russia that had been looted by oligarchs abetted by Western crony capitalists, including Americans. He saw millions of ethnic Russians left behind, stranded, from the Baltic states to Kazakhstan. He saw a United States that had deceived Russia with its pledge not to move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army would move out, and then exploited Russia’s withdrawal to bring NATO onto her front porch.
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Cannot we Americans, who, with our Monroe Doctrine, declared the entire Western Hemisphere off limits to the European empires—”Stay on your side of the Atlantic!”—understand how a Russian nationalist like Putin might react to U.S. F-16s and ABMs in the eastern Baltic?
In the rescript of Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to anticipate.”
The problem with U.S. involvement in this situation has not been poor timing, as Romney claims, but a profound failure to anticipate and take into account the very likely Russian reactions to the attempt to drag Ukraine out of its orbit. This is another confirmation that Romney doesn’t understand why Russia behaves the way that it does, nor does he understand how to deal with it effectively. Whatever else one wants to say about the U.S. response to events in Ukraine, most of us should be able to agree that it’s a good thing that Romney isn’t the one in charge of it right now.
It should give sanctions advocates pause that threatening punishment and then following through on the threatened punishments has had absolutely no effect on Russian behavior. Then again, why would they have any positive effect? It’s almost as if Western punishments are useful to Moscow, because they provide something for it to ignore and/or defy. The administration’s position is that it can impose additional sanctions as needed, but this suffers from the same flawed assumption that Russia can be successfully coerced out of what it is doing. What if that isn’t true? If it isn’t, it doesn’t matter whether the sanctions that Obama announced are “unserious” or not, because imposing such sanctions is based on a misunderstanding of how to alter Russian behavior.
Like many other regimes, the Russian government doesn’t usually take kindly to foreign governments telling it what it can and can’t do in its own neighborhood, and it doesn’t respond well to threats and punitive measures. If this has surprised Westerners in the past, it shouldn’t be a surprise now.
God prompts Noah to come into the ark with his family primarily for their safety and survival, in order that they might preserve life. Similarly, the invitation of holy baptism bids us enter into the safety and life that God offers us in His Church. Saint Nikolai of Zicha has this very security in mind when he quotes the wise Chrysostom: “If you are within, the wolf cannot enter, but if you stray outside, the wild beasts will get you. . . . Do not wander from the Church; there is nothing more impregnable than the Church. She is your hope and salvation” (Prologue From Ochrid vol. 1, p. 16).
As we consider the entrance of Noah and his family into the ark, let us recall our own entry into the Church through baptism. God’s mercy brings us into the Church, and thus into the space where the Body of Christ gathers for liturgy and worship. Our assembly hall is called a nave, which originally meant “ship” – a haven of salvation from the floods of evil around us.
(Dynamis, Orthodox devotional for 3/18/14)
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 