School System Vs America

Many believe that the Scandinavian school system is a superior school system to the one in North America. In many aspects, I believe this is true due to the fact that in many nordic countries the school system is being constantly updated. While here in North America, our school system has been the same for decades and is now outdated. According to an international ranking of OECD countries, the U.S. education system is mediocre compared to the rest of the world. Also according to this ranking, Scandinavian countries rank above average in most of the recognized categories such as science, math, reading and etc. In this paper, we will examine how these two school systems differ and why is it that North America’s school system is so outdated compared

After the Second World War, the educational system in Nordic countries such as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden “was influenced by reform pedagogy and progressive pedagogical movements. These movements believed that the traditional form of education tended to create passive citizens, and they criticized the schools’ barrack-like architecture, rote learning, strict discipline, authoritarian teachers, and rigid pursuit of knowledge and skills” (Lieberkind, 2015). This was the first step that these countries took to take action, they believed that it should be a student first mentality. With all this change in mind, it was not until at least the 1970s that these ideas took place and became recognizable to the students. On the other hand, schools in America have a lack of teacher education innovation which does not let the youth of today express themselves the way they want to because they are stuck in a classroom culture of last century. In Finland, teachers are treated like professors at universities, as they also teach fewer hours during the day than US teachers, with more time devoted to lesson planning while after all that getting paid more than you would in North America. As students minds develop, they become vulnerable to the environment they are in, that is why a change in culture is very well needed in

This would be put into action by restructuring our educational system as Finland did. We should not exactly copy Finland, but take what's working from there and implement it the best we can to better educate our children. The differences between school systems are bigger than we even thought. The Scandinavian countries are already a few steps ahead of us and we need to catch up soon before it's too late. To ensure that this educational movement takes place, It is time for the population to speak up, we need the government to realize we are falling behind. Our generation is being wasted in a classroom with no freedom and students don't have the ability to express themselves like in Scandinavian