Tribal Report: Netherlands, Scotland, Finland (26 March, 2015, 6 Nisan, 5775)
Contents:
1. Are the Dutch Rude or Just Direct? by Simon Woolcot
2. SCOTS have been labelled the UK's friendliest people by a major new study by DAVID O'LEARY
3. 9 reasons Finland's schools are so much better than America's by Libby Nelson
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1. Are the Dutch Rude or Just Direct? by Simon Woolcot
http://amsterdamshallowman.com/2014/06/dutch-rude-just-direct.html
June 22, 2014
Extracts:
A common complaint from Expats upon arriving in the Netherlands is how rude they find the Dutch. Even some Dutch people returning to the Netherlands after being away for a few years share the same opinion. In a survey published in De Telegraaf in 2006 the Dutch voted themselves as the third rudest nation in the world behind the Russians and the French. The common response from some is that Dutch are not rude, they are just direct. Which is true?
An English girl, who I'll call Suzy, was having some issues with her weight. The fact that she kept bringing back steak and kidney pies and other English delicacies to Amsterdam and consuming them in large quantities didn't really help. While at lunch with some Dutch colleagues she happened to mention that she was on a diet to which one of the ladies present responded 'Not another diet? You keep doing these but you're still very fat, perhaps you should eat less and do some exercise.'
A former Dutch manager of mine not long after I'd moved to Amsterdam once said to me, 'From the telephone interview we had, I had no idea you were black. I don't have a problem with blacks, it's Moroccans I can't stand.'
From a reader.
'I've lost count the number of times that people have bumped into me in the street and just walk on as if nothing happened. Words such as excuse me or sorry appear to be more difficult to get out of the Dutch than getting them to leave a decent sized tip in a restaurant. Is it a cultural misunderstanding? In the UK and in many other countries, it's considered normal to apologize if you walk into someone, or kneecap them with your bag of shopping. Am I being too sensitive in expecting some acknowledgement when someone does something like this?'
I believe that the way that Dutch react on Poles is an excellent example how rude can they be.
These are not just ordinary people that use rude language at the address of Polish. De Volkskrant called Polish in one of the articles 'smerig volk' which I would translate to 'shitty nation'.
Even the columnist of the NRC Next (the sister newspaper of NRC Handelsblad) Jan Blokker called Polish not so long ago on a national television 'tuig' = 'scumbags'.
Has he been direct? I don't think so. To me he has been just rude as one can be.
I could come with thousands of such examples.
...I also know plenty of very well mannered and polite Dutch people as well. ... Are the Dutch rude, direct or just all around jolly nice chaps?
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2. SCOTS have been labelled the UK's friendliest people by a major new study by DAVID O'LEARY
http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/scotland-s-smiles-friendlier-than-rest-of-uk-1-3727909
Extracts:
The University of Cambridge researched more than 400,000 Britons online and found wide difference between regions, with the Welsh being labelled the shiest and Londoners the least welcoming.
Scotland also came out on top as the region boasting the most agreeable people, suggesting Scots were good-natured, trusting and kind. The least agreeable people were found in London and various districts throughout the east of England, where large proportions were labelled unco-operative, quarrelsome, and irritable.
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Dr Jason Rentfrow, from the university's department of psychology, said the findings could help shape government decision-making.
He said: 'Geographical differences are associated with a range of economic, social and health outcomes, and hence how important resources are allocated. Although participants in an online test are self-selecting, the demographic characteristics are representative of the British population, so we can develop an accurate snapshot of the psychology of the nation.'
The University of Cambridge report also revealed significantly high levels of neuroticism throughout most of Wales and in a number of Midlands districts, suggesting large proportions of residents were comparatively anxious, depressed and temperamental. Meanwhile low levels of neuroticism, a personality trait characterised by anxiety, fear, moodiness, worry, frustration, jealousy and loneliness, emerged across most of Scotland, suggesting Scots were calm and emotionally stable.
Scotland's ranking as the friendliest region in the UK came as no surprise to many on the streets of Edinburgh.
Dominique Adams, 30, from Glasgow, said of the findings: 'Of course, Scots can be dour but on the whole we are very friendly, a lot more than those down south. It also depends on where you are too; Glaswegians can be very forward and Edinburgh more resevered but both are friendly in their own way.'
Her boyfriend Christian Kramer, 30, who has lived in Scotland for seven years, echoed this: 'You need a sense of humour to get along, but once you understand this everyone is fine.'
Tessa Welsh, 33, originally from Leeds, said: 'People in Scotland say what they mean, just like us in the north of England.
'They're blunt. Sometimes people can view this as being unfriendly but it's just that Scots don't have time to mess about and usually just get to the point.'
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3. 9 reasons Finland's schools are so much better than America's by Libby Nelson
Extracts:
In 2001, the world was stunned when Finland ended up at the top of international rankings after a standardized test administered to students in developed countries. Finland's dominance continued unabated for a decade (although it slipped in 2012). Endless articles, and some books, all have the same basic gist: what can the United States learn from Finland?
Here are 9 reasons that have been cited to explain Finland's success.
1) Finland's teachers have high status, professional support, and good pay
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Becoming a teacher in Finland is hard, but they enjoy more autonomy and professional development. (Shutterstock)
Teachers in Finland with 15 years' experience make about as much as the typical college graduate with a bachelor's degree; in the US, they make less than that. And the workload is also less demanding. Teachers in Finland teach about four hours a day, with another two hours of professional development, and they develop their own curriculum based on a set of national guidelines. The leadership ranks of education are also drawn from former teachers. The result, writes Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish teacher and researcher who has become a one-man promotional machine for the country's schools, is "an inspiring and respectful environment in which teachers work. Parents and authorities regard teachers with the same confidence they do medical doctors. Indeed, Finns trust public schools more than any other public institution, except the police."
American teachers unions point to the high status and professional flexibility for Finnish teachers as something they'd like to have themselves. They also often note that nearly all Finnish teachers are unionized and the unions are relatively powerful. They argue that to improve schools, the US should focus on treating teachers the way Finland does - with more professional support and greater respect, rather than using students' standardized test scores to reward and grade teachers, a trend the Obama administration has encouraged.
2) Finland has more selective and rigorous schools of education
One reason teaching in Finland is prestigious is becoming a teacher isn't easy. Finland, like the US, used to have a large number of teachers' colleges. But in the 1970s, Finland dramatically changed how teachers were trained. Teacher education became the responsibility of the country's eight universities, and teachers are required to earn masters' degrees. It takes five years of teacher education to become a teacher, and only about one in 10 applicants to teacher education programs is accepted. Secondary teachers get a master's degree in the content area they're going to be teaching, and all master's degree recipients have to write a research-based dissertation.
This is the other side of the argument about teaching: education reformers in the US argue that Finnish teachers get more respect because they earn it through a rigorous, selective entry process. The policy lesson they draw isn't that teachers should be treated like they are in Finland, it's that the teacher corps in the US needs to be more like Finland's. Groups like the National Council on Teacher Quality argue that teachers' colleges aren't selective or rigorous enough. About half of all new teachers come from the bottom third of college graduates, as measured by SAT or ACT scores, according to a 2010 McKinsey report.
On the other hand, the fact that Finnish teachers are so intensely trained also appeals to opponents of programs like Teach for America. A popular saying among opponents of the two-year program is that there is no "Teach for Finland," because in Finland, teaching is a lifelong career with a long and rigorous training program.
3) Finland doesn't give standardized tests
The most common praise for Finland (pushed by Sahlberg and others) goes something like this: Finland has no national standardized tests and no rewards or punishments for schools that pass or fail them, and yet they still outperform American students on international exams. Students in Finland take one standardized test at the end of high school. The rest of the time, teachers are responsible for setting expectations and evaluating whether students can meet them. The nation doesn't monitor the quality of schools in any way.
4) Finland emphasizes subjects other than reading and math
Finnish kids get plenty of recess, more than an hour a day; US kids get less than half an hour. Oh, and students do less than an hour of homework per night all the way through the equivalent of American middle school. Arts and crafts are required, both boys and girls learn needlework, embroidery, and metalwork.
It's not clear how much this has to do with the success of the Finnish school system, but Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at Columbia University, argued in the New Republic that these subjects allow students to apply science and math skills in the real world. They're also an example of what some parents fear has been lost in the US as teachers spend more time preparing students for standardized tests.
5) Finland has a history of tight oversight for schools
Finland doesn't have a national curriculum now, and Finnish education experts brag about how much autonomy teachers get in the classroom. But that wasn't always the case. In the 1960s and 1970s, Finland totally overhauled its education system. The change to teacher training was part of this, but the country also worked with teachers to develop a mandatory national curriculum and there were national inspections to check on student learning. That tight national control remained in place for two decades, until it was eased up in the 1990s, the national curriculum is now described as being more like guidelines than a tight prescription for what teachers should teach in the classroom.
Unlike the lack of testing, this is a Finnish tradition that American supporters of education reform, particularly standards like the Common Core, embrace. They argue that Finland can only give teachers the autonomy they have now because of the generation of tight oversight that preceded it.
6) It's easier to learn to spell in Finland
This is the most unusual explanation for Finland's success yet. At The Atlantic, Luba Vangelova argues that the difficulties of learning to read and write English are holding American students back because other languages, including Finnish, are more straightforward.
Masha Bell, the vice chair of the English Spelling Society, says that Finnish is phonetically much simpler than English because there aren't dozens of arcane spelling rules and exceptions (i before e except after c, for example) to memorize. Once you know the alphabet and how letter sounds correspond with the written word, learning to read is fairly simple. A study found that in Finnish and other European languages, children can read a list of familiar words after about a year of reading instruction; in English, it took nearly three years.
In other words, Finnish children have an advantage: even though they don't start school until age 7, and even though the Finnish language is very complex for English-speakers to learn, it's relatively easy for native speakers to learn to read and write.
7) Finland has low child poverty and state support for parents
Finland doesn't spend as much on education as the United States. But that overlooks a vast social safety net for families, particularly low-income families, that doesn't exist here, either. Baby Finns start their life with a "baby box" of supplies from the Finnish government. Child care is heavily subsidized, and most children attend some kind of early childhood education before mandatory schooling starts at age 7.
Perhaps as a result, Finland has very small gaps between rich and poor students' test scores; in the US, those divides are much bigger.
8) Finland's schools aren't better. they're just homogenous
Some people argue that Finland's schools aren't actually better, they're just serving a much smaller, much more homogenous population. Finland is tiny, the entire country has just 5.4 million people, fewer than New York City. About 5 percent of its residents are immigrants, much lower than the United States.
Schools in the US where most children aren't poor are actually better than low-poverty school systems in Finland.
.... In some ways, the United States has two school systems - well-funded, high-performing suburban schools serving the middle class, and struggling urban school systems where students are overwhelmingly poor and from disadvantaged backgrounds.
9) Finland is culturally different
This is another version of the "Finland does better because it's Finland" argument, that Finnish society is just different than American society, and that as a result lessons are harder to translate. Finnish adults are among the most literate in the world, and the country's libraries are treasured institutions.Â