In Finland's Footsteps

[nyhuskyfan]

This article is two weeks old, but I didn't see anything here (and didn't come up with anything in the search function), so I thought I'd post it. In the interest of full discretion, I am half-Finnish (although I have never been there).


Life in Finland, one of the world's best functioning welfare states and least known success stories, can be complicated. Consider the dilemma confronting parents looking for day care for a 4-year-old daughter in Kuhmo, a town of 10,000 near the middle of the country. Should they put their child into the town nursery school, where she could spend her weekdays from 6:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. with about 40 other children, cared for by a 47-year-old principal with 20 years' experience, Mirsa Pussinen, as well as four teachers with master's degrees in preschool education, two teacher's aides and one cook? The girl would hear books read aloud every day, play games with numbers and the alphabet, learn some English, dig in the indoor sandbox or run around outside, sing and perform music, dress up for theatrical games, paint pictures, eat a hot lunch, take a nap if she wanted one, learn to play and work with others.

Or should that 4-year-old spend her days in home care? Most parents in Kuhmo choose this option, and put their children into the care of women such as Anneli Vaisanen, who has three or four kids in her home for the day. The 49-year-old Vaisanen doesn't have a master's, but she has received extensive training, has provided day care for two decades and has two grown children of her own. The kids in her charge do most of the things those at the center do, but with less order and organization. They also bake bread and make cakes.

How to decide? There's no financial difference; both forms of day care cost the parents nothing. There's no difference in the schooling that will follow day care -- all the kids in Kuhmo (and throughout Finland) will have essentially identical opportunities in Finnish schools, Europe's best. There is no "elite" choice, no working-class choice; everyone is treated equally.

It's a dilemma that American parents don't have a chance to confront. And it's a vivid example of the difference between what the Finns call a social democracyand our society. Finland is a leading example of the northern European view that a successful, competitive society should provide basic social services to all its citizens at affordable prices or at no cost at all. This isn't controversial in Finland; it is taken for granted. For a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can't we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080502015_pf.html

[mcscajun]

1. Those are choices most parents in the US would gladly live with...

...instead of the horrific costs, application processes, limited hours, untrained staff, competition, and occasional abuse stories that come out of what passes for our day care "system" (hint -- it isn't one.)

[BlueJazz]

2. You Ask >>>

"If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can't we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do?"

REPUBLICANS

[Dirk39]

3. These parents must be liberated!

Hello from Germany,
please don't talk too much of these lesser known communist socialist terrorist societies.
If there's too much talking, Bush and Pat Robertson might find out, that Finnland's "leaders" are going nuts. And that something has to be done to evil dictators worse than Stalin, who leave parents alone with dilemmas like the above mentioned, while exploiting them with high tax-rates and instead of using this taxmoney to finance freedom-wars, they use it to finance such dilemmas and rob the children from their christian parents to turn them into socialists.

Sarcasm off,
Dirk

[Nikki Stone 1]

4. Waiting for Pat Robertson to declare a crusade on Finland

No sarcasm necessary.

:)