The Global Sociology Blog

[Greatest title EVER, huh?]

In the process of criticizing the latest on education reform from Xavier Darcos (a thankless and yet worthy endeavor, to be sure), Pierre Maura makes a series of excellent points that have larger sociological and public policy significance. Maura uses as a starting point Darcos’s intent to "copy" the Finnish model of education for French high schools. While not questioning the quality of the Finnish system, Maura cautions against blueprint application of the model for several sociological reasons:

Finland is a more egalitarian society than France. The more equal a society is, the easier it is to correct existing inequalities. It seems a trivial statement, but it is, to me, a central one. And how were such inequalities corrected in Finland? In the case of education, through massive government intervention and spending. Proof that the government is not the problem, as should be obvious these days, bad policy is. So, Finland has heavily invested in education at different levels (food, transportation, support staff). More generally, Finland’s income distribution is much more equal than France’s.

As Maura states, to change education to change society is a noble goal, but doomed to fail if reforms fail to take into account the stratification context of the surrounding society (my paraphrase).

The second major difference between France and Finland that Minister Darcos would do well to remember is that Finland has a strong tradition of collective bargaining for reform that goes beyond political lines and electoral time spans. Finland started its negotiations towards reforming education in the 1970s and implementation was completed in 1998. This means over 25 years of negotiations. Minister Darcos wants to shove its reform down everyone’s throats within less than 10 months. How will new programs be drafted and prepared for the 2009-2010 school year? And I might add, how much negotiation will there actually be, with the parties involved, especially teachers’ unions? How much research has been done on the practical application of the Finnish model? Everything is rushed, bypassing the essential aspects of the Finnish success, ignoring the very sociological fact that social institutions are, so to speak, self-contained and historical entities whose current state is the product of precisely social, political, economic development over time.

Ultimately, whatever reform is decided, teachers will be the ones in charge of implementing them. One problem: the Ministry of Education has been busier with eliminating positions and this goes against the individualization of learning that is a component of the Finnish model, with heavy support staff. Maura also points to the lack of proper orientation, based on the fact that one French university student in 4 drops out of higher ed without a degree after three years. Many of them may have been poorly guided in their educational choices. Whereas France has one orientation counselor for 1,500 students, Finland has 1 for 200 students, and psychologists and nurses. Will the Ministry adopt that aspect of the Finnish model? One can only hope against hope.

Ignoring for the sake of discussion the traditional hostility of conservative parties towards teachers and their unions, the question of the status of teachers and their training is an important one here. Finnish teachers may not be paid much better than their French counterparts (remember, this is in the context of a more equal society with more reduced stratification system) whereas the status of French teachers has been consistently degraded (this is reflected in violence exercised by students against teachers, reported with frequency by French newspapers. One could argue that students pick up on the declining status of their teachers). But that is my argument. Maura’s is that the very training of French teachers is problematic: too much academic knowledge, not enough practical know-how. French teachers know their subject but they might not be properly trained in imparting it.

So, these are three major blind spots in Darcos’s proposed reform but more generally, these three critical aspects (social structure, culture, and professional training) should be taken into account by any public policy aiming at "reforming" ("reform" being a completely ruined concept since it has been successfully decontested as meaning "implemental of noeliberal prescriptions").