It's obvious the education system needs a complete overhaul, Finland is not the answer. Yes, we are lagging behind nations like Finland in Education Standards if what we are measuring as Excellence or Competence is UNESCO-driven Performance Standards -- and not actual academic knowledge. If you want a collectivist-minded compliant worker as a graduate then you will test for that particular "outcome" with assessments that look for these traits. In Finland it is this collectivist standards that is being offered as the definitive model of determining what is success and what is failure.

Education should be about "learning'' what you must know in order to find out what you need to know are the required essential skills. Without these basic skills you are at the mercy of the opinions of others and without the ability to gather enough facts to verify or discard what you have been told. As Orwell said, “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

Those believing Finland's system is the answer need to spend time researching what this really about, it's not what you think it is.