Good Lord, just because someone is pointing out that a certain problem might be in a way related to immigration, it doesn't mean that someone is racist. Can you really not see that "more immigrant kids in Finland" might lead to "more kids who have learning problems at school"? Simply because immigrants to Finland typically don't speak Finnish, are poorer than the average Finnish citizen, etc. This is far cry from saying immigrants are inferior.
Suppose that we found out that if immigration in US were heavily curtailed, then some social indicators such as "% of population with low income" or "average grades in standardized tests" would improve and then US would compare more favourably in relation to (say) Finland. That's not to say that immigration is a bad thing! I, for one, think that US is helping more people than Finland, even if reluctantly.
Finland has a policy of providing (wherever possible) early-stage immigrant education in the child's first language. Bilingualism, and an eventual transition to study in Suomi (or Swedish -- which seems to be a level alternative officially) are encouraged, of course, but the object of the game seems to be to get the young minds working as well as possible as early as possible, even if that means teaching reading and math skills in Somali, Vietnamese or Arabic in the interim. It seems to work.
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Good Lord, just because someone is pointing out that a certain problem might be in a way related to immigration, it doesn't mean that someone is racist. Can you really not see that "more immigrant kids in Finland" might lead to "more kids who have learning problems at school"? Simply because immigrants to Finland typically don't speak Finnish, are poorer than the average Finnish citizen, etc. This is far cry from saying immigrants are inferior.
Suppose that we found out that if immigration in US were heavily curtailed, then some social indicators such as "% of population with low income" or "average grades in standardized tests" would improve and then US would compare more favourably in relation to (say) Finland. That's not to say that immigration is a bad thing! I, for one, think that US is helping more people than Finland, even if reluctantly.
Finland has a policy of providing (wherever possible) early-stage immigrant education in the child's first language. Bilingualism, and an eventual transition to study in Suomi (or Swedish -- which seems to be a level alternative officially) are encouraged, of course, but the object of the game seems to be to get the young minds working as well as possible as early as possible, even if that means teaching reading and math skills in Somali, Vietnamese or Arabic in the interim. It seems to work.
But Finland doesn't have any immigrants, that's why they seem to be doing so well.