Revealing the Finnish secret to education success

Like many other foreign journalists, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Helsinki, Finland, to learn how this country has climbed to the top spots in key international rankings measuring economic, political and social success. How did you do it? I asked Finnish President Tarja Halonen in an interview.

"I can sum it up in three words: education, education and education," she said.

And what is the secret of your education system? I asked. Among other things, highly trained elementary school teachers, she said. "We have a long queue outside our ministry of education with all kinds of experts from different countries who would like to learn more from our system," Halonen said. "But what they don't normally believe is that the answer is as simple as having good teachers." Read more of Andres Oppenheimer's observations in The Hartford Courant online. Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald, where this article first appeared.