I was going to call this “Nice Guys Finnish First,” but (a) it’s a bad pun, and (b) for those who don’t get the pun, it just looks like I’ve misspelled “finish.”

However, it seems to be true about nice guys, or at least nice countries: the Finnish education system (entirely public, by the way; there are no private schools in Finland) is overwhelmingly more successful than the U.S. one, primarily because it values cooperation over competition, responsibility rather than accountability, and equality over all. This excellent article in The Atlantic goes into detail: “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success.”

By valuing equality in practice rather than just in speech, Finland has done what America says it wants to do: leave no child behind.