Part II - What the Helsinki?

(Sorry, again)

Matthew Yglesias wrote this a while ago about the greatest school system EVAH:

Teaching is held in high regard not just in the abstract, but in practice as a profession a lot of people want to get into. Consequently, the teaching programs are quite selective. And the selectivity itself makes teaching prestigious since everyone knows teachers are graduates of selective programs. Which helps make going into teaching seem appealing to a lot of people. And so on and so forth in an interesting way. It seems to me that it’s easy to see how it’s socially beneficial to increase the number of talented people who want to be teachers; by contrast, it’s difficult for me to see what kind of social benefits from from increasing the number of talented people who want to be lawyers. Finland and the United States seem to be on different spots on the teacher/lawyer curve, and I don’t think it’s difficult to say which is the better spot.

I can think of no better way to raise the profile of teachers than to compare them to drug dealers.

Also: Chris Christie is a lawyer, not a teacher. Just sayin'...