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In Finland the educational system, as it is today, was build slowly. It is still strongly relying on the work of Uno Cygnaeus ( 1810-1888 ) who was influenced by the early European “constructivist” Pestalozzi ( 1746–1827 ) and Froebel ( 1782 –1852 ). The idea that children learn the best when they areactive and build things was not really invented by John Dewey or Piaget – they only were able to present the idea in a language of positivist science, when the earlier thinkers thought themselves as “pedagogues” or educational philosophers.

Now, in theory, doing a 360 assessment (asking the people around the student, both before the formal learning program and, oh, six months after, for evaluations of behavior) is a pretty good technique. But 360's are also intrusive.

The bad news is that, well, who cares if someone can intellectually differentiate between different leadership styles? That is so old school. Further, simpler programs may get the same result, even if the knowledge is never used, (and the knowledge gleaned from old school programs also decays much more quickly after the program ends).

Multiple-choice questionnaires are biased towards proving what one knows, as opposed to presenting what one does. But I believe with some hacking of the medium, we can create better evaluations to guide us towards more productive programs.

I'm not saying these are necessarily bad things. I'm just saying they no longer exist as they once did b/c they relied on an inaccessibility/scarcity of information and the difficulty of forming and maintaining groups: two things media networks obviously do very well.