--- title: "What the Independence Day ball costs, explaining the PISA fall, and a case for being ordinary — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys" titleOriginal: "Viisastelu: Linnan juhlat törkeää verojen tuhlaamista | Pisa-katastrofin seli-seli-selittelyt" description: "Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 8 December 2023: a panel that sells \"taxation is theft\" merchandise defending the cost of the Independence Day ball, a long working-through of Finland's PISA decline — incentives, inclusion, per-pupil spending, language — and an unexpectedly warm closing argument for ordinary life." format: "podcast" show: "Viikon viisasteluklubi" episode: "Viisastelu 8.12.2023" hosts: ["Ivan Puopolo"] date: 2023-12-08 duration: "44:59" language: "fi" original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfRFSNr2PIA canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisastelu-independence-ball-and-the-pisa-collapse/ --- # What the Independence Day ball costs, explaining the PISA fall, and a case for being ordinary — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys Sami Miettinen joined **Viikon viisastelu** — Ivan Puopolo's weekly political panel, known in English here as *Weekly Wiseguys* — on 8 December 2023, alongside **Tere Sammallahti** and Finns Party MP **Onni Rostila**. It was recorded two days after Finland's presidential Independence Day ball and three days after the PISA results came out. It opens with the best small moment in the recording. The panel — which sells "taxation is theft" merchandise — starts out treating the ball as waste, guesses that it costs €300,000, then checks: €275,000, the most expensive of the president's term, against a previous record of €263,000 in 2013. With the scale established, they spend the next ten minutes defending it, on grounds of tradition, of a shared national occasion, and of being the one evening in the Finnish year when anybody wears formal dress. Those who were there describe shaking hands and exchanging good wishes with the people they spend the rest of the year arguing with. The main section is the PISA fall, and the panel sorts five explanations rather than naming one culprit: the incentives facing the education administration, twenty years of rising per-pupil spending against falling results, inclusion and ability grouping, the disappearance of progression criteria, and language. On the last — the most contested — they take the explanation explicitly to language rather than to ethnic background, and propose investing in second-language teaching, using translation tools in public services, and recognising that selectivity in immigration shows up in the next generation's school results. Where they lean on anecdote rather than data, this write-up says so. It ends somewhere the title does not prepare you for: a direct address to young viewers that it is fine to be ordinary, that being middle-of-the-road is one of the better places to stand, and that the social-media picture in which nothing bad ever happens to anyone is an illusion. ## Chapters - **00:00** — Greetings from the slope - **03:13** — The line-up and the Independence Day special - **04:06** — "Observers at the ball" - **04:53** — What the ball costs — the guess and the figure - **05:41** — Formal dress as culture - **06:27** — €275,000, and how it compares - **07:17** — Who gets invited - **08:05** — A tradition few countries have - **08:53** — Does it look like fun on television? - **09:52** — What it felt like in the room - **10:40** — Political opponents in the same room - **11:40** — A proposal: a second ball for ordinary citizens - **12:27** — The shortage of places to go on to - **13:18** — The attention economy and the media game - **14:12** — A disagreement: is any of it planned? - **15:47** — What "shaking things up" means in practice - **16:35** — Image as work - **17:22** — Turning to PISA - **18:08** — Incentives decide behaviour - **18:58** — More resources as the answer to everything - **19:51** — Per-pupil spending over twenty years - **20:37** — Homes, and homework - **21:29** — Ability grouping and motivation - **22:19** — Inclusion: a beautiful idea, and its limit - **23:06** — The teacher who criticised and was targeted - **23:56** — A question time that left out the obvious variable - **24:42** — What the statistics show - **25:31** — When most of the class needs support - **26:20** — A language test for school? The proposal and its problems - **27:11** — Language as a professional and civic question - **27:58** — The language of the schoolyard - **28:59** — Holding pupils back, and criteria - **29:53** — Short-form content and attention - **30:40** — Grand narratives nobody may question - **31:38** — An observation from building sites - **32:24** — Discrimination, or language skills? - **33:15** — Anecdotes, and how much they weigh - **34:23** — Why language skills decide things at work - **35:12** — What should be done: fix the language programme, use the tools - **36:03** — Selective immigration and the next generation - **36:53** — The taboo, and the moral charge - **37:44** — The comparison with religious prohibition - **38:30** — Why communities produce taboos - **39:18** — "It's fine to be ordinary" - **40:07** — The middle as the best place to stand - **41:03** — What matters more than a career - **41:49** — The counter: is the experience unique? - **42:53** — Social media and the illusion - **43:40** — Encouragement for second-language speakers - **44:29** — Sign-off **The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo’s own channel and he owns it.** This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The chapter marks above are derived from the recording itself; the episode carries no published chapter list of its own. A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, [in English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/viisastelu-linnan-juhlat-ja-pisa-katastrofi/) and [in Finnish](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/poliittinen-satiiri/viisastelu-linnan-juhlat-ja-pisa-katastrofi/). Original recording (Viikon viisasteluklubi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfRFSNr2PIA --- Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 8.12.2023 — What the Independence Day ball costs, explaining the PISA fall, and a case for being ordinary — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys, 2023-12-08, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfRFSNr2PIA. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisastelu-independence-ball-and-the-pisa-collapse/.