SHOCKING NEWS: Ethnically and linguistically homogeneous people from tiny, frozen nation easier to educate than diverse citizens of world's most-immigrated-to nation. Stay tuned for more surprising revelations, as soon as we hear them!
I've had this conversation too many times, but I'll say it again: Americans (and all people who have not lived abroad) tend to overestimate the differences within their own population and underestimate the differences in outside populations. You overestimate the diversivness of America. This is about the point someone says something stupid like Alabama and California are as different as two different countries.
Note that I'm not just picking on Finland here, I'm pointing out that homogeneous peoples are easier to educate than diverse peoples. Locally nondiverse areas of the USA demonstrate the same phenomenon. Portland, the place that Linus is complaining about, is even more diverse than the USA average with 14% foreign born and 20% of households speaking non-English languages. Almost any major city in the USA is going to have a far more diverse population than Finland, and you'll find that the more diverse the city, the larger its educational problems are.
I'll admit that diverse populations do create problems, but I think it's a cop out for people to blame that for any little problem you might be facing. Man up and take some responsibility.
And this is the point where people start using size as an argument, and how states within the country differ sooo much. I've had long discussions with several people saying that New York and Texas are as different as France and Germany. Which is just ludicrous and shows how little they know about the world.
Btw, Russians and Finns are not closely related in any sense. If you said that to a Finn they'd probably kill you, just giving a heads up. Swedes and Finns are more intertwined by history and culture than related in the genetic or language sense. If you told a Finn that they're related to Swedes they might kill you slightly for that too.