Move 4

Finland’s education system

In Europe, Finland is known as the most successful education system. In 2008, Finland got the highest quality of education in the world due to it competent teachers and the autonomy and trust that the schools have.

Is it a coincidence that they are the 7th happiest country in the world ? I don’t believe so. They live with what they have and mostly only what they need to have a comfortable life. Contrary to U.S, they don’t constantly desire more, they believe in the “Less is more” philosophy. Less you have, more you’ll be happy with what you have. The Finnish population is not trying too many new project and innovations at the same time, they test a new system on a longer period to see if it works. It is the same idea for the school system. The country trust their school administrators, who trust teachers and students. Parents are also really respectful with the teachers, it is a trust circle that perfectly works.

They not only believe in “ Less is more” but in “ Happy teaching, happy learning”.

First of all, the system don’t push the children to go to school until they are seven years old.

Leaning on the theory of “less is more”, elementary students are at school for only five hours and high school students are only attending to the classes that they are taking. In fact, their school schedule varies frequently and which means also that they don’t have classes the whole day.

This system helps the teachers too because usually the teachers are overstressed and it decrease the quality of their work in class with the students.

To reinforce this concept, students are allowed to have a 15 minutes of break every 45 minutes of class. They think that it helps the kids to be more successful in their studies when they have a short break to refocus. The teachers have the capacity to make their classes working in silence since the students know that they will have a break after it. Their method is mostly based on learning through games, imaginations and play. Teachers will even encourage their classes to play and learn through games. It is proved that in this way of teaching and schedule , the children are more focus, and understand why being quiet in class is necessary, since their classes are that short.

All of my research were insisting on finnish values of collaboration. Students from different grades and teachers all work together, in a same space and the same goal. Collaboration means also respect. Usually, students stay engaged in their work because the subject was important even if the teachers are not here for a moment. The teachers feel relaxed and confident when they work with their students and their coworkers. This value goes further than for just one school. Every school is equal, which means that there is no competition between them. The government and citizens believe that all schools are supposed to be good. This mentality helps to remove any competition between the students. The finish system believe that more test preparation means less time for free thinking and inquiry, it is why they don’t evaluate them with ACT’s and the one who have best scores go in the best schools or with the best school program. The money is also a problem in U.S. because some schools are so expensive, some students can’t attend to their “dream school”, which does not happen in Finland because most of the schools are free. For finnish high schools, it is considered as too much pressure and every student has the right to have the same chance to attend to the school that they want to go.

At some point, this system is pretty similar to Switzerland. At the age of 16, they have their first choice about their future. They can choose Gymnasium for deeper studies or go to a vocation school to have a hands-on learning infrastructure. Both choices are considered as high school, and provide the opportunity to attend university (college) are respected in the society. Usually, being in high school is considered as mature enough to being considered as worker, which means that high schoolers are paid to attend to their schools.

Through this importance of happy teaching and happy learning, and Less is more, students, parents and teachers seemed to enjoy this collaboration, their experiences and appears a truly general satisfaction.

I’ll finish my Capstone with this truthful phrase : “ When a student struggles, the question is not what’s wrong with the student or what’s wrong with the teacher. The question is, what’s wrong with the system?”.

Sophia Faridi is a 9th grade English teacher at Baker College Prep in Chicago who visited some Finland’s schools.

Conclusion