Michael Enright speaks to Finland's education reform guru, Dr.
Pasi Sahlberg, about how
the country's egalitarian, low-stress model has helped Finnish students reach
for the top.
Dr Pasi Sahlberg - Finnish Education CBC interview
THE MAIN CONCERN of schools should be the Well- Being of kids,
their happiness, ensuring that they find school and learning meaningful,
enriching and interesting, that they
have friends and relationship with teachers. This comes before
academic achievement. The first question parents should ask teachers should
be ' is my child happy at school and not what are her test scores ?
Teachers should be helping kids to understand
themselves, their strengths, develop and find an interest and passion, and equip
them with thinking and communication skills needed for the outside world.
Traditional maths, science and reading won't do the job.
DELAYING FORMAL EDUCATION.
In Finland
kids start school at the age of seven. Dr Sahlberg explains that play teaches
kids to cooperate with others, develops their minds and thinking, and they
learn that this gives them power etc and in order to be good at play one needs time
to practice.
ASSESSMENT
The focus
on testing and especially high stakes standardized testing leads to ' teaching to
test' and the narrowing of curriculum. Focusing on a core curriculum of maths,
reading, writing and science fails kids as there is no way that a core curriculum
can help a kid understand who they are and what they would like to do in the
future. Only a wide curriculum can help kids discover and find their own
passions and talents and tackle the high ' drop-out ' rates in school.
Instead of standardized tests schools can do ' sample
' testing and have more trust in teachers and rely on them. Assessment Joe
Bower reminds us is a conversation , not a spreadsheet . The real progress of
kids can be assessed by the questions
they ask and no test can do that.
A Worrying Study
A survey
of a 100,000 Canadian kids between 7-12 reported that 50% of kids are worried
about their futures, 2/3 of them lose sleep over this and 1/3 have cried over
this. This is a direct result of high stakes standardized testing and an
educational system driven by extrinsic motivators like grades. We no longer use
corporal punishment and punitive discipline but kids today are subject to
greater pressures and expectations to perform. Love and acceptance is now
conditional on how kids behave and their test scores.
