How did this northern, godforsaken land end up with the best education system in the world?Imagine if the very first time you go to school, you’re seven years old. Before that you wouldn’t have touched a pencil to write anything, you would have never sat down to work out a maths sum and you would have never opened a book to read a sentence.
Imagine if for the rest of your primary and secondary school years, you won’t ever wear a uniform, you’re on first-name basis with the teacher, your school hours are short, you have very little homework and you don’t have exams: no benchmarks, no national examination guillotines.
Imagine if this were real. Hang on, it is very real. This is what it’s like to go to school in Finland, the country with the best education system in the world.
How did this northern, godforsaken land where in winter it’s pitch dark at noon, end up with this enviable education system?
It’s because theirs is a land with not many resources, so when the Finns got their independence, they realised early on that education would be to key to success (also probably because it gave them something to do in those brightly-lit nights of mind-boggling midnight suns).
There is a crucial characteristic: the Finns do not equate education with ambition. So you won’t find parents of five-year-olds comparing the books their children read: “Oh, Emma finished the Harry Potter series when she was only four”; “Well, Matteo sleeps with Freud’s books under his pillow, yap yap yap”. There is none of that.
As a matter of fact, up till the age of seven, there is no school for Finnish children. They can stay home or they can go to playschools. While our children are frowning and trying hard to clutch a pencil and work out maths sums at age four or five, Finnish children are just… playing.
Finnish pedagogy experts Johanna Järvinen-Taubert and Elina Harju explained all this to Times of Malta readers in an interview last week. The day before, I had been to a workshop for teachers in which they spoke about the highlights of their education system.
Children under seven don’t even write the alphabet, or read Pietari and Johanna, or whatever their equivalent for Peter and Jane is, we were told.
The result of this education has a ripple effect on Finnish life. Finland has the least corrupt government in the world
“Oh no, no,” Ms Järvinen-Taubert told a stunned room. Science, she said, showed that the brain needed to be developed enough in order to be able to absorb academic material, so it’s pointless giving it academic stuff before the age of seven.
“Therefore, instead of focusing on reading, writing or mathematics, our teachers focus on skills that students would need in order to do well at school in the following years, like teamwork, communication and social skills.”
There was a collective wiggling of fingers in the room: everyone was counting. If Finnish children start reading at eight or nine, then they’d be sitting for their O levels at the age of 20, and go to University aged 30. Surely, they’ll lag behind other countries?
“Oh no, no,” Ms Järvinen-Taubert said. “When it comes to learning languages, we focus on dialogue, not forced reading; then when the children show an interest in a language, they are encouraged to start exploring it through books.” Finnish children are, as it happens, the best readers in the world; even though they academically start very late, they clearly catch up fast.
So what about exams? Oh no, no: there are no official exams. It is up to the class teacher to decide whether to hold tests, or self-assessments, or any form of marking throughout the year. There is a national curriculum; but schools leave the teaching methods up to the teacher.
By the time someone mentioned homework, we all knew the answer. Finnish children do not have more than half an hour worth of homework – from primary right up to secondary school.
And do you know what the children do when they finish the 30 minutes of homework? They play. Or they read. Which is why internationally they are the nation that borrows most books from libraries.
All children attend free State schools. There’s only a couple of private schools in the whole of Finland, but it is unthinkable for anyone to want to send their children anywhere except their village school. “Schools are within walking distance. Children walk or cycle; there’s no traffic.”
Perhaps the success of the world’s best education system hinges on the fact that teachers are highly respected. “Ask teenagers – girls and boys – what they want to be when they grow up and they will tell you: doctor or lawyer or teacher.” And the competition is so stiff that only 10 per cent actually make it. “Only the best get to teach our children,” the Finnish educator said.
The result of this education has a ripple effect on Finnish life. Helsinki is the most honest city in the world – check out the Reader’s Digest dropping-wallet-in-cities experiment. It is one of the world’s most egalitarian countries: Finnish women occupy over 40 per cent of positions in national government.
And according to the Corruption Perception Index, Finland has the least corrupt government in the world and is one of the highest-ranking in terms of freedom of the press. In Finland, for example, it would not cross any government’s mind to gag the press with garnishee orders.
Perhaps this is just what we need: an education system that nurtures a civic conscience; preparing children to become citizens who will preserve democracy. The place to build the foundation of democracy is in schools.
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