Pasi Salhberg ’s address at the opining of the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair on 7 October 2014.
”Alvar Aalto, Finland’s most renowned architect and designer, made the
wise statement that “we should work for simple, good, undecorated
things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and
organically suited to the little man in the street.” Similarly, one
might say that Finnish teachers prefer traditional, reliable, calm
teaching over the sort of heroic feats we’ve seen in the movies. If
anyone thinks they’re going to find a bunch of Robin Williamses from Dead Poets’ Society
in Finnish schools, they will be disappointed. Finns don’t believe a
few super-teachers can save their children and their schools. It takes a
whole village to raise a child.
The world has been talking and writing about the Finnish education
system for nearly a decade and a half now. At the start of the
twenty-first century, the results of the first PISA exam of
15-year-olds’ academic skills instantly plucked Finland from the
periphery of the education world and placed it centre stage. This came
as a huge surprise to Finns and everyone else as well. At the same time,
there was talk in Sweden, Norway, France and especially here in Germany
about ‘PISA shock’ as a result of those countries’ weaker-than-expected
results in the international league tables. It also marked the start of
the new practice of ‘PISA tourism’ in search of the secrets of good
education. For years now, Finland has hosted a larger number of these
visitors than any other country.
Some of the so-called ‘PISA tourists’ regard Finnish schools as a
utopia, a fairytale land where teaching is regarded as a dream job by
young people, where parents trust in the ability of schools to educate
their children to be good human beings, and where political
decision-makers all agree on the direction of changes in educational
policy.
To other visitors, the Finnish school system is regarded as an
oddball swimming against the current of other countries’ education
systems, or as a young Hollywood-style rebel. Children do not begin
formal education until the age of seven. The school day is shorter, and
less homework is set than in other countries. Finnish schoolchildren do
not spend time sitting lots of tests or exams – the only test that is
applied as a universal yardstick is the matriculation exam, which comes
at the end of secondary school.
So what is the ‘golden thread’ that runs through the world-famous
story of Finnish schools? Why do schoolchildren in Finland outperform
their peers in most other countries? Many books and articles around the
world have addressed these questions. My own story includes three
aspects that address this topic.
The first aspect describes the way Finland has worked over many years
to build an excellent education system based on the principles of
equality and fairness for all children. This means that schools are
funded according to pupils’ needs; every child has the right to
early-childhood education and a secure school environment; all schools
pay attention to pupils’ health and well-being; and the curriculum
emphasises each individual’s overall growth and learning.
The second aspect is about how teachers in Finnish schools have more
time during the school day to interact and collaborate with their
colleagues than in most other countries. For example, a typical Finnish
teacher working in a secondary school spends around half as many hours
teaching per day as their American counterpart. Collaboration among
teachers in a school strengthens professional networks and social
capital, which many studies have shown to be linked to improving the
quality of teaching and learning.
The third aspect of my account describes how play has a central role
in Finnish educational concepts about children’s development and
learning. Finnish legislation ensures that every hour of teaching must
include a quarter-hour for pupils’ own activities. In most schools,
these breaks are used by the children for self-directed play. In many
other countries, play and other activities during the school day have
had to give way to the teaching of reading and maths. For example, in
the United States a quarter of primary schools have abandoned recesses
altogether, in order to fit more classroom study into the school day.
The reason the Finnish education system has become a world leader is
not because Finns have managed to improve teaching and learning in
schools using the same methods as in other education systems. Some have
wondered whether it might be because Finland’s small, homogeneous
population has made it easier to implement changes that are difficult to
achieve elsewhere. What is true is that Finland has bravely pursued its
own path of change, which differs from the paths of other countries.
In my own experience, the rest of the world associates Finland with
two things: education and Nokia. There are some interesting points that
the Finnish school system and Nokia have in common. Both can trace their
origins back to the mid-1860s. The inspiration for both came from ideas
and innovations discovered in Germany. The man who brought those ideas
to Nokia was Fredrik Idestam, an engineer, while the father of the
school system was the clergyman Uno Cygnaeus. In addition, the rise of
both Nokia and Finnish schools to global prominence was accelerated by
unprecedented Finnish ideas and innovations in the 1970s and ’80s. That
was when Nokia began to specialise in mobile communication technology
and primary schools based on universal general education took on their
current form.
Whoever ponder the future of education would do well to study the
story of Nokia in detail now that its mobile phone business has been
sold off. One reason Nokia lost out in the high-tech contest was its
rapid rise to the top and the complacency that accompanied it. It’s not
easy to be at the centre of attention from your consumers and
competitors. It’s difficult to reform something that works well,
especially in Finland. When you’re at the pinnacle of success, you have
to know how to spot the next big opportunity and to seize it, even at
the stage where today is still better than yesterday.
I often hear terms like ‘persistent’, ‘able to solve fiendish
problems’ and ‘moderate diplomats’ to describe Finns and who they are.
These characteristics crop up in fictional literature about Finnish
people as well as historical works detailing the achievements of great
statesmen. Solving the challenges that people face will depend on how
well we succeed in guiding each person via the education system to
discover their own talent. “For the past fifteen years, Finland has been
well ahead of the curve in education,” Sir Ken Robinson wrote in his
afterword to my book. He added: “The rest of the world has much to learn
from these Finnish Lessons. One of the most important is that this
story is still evolving and is far from over.”
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