Apps for
1. Find a blanket
2. Carry your kid
3. Lay your kid in the blanket
4. Roll your kid like a burrito.
5. Take your burrito
6. Put your burrito in your bed and hug
7. Kiss your burrito.
8. Your burrito is happy
9. Teach your burrito to Potty train (get the app) Potty training app
10. Teach your burrito to learn to read app
The country’s achievements in education have other nations, especially the United States, doing their homework. So, what is the difference? If the instruction in secondary mathematics is the same or sometimes worse than those found in the US, why are Finnish students succeeding and ours are failing? Here are 11 reasons!
Whereas in the US children start Kindergarten at four or five, in Finland education system they don’t start school until the age of seven. That’s right, seven years old!
Before this, they are already learning, but through play, instead of sitting in a formal classroom. This means that, by the time they do start formal schooling, they’re developmentally ready to learn. They then spend only nine compulsory years at school, after which they choose their path from three options:
(an option chosen by less than 40 of students) is a three-year program which lets students choose a specialist secondary school, depending on what course they’d like to take in college. It’s really a mixture of high school and college.
(an option chosen by a little under 60% of students) is a three-year program, at the end of which students can choose to either go on to university, but most of the students who choose this option are usually content to either go straight into the workforce, or study at a polytechnic college. Oh but wait, I hear you cry, what about learning economics? Or calculus? Don’t these students need to learn those as well? Not necessarily; what if we flip the situation around, and students whose talents in other areas, which aren’t necessarily academic, could be nurtured? What if they were really made to feel valued in the education system? Hmm… something worth thinking about.
Option three is to go straight into the workforce, which is chosen by less than 5% of students.
It’s not just the total number of years you spend in school, but the total number of hours every day, which are different in Finland. Typically, the school day in Finland education system begins between (8.00AM , and the day ends between 2.00PM ; this means an average of three to four classes per day. There are also plenty of breaks built in, so that both students and teachers are well-rested, and can therefore learn and teach to the best of their ability.
It’s not just the students who benefit from shorter schooldays – teachers do as well. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a teacher in Finland will spend an average of 600 hours per year in the classroom – that’s four or less lessons per day. By contrast, US teachers spend about 1080 hours in the classroom – that’s an average of six or more lessons per day.
As well as this, both students and teachers are only expected to physically be in school when they have classes; so, if you don’t have your first class until 11AM, which can happen with the varied timetables in Finland, then you don’t have to come in until that time. This system allows teachers to put more time into planning interesting, engaging lessons.
In the US, students are used to having different teachers each year – but in Finland Education system, that’s not the case. Some teachers can have the same group of children for between three and six years. That’s right, six years!
This is of benefit to the teachers, as they can learn how each child learns best, and they can identify and deal with any behavioural problems or other issues as soon as they arise – rather than “passing the buck” to the next teacher. It also lets the teacher build on what the children have learned in the previous years, rather than having to pass the information on to a different person each year, meaning they can create a more linear and holistic curriculum.
It also benefits the children, who build up a longer relationship with one teacher, as opposed to getting used to a new person each academic year.
It would be reasonable to worry that, since your child has the same teacher for three to six years, they might get a ‘bad teacher’, and the be stuck with them.
However, this is almost never the case, because primary teaching is THE most competitive degree to get into in the country. In fact, only about 20% of those who apply actually get a place.
This is because parents put a lot of trust in their children’s teachers – where an American teacher might get five or six emails a day from parents, one teacher I spoke to said they only get five or six a year! This is because parents generally leave the teacher to do their side of the work, and don’t interfere. This doesn’t mean that there is no communication between parents and teachers, it just means there’s a very high level of trust in, and respect for, these hand-picked professionals in education.
As I’ve already mentioned, both students and teachers have fewer classes per day than their US counterparts. This means they also have more breaks.
For students, it lets them get outside, move around, and get their brains and bodies active. Study after study has shown that the more children can move around, the better able they are to learn. So, instead of unfocused, ‘hyper’ students who go straight from one class to the next, Finnish students have more time to #relax# between classes, with the result that they can be more focused.
These frequent breaks also benefit teachers. When I was in Finland, I was shown to the ‘teacher’s room’, which used to be the ‘Teacher’s lounge’ in the US, but which is now a think of the past, because US teachers don’t have time to take frequent breaks.
However, what I found in Finland Education System was very different: every school has a ‘teacher’s room’, with comfortable furnishings, plenty of space, and sometimes fruit and coffee. It’s an ideal space for teachers to plan lessons, grade papers, or just to take a moment to relax.
Just imagine\7/ all\7/ t\7/he exciting, interesting things you could do with your students, if your pay wasn’t directly related to their performance on tests, and if tests weren’t constantly hanging over your and your students’ heads. Imagine just how much fun and how much more engaging you could make your lessons!
Though testing does still take place in Finland, teachers aren’t as constrained by it as they are in the US. Instead, they have the overall goal of teaching the curriculum, but with less pressure from huge amounts of standarised testing, teachers can try new ideas, take more risks, and teach lifeskills which will benefit the children throughout their lives.
Just looking at math alone: students in Finland learn the same amount between fifth and ninth grade as US students learn in ONE year! Yes, I said one year. That’s what I realised when I observed teaching in Finland. In the US, we’re packing so much work into our math lessons that we have to introduce a new topic on average every two days, which puts a hige amount of pressure on us as teachers and on students. No wonder some students give up!
Accroding to the OECD, Finnish students spend, on average, just half an hour per night on homework. Half an hour! That’s the shortest amount of time in the world. Even more interestingly, Finnish students are outperforming Asian students, who often have hours of extra tuition/classes per week.
So why is that, you may ask? Well, from my observations, students get a lot of work done in class – even the ones who weren’t listening will put away their phones when a task is set, and work on it diligently. The teachers firmly believe that what students get done in class is enough, because they do get the work done in class.
This is obviously a good thing. In Finland, teachers see between 60 and 80 students per day, whereas in the US I see around 180 students per day – that’s a big difference.
Trust is the key element in this whole structure and whole system. So, instead of having a ton of hoops to jump through and a ton of tests to administer, teachers are trusted to teach, in the best way they see fit. This chain of trust is seen right through society, and is very prevalent in our education system.
In all of this, one thing is sure: trust is a very good thing, and is a key part of the education system, and it works.
Learning to read is a fundamental skill, and a very important one which we all need in order to get an education and to succeed in later life; however, as with any other skills, not everyone learns in the same way, or at the same time.
Standards are now dictating that children ‘should’ learn to read in Kindergarten – but many educators believe that this puts children under pressure to learn skills which they are not ready to learn yet. In fact, many European countries, such as Finland, don’t expect children to learn to read until they’re in first grade – and the evidence suggests that this leads to better outcomes for the children, and less frustration for everyone involved.
So, to put your mind at ease, here are 4 things that are worse than not learning to read in Kindergarten:
According to a growing number of research studies, children learn far better when they are playing and being creative. They learn by building structures, by interacting with their peers, and by doing what comes naturally to them (obviously within reason!).
Most of us have heard of the Montessori method of teaching – which advocates exactly this kind of learning – and it is very popular and very successful.
And the best part? Children can play and learn at the same time – without the children even noticing!
By contrast, children don’t learn nearly as much, or as well, by filling in worksheet after worksheet.
This is related to the above point: children learn by being creative, and they also learn by moving. It helps with cognitive development, which in turn helps with learning essential skills like reading.
Unfortunately, increasing pressure on kindergarten teachers to get children to a certain ‘standard’ means that schools are being forced to shorten recess or cut down on gym classes.
This might mean your child learns to read in Kindergarten, but then again, it might not – because teachers and parents alike know that active children learn better – but they are forced to ignore this intuitive evidence and focus disproportionately on academic achievement.
So, get active with your kids if you can, and know that reading will come.
Many teachers report that, over the last couple of decades, they have seen a huge shift in focus from teaching children in individualized ways and nurturing their individual learning styles, to concentrating on ‘scoring’ young children based on standardized assessments.
This might look good on school league tables, but is it really beneficial for our children? It seems not always. Children, as we’ve already said, have their own styles of learning, and the increasing pressure on teachers to meet standards means that, while *some* children might be learning to read in Kindergarten, teachers can’t put the time they would like into fostering a love of learning in children.
Often, this means that children’s enthusiasm waynes, and no child will want to learn if they ‘hate’ school.
Wouldn’t we prefer our children to be happy learngers, than eing forced to learn to read at a set time?
This relates to the point above: children are being expected to ‘conform’ more and more to standardized assessments, which tell them they ‘must’ be able to read by a certain age. So, it follows that if some children can’t meet these expectations, they become frustrated and feel like they’re failed.
Even very young children know that the adults around them have certain expectations of them. If these expectations are not appropriate, there is no way that they can meet them, leading to frustration on both sides, and often meaning that many children ‘hate schcool’ by the end of Kindergarten.
What if, instead of worrying about children ‘meeting expectations’, we could reassure our kids that they will learn skills like reading and math in their own time, in their own way? This would surely make for a much happier school, a much happier teacher, and most importantly, a much happier, more engaged child.
Mario Alphabet
So, in summary, if your child hasn’t mastered reading in Kindergarten, don’t panic – there are many things worse than that.
Source: Groover, Gaye (2016). 4 Things Worse than Not Learning to Read in Kindergarten . Huffingtonpost