For French teachers who believe that knowledge flows from the pulpit down to the empty heads of our children, the Finnish system is an aberration, and its success unintelligible. For others and for enlightened parents, this would be an educational paradise.
More than 20 French articles offer a detailed presentation of the Finnish system on this website. They reveal both the amazement and the enthusiasm felt by their authors when they discovered the Finnish schools.
However, there are problems that have to be tackled and understood too. First, they appeared to me as being anecdotal and disparate:
I met young students who didn’t like school. I ask them some questions, sometimes insistently, about their reasons. The most elaborate answer I got was: “Cos’ it sucks!” When I asked them what they liked at school, they just answered: “Nothin’!”
In each high school class, I met a boy whose identity was to be a heckler. He makes phone calls, makes wisecracks, grunts… Some students giggle, others ignore him. The heckler is never aggressive towards the teacher who treats him leniently. This is so systematic that in my opinion, if he were to be excluded, another heckler would immediately assume the role.
The students’ attention decreases as children grow older. This could be interpreted as a consequence of puberty, but this is so linear that this explaination seems insufficient to me.
An American aesthetic teacher was startled by his students’ behavior when he gave them a lecture at the university of Helsinki. His training course is designed to educate people who will work in art galleries, or in the aesthetic management of open spaces. After a few classes, a female student spoke to him in those terms: “You seem to take for granted that we read the art magazines you pointed to us. But personally, I read none of them.” The dumbstruck teacher then asked his students who had read, first several, then at least one of the magazines he pointed to them: 3 out of 30. Only 5 of them had visited a museum in the course of the year. “Why are you taking this master class?” asked the teacher.
– You know, in Finland, almost everybody goes to college.
A female student had asked to meet him after the first class: “I wanted to explain why I wouldn’t come back, she said. That has nothing to do with you, but you want us to participate in class and to express our opinion. That’s too hard for me.”
How to explain those problems? I won’t consider them as mere oddities. I think they prove a weakness of the Finnish educational system.
Students are helped from their earliest years by numerous and benevolent adults. They heartyly bond with their teachers. The problem is that there are strong relationships between each student and one or several adults, but there is no group relationship between the students of a class. Eacch student can work with one or two others; this can also be the norm, as in technology. But I have never seen the thinking of one student being confronted with that of his peers.
This is almost always a head-on teaching technique. Students are encouraged to express what they know (and if they’re wrong, it never matters), but they’re never called upon what they think.
This warm accompaniment suits well to the psychology of younger children. But it is unsufficient later to answer the needs of teenagers who have to assert themselves, and who no longer want to be held their hands.
In my opinion, the Finnish educational system lacks periods in the class during which children and teenagers can express their thoughts and listen to the thoughts of others. These periods are well-known in France by the teachers who follow the Freinet method: group works, Talk time, show-and-tells, reports of activity, philosophy workshops, Co-operative council, knowledge markets…
They could easily be introduced to the Finnish system as it is right now:
because the teachers’ educational position agrees with it,
because the Fins debate the lengthening of the school day, considered too short,
because the two massacres in schools call out to the necessity to develop children’s self-expression and communication among the actors of the educational system.
However, I don’t think this will be done right now. I questioned the State Secretary of Education during a press conference in Paris: “I deeply admire your educational system, but I’d like to know your opinion on what seems to be a limit to me. Children are taught to express what they know, but not what they think. Consequently, some students cannot express their opinions and their personal reflexions.” Mrs Heljä Misukka answered that it was actually the contrary, that the relationships between the teachers and their students were completely warm-hearted and often affectionate, and that I should see it in Finnish classes with my own eyes.
This could have been a ponctual misunderstanding. I stated at length my reflexions to the Finnish embassador and to some people working for the embassy. Their reaction made me think that they do not accept the problems, and that they consider group discussions as a rat race. “We, the Fins, are shy people and only speak each one in its turn. We are individualist people who don’t like huge groups.”
The fact that, in order to fight against school harassment, the Fins developed an informatic programme to acknowledge the problem instead of organising a debate among them, is also symptomatic.
Finally, the Finnish educational system is really great, but it is no educational paradise, and it probably won’t become one before a long time.
Thanks to all the Freelang translators
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