Contribution of Finnish society to pursuit of interests and dreams

This is the bit that I really struggled - I know too little about Finnish society to say anything meaningful perhaps, but I have still thought about some observations I had through my own eyes and other people's lenses.

Firstly, I can see the Finnish society provides the necessary foundation for the flourishing art and culture industry.

• strong social welfare that removes a lot of economic and financial worries and anxiety behind innovation, which is high risk investment. The costs and disincentives of creative endeavours are reduced. This is the MOST important factor I think - people's livelihood is not threatened or undermined or prejudiced by doing what they want to do. (this is also possible only because the population is very small for a country of the size of Finland - only 5 million)
  
• a multicultural society that already exists - this is a controversial statement, certainly not to the same extent as London, and most Finnis would seem to disagree with this, but I found the atmosphere in creative industries pervasive, for example. There are enough people to appreciate the diversity - something akin to a cultivated civil society.
• equality between jobs – different occupations are respected in their own right. There is less pressure to do some kinds of jobs than in many other places. this leads to a more even distribution of manpower and financial resources.
• society values the individual – respect what each individual thinks and wants to do. less family pressure or pressure from social norms.
• education promotes freedom and liberty in students’ development from an early age. students have always been encouraged to think for themselves. There is a City architecture project for children, and they apparently adopted children's proposal for building a prominent city building. That sounds like incredulous confidence in children, but that says quite a lot. Regrettably I didnt manage to find out more about this when I was in helsinki.

Secondly, there is some contribution from the 'Finnish character' if there is any such thing (which I believe there is).

• honest and serious worker who only wants to do the job well. It might initially sound a very plain irrelevant statement, but that actually makes a HUGE difference. I strongly get the impression most people in Finland (except the drunken) had a serious attitude to what they did as a living in respect of the SUBJECT MATTER itself, rather than treating jobs as a means to earning money.
  
• don’t like money, just for fun - thats what someone wrote and told me before. I also got that impression from the Finnish guide who led me to wonderful tours at EXTREMELY LOW PRICES with a meagre profit )

Contribution of the education system

The education system promotes the development of interests and pursuit of dreams in these three ways:
A. FREEDOM OF CHOICE B. EQUALITY C. FIRM, FERTILE GROUND
A. The system gives students plenty of choice in encouraging their development.

• diversity of subjects in the curriculum – broad range of choices for them to dabble in and try out. I have shown just bits of the system really, but one gets the idea that secondary school is like university - students have SO MUCH CHOICE re learning literally what they like.

• the inspiring and liberal teaching approach - "first the forest, then the trees" (see the section on 'interest development' for more details on my discovery!) – Yolanda Chen introduced this concept which I find as well a very accurate description! Basically they show the students the whole picture before going down to details and honing their skills too early.

This encourages the students to explore their own way of learning their subjects, without so much discipline and control in ensuring precision when they are getting started. Students are more likely to keep up and further develop their interests. The more advanced and rigorous training can be reserved for those who are determined and interested to go further.

• postponing the streaming, and introducing flexibility and reversibility in the decisions young people have to make. Students DON'T HAVE TO SACRIFICE AND GIVE UP THEIR INTERESTS BEFORE THEY ARE OLD ENOUGH TO TELL WHAT THEIR INTERESTS REALLY ARE!

• young people are encouraged to have a balanced life with lots of ‘hobbies’. They don’t consider the sports or music as rigid training purely for the sake of cultivating their abilities or ‘talents’ in those areas. Rather, they aim to help the people to enjoy and learn in a relaxed manner, and ultimately to incorporate their areas of interests as part of their lives. This turns on the purpose and attitude in pursuing their interests – it is not for the sake of standing out from others, but for the genuine love of their hobbies. (See Julius's case for instance)

• Individual fine tuning and attention – allowing students to learn at their own pace and the curriculum and learning materials are designed for individual students.



- Encourage independent learning and thinking AND ACQUISITION of knowledge and skills - Teachers don’t give them the answers, but they help them to find the answers for themselves. (don’t give them the fish, but teach them how to fish – this way the next generation of fishermen have the ability to explore uncharted waters and go to greater lengths and depths) They are more likely to find their own worlds this way in my opinion. (See independence)

• Actual subject called Student counselling which includes classes and individual sessions with students from Grades 7 to 9 (Forms 1 to 3) to tell them what sort of options are available to them, and help them work out what to do (primarily choose between high school and technical schools). There is also one week of compulsory work experience with enterprises in the real world (organised with the help of the school). This makes the options in society known to young people in time for them to make plans for themselves – options only mean something if they are known to our next generation, and they have reasonable chance of working towards it.



B. education values: equality; respect for every child and free education for all

• no child is left behind – free education for all means every child can in theory have access to good school education irrespective of their family backgrounds and financial situation. Talented children do not lag behind because of a competition at the starting point. The philosophy behind this is that the government believes they cannot afford to lose any member of the society. Teachers IN GENERAL don't seem to think there are bad students in Finland (only with one exception from my experience)

• RESPECT THE INDIVIDUAL - the individual ability, potential, thoughts, interests of each child are respected. they are encouraged to think for themselves, independently and critically from very early on. They are not meant to walk the paths already explored by the previous generations – they are meant to find out what they like themselves or their own way of going about things, and do as they wish.

• To look at this from another perspective - the philosophy of no child left behind taken further: the interests, needs and dreams of children are respected, and the society and education system try to facilitate their all-round development to the extent possible for the individuals.

• comparison is not encouraged, so students do not easily feel frustrated when they don’t initially excel or master their interests. Students are encouraged to learn at their own pace, and not rushed or pushed much when they are young. Benefits of small class teaching.



C. The education system has plenty of resources and has a firm legal basis to ensure that everyone is capable of working towards these ideals.

I certainly acknowledge the decisiveness of money as a factor.
• education expenditure occupied 6.5% of GDP. Lots of resources were devoted to the system.

• various pieces of legislation to secure the quality and rights of free education for all

• teachers’ masters qualifications (either in education or their own respective subjects). the teachers themselves set good role models for lifelong learning – always enrolled in postgraduate courses during vacation time. there is in-service training as well.

Finnish society and education --> Dreams??

I already feel incredibly ashamed how i have been doing many other things all these months but write up my report and learn a bit more ... (and feeling legitimately excused because of my busy life with all the tutorials and seminars and exams lol) but since I have an opportunity now timewise and after I have unleashed my emotions, I'll write a concluding entry about my understanding after this brief investigation - that is -

my understanding of the original hypothesis I wanted to look into:

How does the Finnish education system and society help their young people to pursue their interests and dreams?

Whilst I'm afraid I still don't have a very simple and conclusive answer (which i dont think exists anyway), I have concluded my thoughts as follows. I have written a report initially which presented an overview. I by no means claim that Finland does this better than anyone else, but I just thought given how well it has done in the general tests and surveys, I wondered if it was equally good in THIS RESPECT.

Please see the following two entries: Contribution of education and Contribution of society.

Art and design in Finland

Just random snapshots of what I have seen for myself. Helsinki is a growing capital of design with a very high density of design boutiques and art galleries in a tiny place.


See for yourself how dense it all is in the map.

Chinese art gallery run by Ms. Teng Yue (Link to be attached later)


There's creativity everywhere.



There are loads of galleries:









This is really the foundation of the development of the arts and culture.

Student counselling classes and meetings: Helping students find their way

There is a curious subject called Student Counselling in Finnish core curriculum. There are two Student Counsellors in every upper comprehensive school (Grades 7 to 9). What student counselling involves is to get students to start thinking about their future under certain guidance. In 7th grade, they learn how to learn. In 8th and 9th grades, they start considering their options for future. All ninth graders, and in some schools eighth graders also, obtain 2 weeks of work experience in some corporation, with a bit of help from schools. (I was told the community is generally very happy to cooperate in offering some unpaid internship opportunities). Each 9th grader gets to have a chat individually with the Student Counsellor and discuss his/her future path seriously.

The reason why that decision matters in Finland is after 9th grade, students split into two streams: high school VS technical school (roughly half half by statistics). High school is the general grammar stream, while technical school includes art, sports, design, hairdressing (and even plumbing I heard) etc. It's a lot harder to get into high school because they require stronger academic qualifications. But it is done on an absolute rather than competitive basis: in theory if you have demonstrated to be academically competent to handle high school and you want to do it, you will get a place. If you aren't ready yet, you can repeat a year and apply for high school again. In general only high school students can go to university.

So in many ways this is a much bigger decision than the S4 'stream division' I had to make.

This reminds me of how I made my decision to take science stream rather than arts stream in Grade 9 (ages ago). I made that choice without much thinking, but essentially for a few reasons: 1. science stream offered much wider choices in society and university subject choices; 2. the science classes were a lot better taught in my school; 3. Science subjects took less effort than arts subjects and i was quite lazy.

To a certain extent I regret that decision. While I think I only managed to come so far because I had taken science and got the grades, I would have liked arts subjects a lot more in retrospect.

The point I'm trying to make is that when young people make critical decisions in life, they rarely have the complete picture. It helps a lot to have someone go through the options and help them to make an 'informed' choice as far as possible.

On a more macroscopic level, this is essential to an efficient allocation of resources. Students are better informed about what they have to do in order to achieve their dreams. For example, if they want to be a designer, they need to take certain subjects in schools, that kind of thing. Opportunities are meaningless if they are not known and cannot be taken up by the 'right' people.

Having individual professional advice for everybody makes it more likely for students to know how to get to their desired paths of life.

I see this as a key aspect of the ability of Finnish education system to channel people into the right fields for them in society.

Music lesson at Moision Koulu: steel band shows

Music class (Annika Viitanen, Grade 8)

Students were making posters about their own computer music products. They had worksheets for computer music which were guidelines for them for an entire year. Basically they all sat down to do their own work, and asked the teacher when necessary. (A bit quiet for a music class I thought, but this confirms the emphasis on independent learning.)

In grade 7, music is compulsory, and students learn about rock and roll history, guitar, bass, drum, singing, and a bit of music theory. From Grade 8 onwards, music is optional.

This school has a special music oriented scheme which continues the music training for students who mostly have begun their special music scheme since grade 3, and this scheme itself will be followed up on by high schools. Students learn about music history, singing, classical music, jazz, etc.

This is only possible because the municipal government and local community give a lot of resources. The equipment for computer music production (the keyboard and computer equipment) is very costly.

The school has quite a lot of music-related activities: choir training, 10 gigs and concerts every year. Music projects are common for other subjects too eg theatre.




They have also started a steel band, and I had a chance to see their steel band show. (they had only had 4 hours of group practice together, and started learning it two weeks ago – very impressive). It is not a difficult kind of instrument apparently, and Annikka has marked the notes on the drums so students can get the hang of it more quickly.

(unfortunately the video is not working at the moment because of technical problems...)

I asked the teacher whether she valued the inspiration of interest more than the honing of skills in musical instruments. She said this was a personal choice for the teachers, and she personally tries to strike a balance between the two. There is not much individual music instruction in the school because teachers don’t have much time, but when teaching in group, the teacher cares a lot about the holistic cooperation between the group and learning together on the same level.

Their philosophy is to give students enough time to develop their interests and skills in their instruments – rather than churning out young prodigies in music.

(Reflection: This is good for the kids who can’t stand a competitive training, and reveals their policy of equality rather than elitism. For the more able and interested students, they can generally thrive if there are opportunities to go a bit further. Finland has a significant number of music institutes for additional training for such students.)

Annikka herself is a substitute teacher for a year because the school music teacher is on maternal leave for a whole year. Annikka is a cellist and she has an interest beyond music in law and politics. I asked her how she ended up with music. She said the decision was straightforward for her when she first started playing the cello – she told her mother after the first lesson that she wanted to be a cellist. Things got slightly more complicated after she has started Turku Academy training, and she is considering some other options as well. Maybe further studies in law and politics. Money is one consideration.

cookery class: independent thinking and working together

It initially seemed no different from the cookery classes I had been through in HK myself, but after some observation I realised there are two interesting differences.





The teacher gave instructions and explained how to make the apple pie once. The teacher refused to give any demonstration. In this way students were encouraged to think for themselves how to make it and the teacher said ‘they were here to learn to think for themselves’. Teacher was of course there to answer questions and help out in small groups. (It's a bit like reading math problems in exercise books and attempting questions, and to be fair the recipe for apple pie is not terribly complicated!)

Another amazing thing was everyone got along really well and worked in groups. They naturally went around and helped each other out in other groups, very nicely. They were like a big family together, and would see how others were gettnig on.

And they were generous kids who liked to share ;) i got to try their apple pies as well, sweet! Another plus, the Finnish teacher didn't speak English, and I used my limited German to talk to her!

Sleeping beauties and cross play - dealing with interested and uninterested students

In the textile class, I had a rather interesting experience because I saw the two extremes - both interested and uninterested students.

There were a few girls who refused to participate and literally sat there for the entire period of one and a half hours. (I have to say this is the only incident i've seen, and indeed very uncommon.) I had a chat with them and they said school was really boring. I asked them about their hobbies and what they'd rather do - they said sleeping all day, and drinking. They were also checking their make up and eyelashes every now and then. Therefore I dubbed them sleeping beauties. I heard they had been playing truant, and it was getting worrying.

In fact, a couple of them had already finished the work, and were only refusing to write posters for their products. I also asked them whether there was anything at all that they liked about school. It set them thinking I thought, and one of them however said a firm no, and the rest looking rather hesitant, followed suit apparently because that's more cool. Very typical teenage rebellious attitude. It's clear that they aren't bad people at all - they are merely distracted and uninterested.

So how do Finnish schools deal with that?
I had a chat with the teachers there and realised that the law requires them to report any truancy problem to social workers because basic education is compulsory for everyone. This is usually the last resort as they'd first talk to the students and families about the problem.

It's difficult to manage these children especially in a class. The teacher really had no choice but to leave them on their own and attend to the rest of the class who actually wanted to learn. Finnish teachers stressed the importance of the student's own motivation and initiatve in learning.

Honestly that doesn't seem to be helping the children much, and 'leaving no child behind' is really an ideal. I get the impression that these kids are very rare in Finnish classroom, and teachers have traditionally had little to do with enforcing discipline.




In contrast, as soon as the lesson was over, I saw two girls waiting eagerly at the door because they wanted the teacher's help with making costume (as shown in the picture below) for a crossplay. The teacher said very shyly, 'I couldn't resist!'

Textile class

The students finished making their bags, and were making their reports by drawing and writing a bit about their products. I had a look at them and they all looked gorgeous in their own kinds of fabric.

My impression about textile classes is that they didn't look much different from classes in Hong Kong that I have seen (and been through myself). It is separate from cooking (while both are subsumed within Home Economics in Hong Kong).

As you can see in woodwork classes, the emphasis is on practical utility and doing what they can use in their daily lives.