The Finish Education System: Why it might be the best model
The Finnish education system is unique in that it has completely abandoned the aspect of competition within the students from its education policies. Every other country has a competitive aspect of exams, homeworks and assignments and the marks are to be distributed in a manner of making the students feel pressured to perform better. This has a considerable downside, where some privileged background students feel more comfortable in pursuing the curriculum and competing and on the flip side the efforts are less creative and more systematic because only studying “harder” is the way to get an A.
Reducing stress and empowering students to learn through their creativity is the core factor of the Finnish education system. Learning chemistry means learning about different atoms through colored plastic models and learning the different bonds between the chemicals then finally working all together to make chemical combinations. In this process the students feel encouraged and students who may not grow an interest in chemistry have the option to opt out at any time. On the other side, the rigid division of Science, Business and Arts have made the options more narrow for the students. A student enjoying physics may also like economics or history but he doesn’t get the option to learn about those interesting activities.
Practical learning is also implemented wherever possible. Math in elementary schools is taught using objects and counting with something tangible and fun. Elementary education is emphasized more in terms of organizing games during recess and having an open classroom. The environment is very encouraging for the students
And the most important factor is no exams, no pressure, no emphasis on competition and embarrassment. The school is a safe place for anyone to not feel shame or less than their peers. Which encourages students to give it their all when class is being conducted as they truly feel that learning is the main objective and who is the best learner is irrelevant.
For these above reasons it is clear that Finland has aced the model of education that most caters to the well being of the students. And as a country which lacks proper guidelines and knowledge on handling the modern child we have much to learn from Finland.
