Finland as a model for education review
Zahiruddin
Introduction
This essay was written as a note in my facebook face. It has subsequently been updated for pubication here. I have been waiting for this review for so long. Lets hope the powers that be are sincere enough to put people first, and political and personal economic gains last when carrying out this review and the subsequent implementation. I also hope that whoever that comes into power in the next GE will continue on this path as this is the chance for us to produce thinking humans and not regurtitating robots.
Education Model
Reading through commments and talking to people, I can't help that notice we are not looking hard enough at the best examples in the world. Many people still look at the USA as they are probably the biggest economy in the world and more advances technologically. However, based on the PISA report, published by the OECD, their achievement is far from exellent [1].
The PISA report shows that countries like Korea, Finland and Singapore are at the top of the table in reading, math and science. I can't help but think that the approach of the Asian countries are somewhat different than the likes of Finland because culturally we are more driven by social pressure to be succesful. I had a look at the world suicide rate and can't help but notice that the Asian countries are accidentally at the top of the table for suicide rates [2]. The statistics in Finland shows that suicide only happen in men and women of working age [3]. However, the statistics for the Asian countries are not available to identifiy relationship with age group and sex.
In Finland, gaps between schools are very small, that is to say, where ever you send your children to school, their performance will be more or less the same. Education is free up to the University level and this includes even school meals.
Our situation, we have all kinds of schools with lots of fancy names, i.e. SBP, SPT, SMK, SMKA and SMV to name a few. Different school give different emphasis while we still have a standard national test to measure all of the student. It is like a school where a monkey, a giraffe, a fish, and a bird are tested on their ability to climb a tree.
On the subject of test, teachers are not allowed and it is even illegal for a school to grade a student up to a certain age. There are no standard national test like we have (SPM,PMR). It is interesting to see that with the absence of tests, when the pupils are actually tested they could perform better than their peers from other countries who are used to be measured all the time with tests.
Teachers
Finnish teachers are highly trained idividuals and they are well paid. It is compulsary that they have a Masters degree. Competition for a place in teacher training degrees are highly competetive with only top 10% of school graduates accepted to the 5 year course.
My view is that we should look at Finland's model of education for the current review. There are a lot of videos in youtube about Finnish education systems [4,5,6,7].
An excert from the time magazine US say this succintly :"Finland is a society based on equity," says Laukkanen. "Japan and Korea are highly competitive societies — if you're not better than your neighbor, your parents pay to send you to night school. In Finland, outperforming your neighbor isn't very important. Everybody is average, but you want that average to be very high."[8]
Language
PPSMI proponents argue that to be better in math and sciences, these subjects must be thaught in English. However, the countries at the top of the PISA table uses their respective national languages for teaching. In Finland for example, despite not learning math and science in english, by the end of secondary education, most pupils would have mastered a 3rd or 4th language, apart from scoring top in the PISA table. To me this is a vindication that teaching math and science in English will not solve the problem [9] as most of the countries at the top of the PISA table learn math and science in their native tounge. In my opinion, the best way to improve the standard of English is to better train the English teachers. I had a personal experience where, I was thaught by an excellent English teacher when I was in primary school near Kuantan (1982-87). As a result, most of our cohort excels in English. Apart for her mastery in the language, even when most of us started learning the language for the first time, she made sure that everybody has and uses an English-English dictionary.
Student-teacher attachment
Another interesting facet of Finnish education is that a student stays with the same teacher throughout 6 of the 9 years of the compulsary education. This is called attachment theory, where student and teacher creates a strong bond, that the teacher knows everything about their pupils. This allows the teacher to tailor the learning to each individual. As a result of the concept of nobody is left behind, Finnish classrooms often have 3 teachers in them, 1 is the class teacher who's responsible for the whole class, the 2nd teacher is the assistant teacher, and a 3rd teacher who goes round helping those who are having problems cathing up. The importance of the student-teacher attachment also meant that class sizes is small, with around 20 pupils only in a single class
Unity and integration
This subject is often glorified in Malaysia as our uniqueness. The problem with our national type schools is that however you look at it, it creates and justifies ethnic separation when the country is trying very hard to promote unity. Unity and integration must start with education. However politically challenging this may be, national type schools is at the root of ethnic segregation. Just have a look at our universities and you can see that malay, chinese, and indian student more often than not, group together amongst ethnic groups for course works.
2. http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/
3. http://www.stat.fi/til/ksyyt/2010/ksyyt_2010_2011-12-16_en.pdf
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwD1v73O4VI
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlYHWpRR4yc
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntdYxqRce_s
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kK6u7AsJF8
8. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062465-1,00.html
9. http://www.scidev.net/en/south-east-asia/opinions/don-t-teach-maths-and-science-in-english-1.html
