in 6. grade, we collected our own money for field trip. discos, lottery for begged goods(go to store store askings things for lottery), bake sales and stuff like that. school payd rest what we didnt raise
Im 17 now so im in the second year of highschool, but when i was in elementary school (2012-2019) we always had to go outside, it didn't matter if theres a 5 meters of snow. Nowadays they have lots of these inside recess stuff and we definitly did not have playstations or xbox's in my school :D It could also matter that im from western Finland not from Helsinki region.
yea same, the rule was that we could stay inside if it was -25 degrees or colder, and even then we had nothing like this, we just sat in the class and read or something. otherwise it was always outside.
I just recently visited my school (I went there in the late 90's) and talked with my old teacher. We had lovely conversation but it was clear she was saddened by the direction the education system is heading. She showed my old classroom and directed to the huge corner with beanbags and books. She told me that space was made because children have to have a space that "doesn't resemble a classroom" and is a comfortable place to retire in the middle of the class in case the sitting on school desk becomes too much. Needless to say, some children sit in those comfy beanbags all day and when the teacher asks them questions it is clear they are not paying attention at all. The boom of "schools that doesn't resemble schools" is one of the reasons for plummeting scores of Finnish students. I also almost fell on my **s when my friend told me her son who is on the first grade can choose his homework by himself! "I don't feel like doing math today, so I'll do Finnish today and math tomorrow." I mean, maybe that could work for third or fourth grader, but the first grader?! I think the first grader is just supposed to learn how to go to school. You have to go there every day even if you don't want to, you have to listen to your teacher, at the certain times a day there are recesses and lunch, you have to learn to read curriculum, you get homework which you have to do, even if you don't want to etc. etc... That kind of freedom for first grader is bound to cause problems at least for some kids. My friend told me it is causing his son to always choose the fun and easy homework and later when there are only hard and not fun homework left, it is homework tantrums every single evening at home. Elementary schools have also started to teach kids to read and count, because it is nowadays expected that children have at least some skills when they start their first grade. When I went to elementary school in the mid 90's we were pretty much just playing with each other. Only learning we had to do was to learn respect the rules of the school, learn social skills and team work. I don't know, it has been said that children in Finland become independent at very young age (some say that unhealthily young age) and now the education system is pushing kids to make important decisions at even younger and younger age. I wonder where the limit is?
Unfortunately the Finnish schools are not the among the best anymore. Especially during the past 10 years we can see a dramatic drop in the PISA scores. The reforms that have been done are not working and frankly I don't understand why we have to fix something that is not broken. The things below are what I have picked up from discussions and the news over the years. You could say we have a kind of fetish with making units bigger and bigger, i.e. closing small schools and building big centralized schools. Policymakers think this will save money, when in fact no study I know of has shown this to be true. Instead small children have a very long and tiring trip to school and the classes are too big for a calm and good learning experience. Many new "modern" schools have these big open teaching areas and in some cases just curtains instead of walls to separate "class rooms". This just makes the schools noisier and hard for the children to concentrate. Nowadays too much emphasis is placed on the ability of very young children to be self-guided, to choose for themselves what subjects they want to learn and to be able to manage their learning on their own. Yes, it gives much freedom, but most children can't handle this without proper help and some just give up. Children of well-off parents who have time and energy to help their children are doing great, but others are doing worse than before. The difference between the good and the bad students is quite big, bigger than in many other countries. Another thing to save money has been to incorporate special needs children into the normal classes and this does not work either. Usually this just means that these children don't get the help they need and fall behind, because the teachers don't have the time, and the classes are too big and too noisy. The difference in PISA scores in Finland between girls and boys is among the biggest compared to the other OECD countries. This system doesn't work that well for boys and all these freedoms mean that many teenage boys will do the bare minimum to pass school. This also causes future problems, because they have no chance of continuing in higher education and hence finding a job. And let's not forget the friggin smart phones. Today's youngsters have zero attention span and too many children play with them during classes and there haven't been any clear rules for what the teacher can do about it. Recently there has been talks about this and some schools have said that they will start banning phones from their class rooms. Many teachers and parents have been criticizing all these bad changes and hopefully with these recent bad PISA scores the policymakers will see reason and start to do something to get us back to the top. Finland is still well above average, but the score curve is falling so fast that this can not continue.
Big open teaching and working areas have already been proven to be not ideal - when workers had the change to work at home instead of big open working areas, they would prefer to work in more solitude. This was a test that was very quickly proven to be wrong.
You hit the nail on the head with all your points my friend. Reading your comment reminded me that many employers have actually already noticed the change in teenagers and young adults. They are apparently been given so much freedom of choice in their lives in school (and probably at home too, can't pour this all on education system though) that they can't adjust for the working environment. This is apparent especially in the teenagers who are taking on summer jobs. They might just simply not show up in the morning, because they had hard time to fall asleep and decided to just sleep longer and work longer shifts to make up for it. Without the employers consent that is. They also often talk back at their employer if they are made to do something they simply don't want to. It has to be emphasized that most are adjusting well, but the change in noticeable. I actually had recently a intern who plainly just informed me that she will be leaving earlier next Friday because she "needs" to attend a pub quiz. I explained that it would be really beneficial for her to be there the whole shift since there is procedure that is only done on Fridays that I had planned her to attend that. But no. She insisted to work longer days so she could attend the damn quiz. Not a very good look if she would be interested to work here, which she is. Might be just her, but I can't help thinking, if all the freedom of choice is changing youngsters attitudes this way.
@@Tenshionful Good points, I've heard the same thing. I think I read in an article maybe a year or two ago about many smaller companies having big problems finding good interns, or interns in general, since no one wants to get their hands dirty and do anything physical anymore. Young adults think they can unilaterally dictate when they work, what they do and how they do things. That's not how the working life works. You sign an employment contract and your employer tells you what to do, what are the working hours and is remote work allowed or not. If you don't comply, then you are breaking your contract and you'll get a warning and if still no change in your behaviour you will be fired. If you have a good employer and the work allows, many things can be discussed and agreed upon beforehand, but it's always the employer that has the final say. I mainly blame the parents, because it's not the school's job to raise the children.
First grade normally start that year you turn 7 years old. You might get school earlier if your learning state is up you age level. Pre school is only one year. This is held in school or kindergard.
Even though school results have sunk in recent times in Finland their school system is still much better then for instance Sweden where we have really messed things up, in part due to a “free school” system that is not fully regulated.
Kind of ironic that you are doing this video now that we have just very recently plummeted in PISA score. 😅 Also that they have done this kind of video now, when we are now seeing the effects of this renewed style of teaching. We have been top performers in PISA scores back in the 2000's, which is when I have gone to school. And the school was certainly very different back then.
I just found your videos and I’m definitely interested to start watching them! As a Finn though I’m very curious how you became interested in Finland in the first place. Do you have any connections to it or what was it that made you want to learn about Finland enough to dedicate your whole channel to it? I love it though!
Having a pool table in school isn't necessarily a good thing. In general more and more public funds are being used in a way, which doesn't benefit the purpose to which the funds are allocated. At the same time the schools are being introduced reforms and values, which doesn't serve education in a way, which benefits the students or the society as whole. This applies to early childhood education as well. Even the students in schools facing the reforms realize that there's a more beneficial way to organize school environment and teaching. In 2021 six out of ten teachers were considering of pursuing a different career.
Not anymore. Finnish school is dropping in PISA. It's going very badly here. Many stupid reforms that weaken learning outcomes. Also smart phones are serious factor for bad results.
Finnish main problem is the same as is in Britain and USA, voting right wing as Persut or Kokoomus. First ones want to destroy the school system because dumb citizens are their voter base and later, because they have the funds to pay for private schools.
Just saw how this has come to true last weekend. Were throwing darts with my nephews. The 17 year old one had huge trouble remembering three dart score or even adding up three different single scores together in mind.
Smart phones are of course not the only factor, but I am sure they play a big part in this. When before after school we would have used all of our freetime in hobbies, spending time with friends (gathering social skills), reading books, playing videogames (yes, videogames, those can improve many skills also), writing letters to pen pals or drawing or building forts to forests or whatever. I am not saying kids nowadays do not do this kind of stuff at all anymore, but for sure are the smartphones and social media taking a big chunk of the time out of something more worthwhile. The same goes with us adults as well, while knowing full well we should do something else, we are wasting scaringly lot of our time just scrolling down social media feeds. Of course it will affect our learning and performance in tasks where you should actually concentrate to something not exactly entertaining for longer than ten seconds, when that is when you are used to scroll to the next funny videoclip.
A child's brain only takes in information for 45 minutes at a time, and it depends on the age how many hours a day, anything over that is pointless, because it has to be repeated when it hasn't been remembered
I'm glad I started at school when the education was at its best, in 2005. I consider myself extremely lucky. My mom is a teacher and hearing what it's like nowadays sends me into a coma.
Pisa results are a bit different than the entire education system!!! However, the Pisa results have decreased, but Finland is still well above the average. Immigrants have increased, so their lack of Finnish language skills is one of the big reasons for the Pisa results. For example, Sweden is worse than Finland in mathematics and they have many more immigrants. The attitude of immigrant parents towards school is also quite weak. Racists are idiots, but it's worth taking the facts into account.
I don't think every school in Finland has a PlayStation or a pool table. At least none of the schools I went to had them. We had to play outside on our breaks, and later in high school when you were not forced to go outside anymore people just hung around in lobbies or hallways, or in the school library or the computer room doing some research for an assignment. Even though they said in the video that every school gets equal amount of money, that is not completely true. Schools might get the same amount per children, but a school with 50 students gets way less than a school with 500 students. So those bigger schools can afford to get pool tables, beanbags, etc, while smaller schools struggle to survive, and in fact most smaller schools have already been closed because they have too few students to survive.
Sadly finnish school goes middle way. Those who want to learn more and are bored on simple thing wont get any help to get exited or challenged more. Also those who struggle arent really helped enough. Its not Teachers fault. Classrooms are too big and invidual teaching on either side of spectrum is limited on time/resourses on teaching side. From my school years i remember teacher matters a lot how you get interested on current subject to be learnt from. I had many good teachers who made learning fun whit their personality, knowledge and supporting.❤
My son is now 10 years old and go to school here in Helsinki. This is totally normal.
in 6. grade, we collected our own money for field trip.
discos, lottery for begged goods(go to store store askings things for lottery), bake sales
and stuff like that. school payd rest what we didnt raise
Im 17 now so im in the second year of highschool, but when i was in elementary school (2012-2019) we always had to go outside, it didn't matter if theres a 5 meters of snow. Nowadays they have lots of these inside recess stuff and we definitly did not have playstations or xbox's in my school :D It could also matter that im from western Finland not from Helsinki region.
In Eastern Finland we had to go out even when it was -37 degrees outside
yea same, the rule was that we could stay inside if it was -25 degrees or colder, and even then we had nothing like this, we just sat in the class and read or something. otherwise it was always outside.
I just recently visited my school (I went there in the late 90's) and talked with my old teacher. We had lovely conversation but it was clear she was saddened by the direction the education system is heading. She showed my old classroom and directed to the huge corner with beanbags and books. She told me that space was made because children have to have a space that "doesn't resemble a classroom" and is a comfortable place to retire in the middle of the class in case the sitting on school desk becomes too much. Needless to say, some children sit in those comfy beanbags all day and when the teacher asks them questions it is clear they are not paying attention at all. The boom of "schools that doesn't resemble schools" is one of the reasons for plummeting scores of Finnish students.
I also almost fell on my **s when my friend told me her son who is on the first grade can choose his homework by himself! "I don't feel like doing math today, so I'll do Finnish today and math tomorrow." I mean, maybe that could work for third or fourth grader, but the first grader?! I think the first grader is just supposed to learn how to go to school. You have to go there every day even if you don't want to, you have to listen to your teacher, at the certain times a day there are recesses and lunch, you have to learn to read curriculum, you get homework which you have to do, even if you don't want to etc. etc... That kind of freedom for first grader is bound to cause problems at least for some kids. My friend told me it is causing his son to always choose the fun and easy homework and later when there are only hard and not fun homework left, it is homework tantrums every single evening at home.
Elementary schools have also started to teach kids to read and count, because it is nowadays expected that children have at least some skills when they start their first grade. When I went to elementary school in the mid 90's we were pretty much just playing with each other. Only learning we had to do was to learn respect the rules of the school, learn social skills and team work. I don't know, it has been said that children in Finland become independent at very young age (some say that unhealthily young age) and now the education system is pushing kids to make important decisions at even younger and younger age. I wonder where the limit is?
Very good takes, you seemed to instantly catch the true purpose of these sort of lessons
Unfortunately the Finnish schools are not the among the best anymore. Especially during the past 10 years we can see a dramatic drop in the PISA scores. The reforms that have been done are not working and frankly I don't understand why we have to fix something that is not broken. The things below are what I have picked up from discussions and the news over the years.
You could say we have a kind of fetish with making units bigger and bigger, i.e. closing small schools and building big centralized schools. Policymakers think this will save money, when in fact no study I know of has shown this to be true. Instead small children have a very long and tiring trip to school and the classes are too big for a calm and good learning experience.
Many new "modern" schools have these big open teaching areas and in some cases just curtains instead of walls to separate "class rooms". This just makes the schools noisier and hard for the children to concentrate.
Nowadays too much emphasis is placed on the ability of very young children to be self-guided, to choose for themselves what subjects they want to learn and to be able to manage their learning on their own. Yes, it gives much freedom, but most children can't handle this without proper help and some just give up. Children of well-off parents who have time and energy to help their children are doing great, but others are doing worse than before. The difference between the good and the bad students is quite big, bigger than in many other countries.
Another thing to save money has been to incorporate special needs children into the normal classes and this does not work either. Usually this just means that these children don't get the help they need and fall behind, because the teachers don't have the time, and the classes are too big and too noisy.
The difference in PISA scores in Finland between girls and boys is among the biggest compared to the other OECD countries. This system doesn't work that well for boys and all these freedoms mean that many teenage boys will do the bare minimum to pass school. This also causes future problems, because they have no chance of continuing in higher education and hence finding a job.
And let's not forget the friggin smart phones. Today's youngsters have zero attention span and too many children play with them during classes and there haven't been any clear rules for what the teacher can do about it. Recently there has been talks about this and some schools have said that they will start banning phones from their class rooms.
Many teachers and parents have been criticizing all these bad changes and hopefully with these recent bad PISA scores the policymakers will see reason and start to do something to get us back to the top. Finland is still well above average, but the score curve is falling so fast that this can not continue.
Big open teaching and working areas have already been proven to be not ideal - when workers had the change to work at home instead of big open working areas, they would prefer to work in more solitude. This was a test that was very quickly proven to be wrong.
You hit the nail on the head with all your points my friend. Reading your comment reminded me that many employers have actually already noticed the change in teenagers and young adults. They are apparently been given so much freedom of choice in their lives in school (and probably at home too, can't pour this all on education system though) that they can't adjust for the working environment. This is apparent especially in the teenagers who are taking on summer jobs. They might just simply not show up in the morning, because they had hard time to fall asleep and decided to just sleep longer and work longer shifts to make up for it. Without the employers consent that is. They also often talk back at their employer if they are made to do something they simply don't want to.
It has to be emphasized that most are adjusting well, but the change in noticeable. I actually had recently a intern who plainly just informed me that she will be leaving earlier next Friday because she "needs" to attend a pub quiz. I explained that it would be really beneficial for her to be there the whole shift since there is procedure that is only done on Fridays that I had planned her to attend that. But no. She insisted to work longer days so she could attend the damn quiz. Not a very good look if she would be interested to work here, which she is. Might be just her, but I can't help thinking, if all the freedom of choice is changing youngsters attitudes this way.
@@Tenshionful Good points, I've heard the same thing. I think I read in an article maybe a year or two ago about many smaller companies having big problems finding good interns, or interns in general, since no one wants to get their hands dirty and do anything physical anymore. Young adults think they can unilaterally dictate when they work, what they do and how they do things. That's not how the working life works. You sign an employment contract and your employer tells you what to do, what are the working hours and is remote work allowed or not. If you don't comply, then you are breaking your contract and you'll get a warning and if still no change in your behaviour you will be fired. If you have a good employer and the work allows, many things can be discussed and agreed upon beforehand, but it's always the employer that has the final say. I mainly blame the parents, because it's not the school's job to raise the children.
Finnish primary starts at 6 y.o.
And school is mandatory till 18 y.o. nowdays.
First grade normally start that year you turn 7 years old. You might get school earlier if your learning state is up you age level.
Pre school is only one year. This is held in school or kindergard.
first grade starts the year you turn 7, so some people are 6, some are 7 when they start school
Even though school results have sunk in recent times in Finland their school system is still much better then for instance Sweden where we have really messed things up, in part due to a “free school” system that is not fully regulated.
Kind of ironic that you are doing this video now that we have just very recently plummeted in PISA score. 😅 Also that they have done this kind of video now, when we are now seeing the effects of this renewed style of teaching.
We have been top performers in PISA scores back in the 2000's, which is when I have gone to school. And the school was certainly very different back then.
It's ironic to watch this now. The last results have been very poor. The Finnish education miracle has died a painful death.
I just found your videos and I’m definitely interested to start watching them! As a Finn though I’m very curious how you became interested in Finland in the first place. Do you have any connections to it or what was it that made you want to learn about Finland enough to dedicate your whole channel to it? I love it though!
Having a pool table in school isn't necessarily a good thing. In general more and more public funds are being used in a way, which doesn't benefit the purpose to which the funds are allocated. At the same time the schools are being introduced reforms and values, which doesn't serve education in a way, which benefits the students or the society as whole. This applies to early childhood education as well. Even the students in schools facing the reforms realize that there's a more beneficial way to organize school environment and teaching. In 2021 six out of ten teachers were considering of pursuing a different career.
Not anymore. Finnish school is dropping in PISA. It's going very badly here. Many stupid reforms that weaken learning outcomes. Also smart phones are serious factor for bad results.
I feel ashamed these days after watching these.. Feels like how fairytails start "in the beginning" and the there is Sipilä etc.
samoin, vihasin lukiota
Finnish main problem is the same as is in Britain and USA, voting right wing as Persut or Kokoomus. First ones want to destroy the school system because dumb citizens are their voter base and later, because they have the funds to pay for private schools.
Just saw how this has come to true last weekend. Were throwing darts with my nephews. The 17 year old one had huge trouble remembering three dart score or even adding up three different single scores together in mind.
Smart phones are of course not the only factor, but I am sure they play a big part in this. When before after school we would have used all of our freetime in hobbies, spending time with friends (gathering social skills), reading books, playing videogames (yes, videogames, those can improve many skills also), writing letters to pen pals or drawing or building forts to forests or whatever. I am not saying kids nowadays do not do this kind of stuff at all anymore, but for sure are the smartphones and social media taking a big chunk of the time out of something more worthwhile. The same goes with us adults as well, while knowing full well we should do something else, we are wasting scaringly lot of our time just scrolling down social media feeds. Of course it will affect our learning and performance in tasks where you should actually concentrate to something not exactly entertaining for longer than ten seconds, when that is when you are used to scroll to the next funny videoclip.
A child's brain only takes in information for 45 minutes at a time, and it depends on the age how many hours a day, anything over that is pointless, because it has to be repeated when it hasn't been remembered
I'm glad I started at school when the education was at its best, in 2005. I consider myself extremely lucky. My mom is a teacher and hearing what it's like nowadays sends me into a coma.
Pisa results are a bit different than the entire education system!!! However, the Pisa results have decreased, but Finland is still well above the average. Immigrants have increased, so their lack of Finnish language skills is one of the big reasons for the Pisa results. For example, Sweden is worse than Finland in mathematics and they have many more immigrants. The attitude of immigrant parents towards school is also quite weak. Racists are idiots, but it's worth taking the facts into account.
Yeah lets aim for average.. what next, lets aim for not being last.. lowered expectations..
Hah. This was old good times. We are plummeting now like TItanic. Check Estonian they do something right and are high in PIsa scores.
Got it
I don't think every school in Finland has a PlayStation or a pool table. At least none of the schools I went to had them. We had to play outside on our breaks, and later in high school when you were not forced to go outside anymore people just hung around in lobbies or hallways, or in the school library or the computer room doing some research for an assignment.
Even though they said in the video that every school gets equal amount of money, that is not completely true. Schools might get the same amount per children, but a school with 50 students gets way less than a school with 500 students. So those bigger schools can afford to get pool tables, beanbags, etc, while smaller schools struggle to survive, and in fact most smaller schools have already been closed because they have too few students to survive.
Sadly finnish school goes middle way. Those who want to learn more and are bored on simple thing wont get any help to get exited or challenged more. Also those who struggle arent really helped enough. Its not Teachers fault. Classrooms are too big and invidual teaching on either side of spectrum is limited on time/resourses on teaching side. From my school years i remember teacher matters a lot how you get interested on current subject to be learnt from. I had many good teachers who made learning fun whit their personality, knowledge and supporting.❤
Estonia has surpassed Finland long ago. We were good maybe 15 years ago.
You need to reac when finns wins ice hockey wolrd championship
Or.. you could move over here to Finland....😉
This is old data. Finnish schools were ruined a while back.