
Could school subjects soon be a thing of the past in Finland? - gpresot
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39889523
======
cbanek
I've actually done a similar "integrated" program here in the US. I really
have to echo what the article says about great students getting it, while some
students aren't sure what to take away from each lesson to bring to the next
lesson:

> "This way of teaching is great for the brightest children who understand
> what knowledge they need to take away from an experiment. It allows them the
> freedom to learn at their own pace and take the next steps when they are
> ready to," he says.

> "But this is not the case for children who are less able to figure it out
> for themselves and need more guidance. The gap between the brightest and the
> less able has already begun widening and I am very afraid that this will
> only get worse".

I had this integrated science program at IMSA
([http://www.imsa.edu](http://www.imsa.edu)) in the late 90's. It was
certainly interesting. We started off talking about the Yucca Mountain nuclear
waste storage site. Overall, it was a fun program, and IMSA is meant to try
out new teaching strategies, but I'm not sure how much of a success it would
be in all public schools.

It is very important to connect various scientific and learning concepts.
Sometimes it even makes it easier to learn (physics and calculus are peas and
carrots). But there is a certain foundation that also needs to be built up,
such as atomic theory and chemistry.

Right now we kind of teach school like a layer cake, where each layer is a
grade. There's some stuff, and it vaguely builds on each other, but it's not
directly connected. But whatever isn't directly connected on that graph is
hard to find a use for. That's why it's important to connect concepts and
understand how they interact in the world. I do think there's the possibility
of a path that is more winding, connecting concepts along the way, but I'm not
sure we know what the best path is. Should we focus earlier on math and
reading? More science later after basic reading? Right now we seem to more or
less equally divide time over subjects, which seems hugely arbitrary.

~~~
Kluny
> "But this is not the case for children who are less able to figure it out
> for themselves and need more guidance. The gap between the brightest and the
> less able has already begun widening and I am very afraid that this will
> only get worse".

It's too bad, but doesn't that just mean that the better students have been
held back by the previous system and they're finally getting what they need?
The slower students need something else, but I hope that the better ones
continue getting better education that they can use.

~~~
bicubic
Yeah. I get that modern education seems to have equality as a centerpiece, but
the elephant in the room is that yes, some children are brighter than others.
Making entire classes wait until everyone reaches a milestone before moving
on, is dragging down the quickest learners to the level of the slowest.

When they say "gap between the brightest and the less able has already begun
widening", I think they're just starting to see again the gap that has always
been there but was 'closed' at the expense of the smart kids. And it is at
their expense, I've seen very bright students lose interest or turn to
mischief because classes were not sufficiently stimulating for them. The
smartest kid from my high school class was constantly getting in trouble and
was almost expelled because he was perpetually bored.

------
spodek
As an adjunct professor who also teaches online independently, I find project-
based learning more effective for my classes in leadership, entrepreneurship,
and sales.

The students seem to agree, sometimes after a transition when they realize the
class is about skills more than facts. The students are adults and give
reviews like

" _Absolutely. I would recommend this course not just to peers, but anyone
interested in leadership. Honestly, even if you don 't care about being a
leader, this is the kind of class which can help anyone grow as a person, not
only bettering themselves in terms of leadership, but also in terms of self
actualization. The social skills you learn in this class have never been
taught to me in an academic environment._"

and

" _This course teaches leadership not just by reading theory, but actually
putting the theory into practice. In most classes we are forced to regurgitate
information back to the professor, in this class we are taught to be self-
accountable, which is a skill everyone should have. What I learned in this
class will stick with me for life. I can 't say that about every SPS class.
This course was refreshing._"

The faculty, on the other hand, have a hard time fitting these courses into
their subject-based system, independent of the value to the students.

It's like universities are asking to be disrupted.

~~~
dilemma
Schools are built on a theory of mass production and we know from the last
hundred years that mass production is expensive, slow, and low in quality. See
Ford and GM vs Toyota in the mid 20th century.

Lean is about integration and removing arbitrary walls between types of
knowledge. Hopefully today's Fordist mass production is soon replaced by
Finland's lean education system. But remember, it will have nothing to do with
iPads.

------
IdontRememberIt
With such a low immigration, the pisa sample tended to be more uniform in
Finland which introduced a distortion with other countries having more
immigration but a better teaching system. Recent immigration increase has
lowered the last Finnish pisa rankings. So, of course, some methods are
innovative, but being an example is maybe overrated. Results will be
"assessable" only when these kids will have a professional path.

~~~
tuukkah
You are simply mistaken: The immigration increase is so recent and so small
compared to the population size that it can't have lowered the country's
rankings.

Pasi Sahlberg is the expert to listen to: "I don’t believe that the PISA
results in Finland have anything to do with the language or the fact that
Finland is more homogenous than others[.] Of course Finland has had fewer non-
Finnish speakers or children who were born outside of Finland, but that cannot
explain the progress in previous PISA studies or the declining results in
maths."
[http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finlands_school_system_the...](http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finlands_school_system_the_new_nokia/6965192)

EDIT: Same misconception propagated by BBC in the article here (for
"balance"?): "Success has been attributed to a traditionally high regard for
teaching and reading, as well as a small, largely homogenous population" How
would population size contribute to the averages? Who has attributed? In the
BBC archives I can find that claim by some right-wing British think tank.

------
twic
I saw the title and assumed this was an attempt to make Finnish grammar even
more difficult.

~~~
wolfgang42
As did I! (It turns out to be about replacing individual curriculum topics--
history, mathematics, and so on--with a more integrated learning style.)

~~~
cassowary
As for me, I understood it immediately. I understand the grammatical term
"subject", but I don't know how to read "school subject" as a grammatical
term. I would appreciate some help.

(in case this is regional: I'm Australian)

~~~
tuukkah
Now fixed at HN, not in the original article.

------
Aoyagi
Sure, the best thing to do when you have one of the best education systems in
the world is try to fix it. What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
kbart
The reason why Finland has one of the best education system in the world is
precisely the experimentation and non-conforming to the conservative education
system. They have very good education specialists, I'm sure they will handle
this just fine.

