

Finland’s new plan to change school means an end to subjects - ghosh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/24/finlands-radical-new-plan-to-change-school-means-an-end-to-math-and-history-class/

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tuukkah
Talk about bad reporting: what the new national curriculum says is not
radical, it's not a plan, and it doesn't end subjects. It just suggests as one
method of teaching to consider themes that cross the traditional academic
divisions. And this it has done already in previous versions, just with
different words. In the end, it's still up to each teacher whether they want
to break the traditions, learn new methods and materials, create new lesson
plans. On their own time.

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jmilloy
Is there a better source (in English) for the real information?

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tuukkah
Your best bet may be to follow Pasi Sahlberg who's an international expert in
these matters and from Finland:
[https://twitter.com/pasi_sahlberg/status/580376929351516160](https://twitter.com/pasi_sahlberg/status/580376929351516160)

Here's one presentation from the government, where they use the term "broad-
based competence":
[http://www.oph.fi/download/151294_ops2016_curriculum_reform_...](http://www.oph.fi/download/151294_ops2016_curriculum_reform_in_finland.pdf)

A shorter one with video and the term "transversal competences":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=70&v=KY_LZJkEo28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=70&v=KY_LZJkEo28)
Slides:
[http://www.oph.fi/download/158389_general_aspects_of_basic_e...](http://www.oph.fi/download/158389_general_aspects_of_basic_education_curriculum_reform.pdf)

EDIT: These should be contrasted with the old curriculum which talks of
"integration and cross-curricular themes", "examining phenomena from the
perspectives of different fields":
[http://www.oph.fi/download/47675_POPS_net_new_2.pdf](http://www.oph.fi/download/47675_POPS_net_new_2.pdf)

EDIT2: _Finnish schools are obliged to introduce a period of “phenomenon-based
teaching” at least once a year. These projects can last several weeks -- by
2020._ [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-
schoo...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-schools-
subjects-are-out-and-topics-are-in-as-country-reforms-its-education-
system-10123911.html)

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socalnate1
"...instead of teaching geography and foreign language classes separately,
teachers will ask kids to name countries on a map in a foreign language.
Instead of separate lessons on history and economics, they'll talk about the
European Union."

It's depressing that this is considered "radical."

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cheatsheet
I think consciously maintaining a collective categorization of entities, or
independently maintaining a collective categorization of entities is radical.
More people might discover abstract math on their own, simply because it
hasn't been purified down to it's symbolic form. The relationships naturally
arise out of our own decisions and plans in how we mentally construct
relationships between entity forms, and notice the differences and variations
between person to person.

I think tradition is important, but so is learning how to think totally
differently in a fundamental way - and I think that's what these educators see
in this specific case as radical. They see it as a creating a foundation of
how to think first, then it is followed by lesson plans. It may affect the way
people learn to organize and think about information, or it may not. Maybe
people in the future will refine information down to essential subject form,
because the chaos in connectivity between information forms has become too
complex to reason about, and consequently becomes too complex to do anything
with (aside from think). These things happen already. The difference is a
magnitude of scale. Will an entire generation be raised with these
characteristics?

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feider
One thing that almost never get mentioned is role of pre-school education and
how it is drastically different in Finland.

Becoming preschool teacher in Finland requires a bachelor degree in
"varhaiskasvatus" (that roughly translates to early parenting, which is an
academic subject). I don't know what qualifications are required in US, but in
many other European countries the bar of becoming preschool teacher is much
lower.

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IndianAstronaut
Strange how the metrics used to measure performance still break down by
subject. Maybe we can break down into more interesting subjects or core areas
like analytic skills, deep thinking, execution, people enabler, etc.

