Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes
How Finland became an education leader – David Sirota – Salon.com.
THIS is the model that the Canadian system ought to follow. Of course, there are many people I know in the system now who would have to change their ways – and I mean the teachers as well as those who teach them.
So they began in the 1970s by completely transforming the preparation and selection of future teachers. That was a very important fundamental reform because it enabled them to have a much higher level of professionalism among teachers. Every teacher got a masters degree, and every teacher got the very same high quality level of preparation.
It is still true that in most Canadian schools of education, you have do a pretty lousy job as a student in order to fail. It is still the case that Education students come largely from the lower third of the pool – even in places like the U of Calgary, where the Ed Degree is a degree after. That almost sounds like the kind of thing that Finland is doing. Not so. After years of listening to experienced teachers rant about the poor level of quality of the graduates from that program, I can say with confidence, that having a previous degree is not enough.
They really think about teachers as scientists and the classrooms are their laboratories. So, as I mentioned — every teacher has to have a masters degree, and it’s a content degree where they’re not just taking silly courses on education theory and history. They’re taking content courses that enable them to bring a higher level of intellectual preparation into the classroom.
I will grant that the Canadian system is head and shoulders above the American one still, but this is changing, and not in the right direction.
So what has happened since is that teaching has become the most highly esteemed profession. Not the highest paid, but the most highly esteemed. Only one out of every 10 people who apply to become teachers will ultimately make it to the classroom.
It is not enough to simply grant teachers respect – they need to actually be worthy of respect – and that’s the challenge.
For one thing, in order to be in a position to earn that respect, teachers need more time and more help. Good teachers get burned out when they have to spend 6 hours a day in the classroom alone. When do they find time to do development? Solve issues? The answer is, mostly, they don’t.
The second point is that they’ve defined professionalism as working more collaboratively. They give their teachers time in the school day and in the school week to work with each other, to continuously improve their curriculum and their lessons. We have a 19th century level of professionalism here, or worse, it’s medieval. A teacher works alone all day, everyday, and isolation is the enemy of improvement and innovation, which is something the Finns figured out a long time ago. Get the teachers out of their isolated circumstances and give them time to work together.
Here’s why we need to do this:
First of all I want to point out that Finland is rated among the highest in the world in innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity.
Sadly, you need a government that values an educated, thinking population. We don’t have that right now.
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