![]() ![]() ![]() The transformation of the Finns’ education system began some 40 years ago as the key propellent of the country’s economic recovery plan. “Children from wealthy families with lots of education can be taught by stupid teachers,” Louhivuori said, smiling. The school where Louhivuori teaches served 240 first through ninth graders last year and in contrast with Finland’s reputation for ethnic homogeneity, more than half of its 150 elementary-level students are immigrants-from Somalia, Iraq, Russia, Bangladesh, Estonia and Ethiopia, among other nations. Nearly 30 percent of Finland’s children receive some kind of special help during their first nine years of school. If one method fails, teachers consult with colleagues to try something else. Many schools are small enough so that teachers know every student. “Whatever it takes” is an attitude that drives not just Kirkkojarvi’s 30 teachers, but most of Finland’s 62,000 educators in 3,500 schools from Lapland to Turku-professionals selected from the top 10 percent of the nation’s graduates to earn a required master’s degree in education. Finnish schooling became an unlikely hot topic after the 2010 documentary film Waiting for “Superman” contrasted it with America’s troubled public schools. This tale of a single rescued child hints at some of the reasons for the tiny Nordic nation’s staggering record of education success, a phenomenon that has inspired, baffled and even irked many of America’s parents and educators. “This is what we do every day, prepare kids for life.” Besart had opened his own car repair firm and a cleaning company. “You helped me,” he told his former teacher. ![]() Years later, a 20-year-old Besart showed up at Kirkkojarvi’s Christmas party with a bottle of Cognac and a big grin. By the end of the year, the son of Kosovo war refugees had conquered his adopted country’s vowel-rich language and arrived at the realization that he could, in fact, learn. When Besart was not studying science, geography and math, he was parked next to Louhivuori’s desk at the front of his class of 9- and 10-year- olds, cracking open books from a tall stack, slowly reading one, then another, then devouring them by the dozens. “I took Besart on that year as my private student,” Louhivuori told me in his office, which boasted a Beatles “Yellow Submarine” poster on the wall and an electric guitar in the closet. This 13-year-old, Besart Kabashi, received something akin to royal tutoring. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete.įinland has vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy over the past decade in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. The school’s team of special educators-including a social worker, a nurse and a psychologist-convinced Louhivuori that laziness was not to blame. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme-by Finnish standards.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |