Do you ever feel that you can’t really apply algebra in real life or that benzene doesn’t concern you? Most of us do, yes most of us feel that way. The question of “why do we need to study these things” has always been a riddle for our minds.
The chemical formula of water doesn’t concern many of us because not everyone wants to pursue a future in the science field. It’s not that this information and the education system are not relevant; however, it needs to be organised. Students read and learn stuff, but they don’t know where it is to be applied. This dilemma leads them to a blank canvas where students face the absence of application and end up in a pool of confusion.
Following this, the Finland education system came up with an exceptional, innovative idea. Finland has always been famous for its creative approach towards education. The solution to this conventional iterative learning problem is their latest experiment. Taking up a very different approach, the country has struck out subject-wise learning experiences. To understand this better, let’s consider an example.
Let us assume that you have studied the history of India, but you don’t know how it’s useful to you in real life. To make things clearer for the students, instead of telling them how dates have managed to amend the flow of time, they’ll be taught about the Mughal Empire, where they’ll learn languages, culture, the geography of lands, and history. Let me make this more understandable by using another example; under the subject or chapter “Shop Handling”,; students will be taught basic cost math, statistics, communication skills, languages.
Finland has always proved its worth in study citations. Only far eastern countries such as Singapore and China are above this Nordic nation in influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. So the step of “teaching by topic” instead of “teaching by subject” is about to embark on one of the most radical education reform programmes. Pasi Silander, the city’s development manager, explained, “What we need now is a different kind of education to prepare people for working life. Young people use quite an advanced computer. In the past, the banks had lots of clerks totting up figure, but now that has totally changed. We, therefore, have to make changes in the education system that are necessary for the industry and modern society.”
It is a necessity for Finnish schools to apply “phenomenon-based teaching” at least once a year. With the appliance of the new reform, it has to last for two to three weeks. As per Mr Silander,” We have really changed the mindset behind teaching and education. It is quite difficult to get teachers to start and take the first step, but teachers who have taken the new approach say they can’t go back”. About 70 per cent of the city’s high school teachers have now been trained in adopting the new approach.
Finland has always presented an image of idealism in education fields, yet again, they have something to offer. If the experiment worked, it would be a significant change for the “lineage of books” worldwide. This new reform can improve the conventional learning methods and bring back the ages of “learning the practical”. Whatever the result may be, the step has reduced the distance between academic knowledge and its impact on the real world.