On a regular day, a first grade student from a Finnish school knows what time to come to school, but he does not know what timetable he has, and in breaks, the classroom closes and everyone is forced out of the yard to play, even if the weather is rainy or cold. And that’s perfectly normal.

It’s Monday, end of May, rainy and cold. At 9 without 10, teachers are preparing for classes in Helsinki’s Comprehensive Ressu School. On the two long, metallic, gray and austere tables in the middle of the room, coffee mugs, tables and lists are scattered along with the home-made chocolate cakes. On the walls are noticeable timetables, tables that announce the calendar of the week, the visits and the sessions of the day. On one side of the hall are four elegant armchairs – two of a kind, two of a different kind and a coffee table, as if for another time and for somebody else. Teachers use them if they have a break of an hour, but in the morning they are unnoticed.

They are all dressed sporty and even look like they are going to do a lot of sports – a feature of the Finns. There is no TV, radio or smoking area in the teacher’s room, but there is a kitchenette with a fridge, microwave, sink and dishwasher, and the lobby at the entrance is a real cloakroom: teachers can change their shoes if they want, and they really do it in heavy winters.

The school has 480 students of several nationalities and a history of over 120 years – during the Second World War, for example, it was a campaign hospital. Since 2007, Ressu also offers the International Baccalaureate program, both in Finnish and English. It does not differ in terms of material or programming from the national system but due to the increased emphasis on the development of problem solving skills and many individual and group projects, the diploma is internationally recognized.

Marika Lankinen has been teaching Biology and Geography for 16 years, and 13 years in Ressu. At 9 o’clock she unlocks the classroom with an electronic card for the Geography class with VII B. Classes “A” study in Finnish, and the series “B” in English. Students do not have a classroom, they move from one room to another according to schedule, but they have individual wardrobes in which they keep their belongings. It takes two minutes for everybody to sit at a desk and for Lankinen to turn on the projector found in the classroom and project the first photo she has prepared at home. Furthermore, absences go into an electronic catalog, which parents have access to, and they are able to look at the grades, which range from 4 to 10. (No one announces the absences at the beginning of the hour, nor is the roll-call made, but the teacher simply has to know their students – explains the school principal.)

The first is a photo of a boat full of refugees, and Lankinen asks them to explain what they see and try to tell the people’s story. “Boat,” “no life jackets,” “are called refugees,” are heard in the class. “From what country?” Asks the teacher and continues with a series of photographs: a boat arriving at the shore where a 3-4 year old child tries to climb the rocks, a group of refugees behind a barbed wire fence, two men who descend a coffin in the ground, two single children carrying a suitcase in the mud and the famous photo of the Syrian child found dead on a beach in Greece last autumn. Students are free to move through the class, speak whenever they want and even call vocal Google translate from iPhone 6 to one when they do not find the word “barbed wire” in English.

They are talking about the obvious things in the photos, but Lankinen asks them about the least obvious: “Where are they going?”, “Why are they leaving?”, “Where is the mother of the two children alone?”. In an earlier lesson they had discussed the economic development of certain countries in the Orient, but this is the first time they talk about refugees. There are no right or wrong answers, just a living discussion about the world around them and the things that happen while they are at school.

Lankinen closes with some general data on refugees: according to UNCHR, in 2016, 60 million people were forced to leave their homes, and half of them are children. “But you have to understand that they do not come to Finland, almost none of them came here,” she says, and concludes an hour of Geography with 20 14-year-olds in which no one was listened to regarding the African countries’ capitals or forced to show on the map any lake in Switzerland and was not even asked about the economy of the refugees’ countries of origin.

The teacher takes her backpack and hurries for the next class: he teaches 23 hours a week, to more than 200 children grouped in classes 25 to 32. Unlike in Romania, where the teacher’s teaching standard is 18 hours regardless of material, in Finland it differs, from 20 hours for Foreign Languages and 21 for Mathematics, 24 for physical education. 24 hours a week also have the so-called “class teachers” who are “generalist” teachers, a kind of teachers who teach from the first to the sixth grades, interdisciplinary, all subjects less physical education, music and languages.

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In the Finnish system, compulsory education lasts for 10 years and takes place in “comprehensive schools”: students start with a preparatory year when they are 6 years old, then up to grade 6th they have a “generalist” teacher, because in the 7th, 8th, and 9th to make stand-alone materials with different teachers. However, they also have projects that reach many areas and for which they receive more notes: for example, for a project about moral dilemmas, such as the right to euthanasia, they make an essay in pairs plus a debate in class and are rated at three disciplines: Biology, Religion, Health Education. For students who are members of the Lutheran Church, religion is mandatory. Others may study ethics or, if appropriate, their own religion: Orthodox, Catholic or Islamic.

For the euthanasia project they have a working time of one month, basically during class hours, and home only if they do not finish in the classroom. “If they are effective and even work in class, they do not have to work at home at all,” says Emmi Roponen, who teaches history and civic education at Ressu.

Markku Suominen, one of three school’s Mathematics and Physics teachers, is the same. A week ago, he had given the 8th to recapitulate 29 exercises in three chapters of geometry: reflections, rotations, and translations within six hours. That morning the students were working quietly, and Suominen walked among them and helped them. At his class, twice a week a support teacher comes to work with those with special educational needs (such as dyslexia or ADHD) or simply with anyone who needs it.

Each chapter in the Mathematics manual ends with a “Why this chapter counts” page, with practical applications of theoretical notions. The book is in English and has 660-page from the Cambridge University Publishing House, which Mathematics Teachers have selected to use on the VII-IX classes, and they keep them in the classroom.

In the 9th year, students from Ressu have 30-32 hours a week (in Romania – 29), of which two or three are optional lessons they choose from what the school offers (eg, acting or manual work ). No hours are allocated for learning how to use the computer – this is achieved by itself, using the digital teaching devices. Instead, even in the fourth grade, they make optional programming. And for the olders, the classes are locked in recreation, and when it’s too cold to get out in the yard, they have fusball tables, billiards and table tennis.

At the end of the 9th grade, everyone passes a graduation exam, then goes on with three years of high school or vocational education. This is more like a test, not a standard national exam. Only the evaluation criteria are the same for all, set by the Finnish National Board of Education, a subordinate institution to the Ministry of Education, which implements national policies in the pre-university system, while the subjects are made by each school.

In general, there are no homework in Finnish schools, and when they are given, they consist of reading a short text (for children in small classes), documenting about a historical personality, or reading a book in the 11 weeks summer vacation. Students have a lot of freedom and they depend on how they use it, says Roponen. “For example, if I give them homework, I do not check them all, and they know that. It’s their responsibility to do it, and the responsibility we educate in the primary classes. ”

In the first grade, students have 20 hours a week. Their schedule includes English, Finnish, Mathematics, Science, Manual Work, Arts, Music, Religion and Sport. “But they do not see the timetable”, says Ropponen. “They only know at what time they have to go to school, and if they have sports – to bring their equipment – or a foreign language – then they have to go to another room. The content of the day is organized by the teacher.”

The lunch break is 45 minutes and all schools offer – since the 1970s – free lunch from the first grade until high school and free textbooks in the first nine grades. In the last two years, students have to buy them.

Our students, receive bread crescent and milk daily, and a warm meal should be offered by the ministry for the first time this autumn in 50 schools as part of a pilot project, but the details are not yet in place. Free textbooks for Romanian pupils are received so far only in the top ten classes, although the 2011 Education Act provided until the end of high school. The situation was remedied this autumn as a result of the student associations.

After hours, in most Finnish schools, first grade students stay until 16 o’clock at an afternoon club where they paint, watch movies and mainly play outside under the supervision of some teachers. For this, parents pay 80 euros per month (for comparison, a monthly bus subscription in Helsinki costs 52 euros).

So at 13 o’clock, when the big ones either got into the last hour or gone home, only the first-class ladies remain in the courtyard of the Comprehensive School Ressu, all with reflective vestments on them, a sign that they are the afterschool. Some girls throw to the wall with the basketball, and others – just in the shirt and vest – are lying in the sun on the rubber carpet with Snoopy’s cartoon character. Outside there are only 15 degrees and a gentle wind, but the rubber is warm and the Finnish children are lured. Snoopy in Finnish is called “Ressu”, and hence the name of the school.

Other children play chess scattered on the benches, and some search for bugs and inspect the strawberry seedlings they planted at biology classes a week ago in large wooden boxes full of soil. The blue and orange spheres are already bored. That had given the idea to those who had arranged the playroom four years ago (the director then consulted the students, and that was the result). And when they go home, at 4 p.m., the school yard becomes public space and remains open to anyone who wants to use it, because freedom and responsibility are not the principles that govern only the Finnish school (Educational System), but the whole society.

Article created with the support of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This text is part of EduDoR, a series of texts on education funded by the Romanian-American Foundation and DoR.

Source: Scoala9