Finland,World Atlas graphicmaps.com
Finland is a country with an amazing string of near-best results in the world.
Imagine the following situations and locations:
A place where students rank their country as one of the best suited to them and their personal pursuit of happiness is at the highest in the world.
A place where students walk around the hallways and the classes without shoes on, with just socks and/or slippers on their feet.
A place with cubbies, bean-bag chairs, plush carpets and couches in the classroom.
A place that de-emphasizes sports to club status, so schools can focus of academic achievement first and foremost.
A place that brags it has 188,000 lakes for swimming, boating, fishing, skating, and vacations.
A place that touches Russian along an 833 mile borderline.
Imagine a school that does not have regular standardized tests, but score near the highest on international PISA testing than any other country in the world.
A school where students are trusted to do the work they need to do and are not bugged for reports all of the time.
A school that cooks a hot nutritious meal every day for its students and faculty.
A school that offers students saunas and days off to go on a school-sponsored skiing field trip.
Imagine a school where students can choose the classes they want to take for a seven week course that combines lots of disciplines together.
A school where all of the students speak three languages fluently and they are studying a fourth language, aiming for fluency.
A school which is a community hub, where the student music, artwork, textiles, singing, sculptures, and paintings are on display for all grades, all of the time.
Imagine a school system where the parents trust the teachers.
A school system with the community embraces and esteems the schools, its people and processes.
A school where the administrators trust the teachers, unequivocally.
A system that costs far less per student for a year of high school than in Oregon and most of the US.
A system where students can place petitions to change processes and those petitions are addressed.
A system that accommodates refugees and students with special needs in large numbers.
A system where the students trust the teachers, and vice versa.
What would be different in these schools? Everything.
Imagine Finland!
Henry E. Hooper 