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In a clearing outside the Kallahti Comprehensive School, which is located in the poor part of
2)Helsinki known as the Deep East, a handful of 9-year-olds are sitting back to back, arranging sticks, 3)pinecones, stones and berries into shapes on the ground. The arrangers will then have to describe these shapes using 4)geometric terms so the kids who can’t see them can say what they are. “It’s a different way of 5)conceptualizing math when you do it this way instead of using pen and paper, and it goes straight to the brain,” says Veli-Matti Harjula, who teaches the same group of children straight through from third to sixth grade.
Educators in Sweden, not Finland, came up with the concept of “outside math,” but Harjula didn’t have to get anybody’s approval to borrow it. He can pretty much do whatever he wants, provided that his students meet the very general objectives of the core 6)curriculum set by Finland’s National Board of Education.
The 7)Finns are as surprised as everyone else that they have recently emerged as the new rock stars of global education. It surprises them because they do as little measuring and testing as they can get away with. They just don’t believe it does much good. They did, however, decide to participate in the 8)Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the 9)Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And to put it in a way that would make the non-competitive Finns 10)cringe, they 11)kicked major butt. The Finns have participated in the global survey four times and have usually placed among the top three finishers in reading, math and science. In the latest PISA survey, in 2009, Finland placed second in science literacy, third in mathematics and second in reading.
Which is why delegations from the U.S. and the rest of the world are 12)trooping to Helsinki, where world-class results are achieved to the
13)strains of a 14)reindeer 15)lullaby. “In Asia, it’s about long hours—long hours in school, long hours after school. In Finland, the school day is shorter than it is in the U.S. It’s a more appealing model,” says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the PISA program at the OECD. There’s less homework too. “An hour a day is good enough to be a successful student,” says Katja Tuori, who is in charge of student counselling at Kallahti Comprehensive, which educates kids up to age 16. “These kids have a life.”
There are rules, of course. No iPods or portablephones in class. No hats indoors. But not much else. Tuori 16)spots a kid texting in class and shoots him a 17)reproachful glance. He quickly puts the phone away. “You have to do something really bad, like hit somebody, to actually get punished,” says Tuori.
Finland has a number of smart ideas about how to teach kids while letting them be kids. For instance, one teacher ideally stays with a class from first grade through sixth grade. That way the teacher has years to learn the 18)quirks of a particular group and 19)tailor the teaching approach accordingly. But Finland’s20)sweeping success is largely due to one big, not-so-secret weapon: its teachers. “It’s the quality of the teaching that is driving Finland’s results,” says the OECD’s Schleicher. “The U.S. has an industrial model where teachers are the means for conveying a 21)prefabricated product. In Finland, the teachers are the standard.”
That’s one reason so many Finns want to become teachers, which provides a rich talent
22)pool that Finland filters very 23)selectively. In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, 1,258 undergrads applied for training to become elementary-school teachers. Only 123, or 9.8%, were accepted into the five-year teaching program. That’s typical. There’s another thing: in Finland, every teacher is required to have a master’s degree. (The Finns call this a master’s in kasvatus, which is the same word they use for a mother bringing up her child.) Annual salaries range from about $40,000 to $60,000, and teachers work 190 days a year.
“It’s very expensive to educate all of our teachers in five-year programs, but it helps make our teachers highly respected and appreciated,” says Jari Lavonen, head of the department of teacher education at the University of Helsinki. Outsiders spot this quickly. “Their teachers are much better prepared to teach physics than we are, and then the Finns 24)get out of the way. You don’t 25)buy a dog and bark for it,” says Dan MacIsaac, a specialist in physics-teacher education at Buffalo State College who visited Finland for two months. “In the U.S., they treat teachers like pizza delivery boys and then do efficiency studies on how well they deliver the pizza.”
The Finns haven’t always had everything figured out. In the 1960s, Finland had two parallel education systems after primary school; brighter kids went one way, 26)laggards went the other. Reforms began in 1968, 27)scrapping 28)two-tier education in favour of one national system. In the 80s, Finland stopped “29)streaming” pupils to different math and language tracks based on ability. “People in Finland cannot be divided by how smart they are,” says Reijo Laukkanen, a counsellor at the Finnish National Board of Education. “It has been very beneficial.”
“Finland is a society based on 30)equity,” says Laukkanen. “Japan and Korea are highly competitive societies—if you’re not better than your neighbour, your parents pay to send you to night school. In Finland, 31)outperforming your neighbour isn’t very important. Everybody is average, but you want that average to be very high.
在芬兰赫尔辛基市内被称为“里东区”的贫民区里，有一所卡拉提综合学校，一群9岁的孩子们正在学校的一块空地上进行课外教学活动。他们背靠背坐着，用树枝、松果、石头和浆果在地上摆出各种形状。他们要用几何术语来描述自己摆出来的这些形状，然后让背面看不见那些形状的孩子们来猜。“这是一种完全不同的数学学习方式，不是用笔在纸上画，而是通过这种形式将几何概念以最直接的方式印在孩子们的大脑里。”约里—马提·哈尤拉说，他是这群孩子的老师，负责从三年级到六年级的教学工作。
“户外数学”的理念最先由瑞典教育专家提出，而非芬兰，不过哈尤拉老师无需经过任何人的批准就能借鉴这一理念。事实上，他的教学自由度非常大。芬兰国家教育委员会设有核心课程大纲，只要老师能让孩子达到其中的基本教育目标，具体采用的教学方式不受限制。
在全球教育界，芬兰人俨然一颗令世人瞩目的“摇滚新星”，就连芬兰人自己也有点吃惊。他们吃惊是因为平时甚少对学生作测试和考核，能不考就不考，他们并不相信考试能带给学生什么好处。不过，他们还是参加了经济合作与发展组织（OECD）主办的“国际学生评估项目（PISA）”。芬兰人一向不争强好胜，但如果用一句让他们退避三舍的俗语来描述他们的考试成绩，那就是“牛逼得很”。这样全球范围的测试他们参加了四次，在阅读、数学和科学方面，他们通常都能进入三甲。最近的一次PISA测试是在2009年，芬兰在科学素养和阅读素养方面位居第二，数学方面则名列第三。
芬兰这种轻松自由的教育方式获得了世界级的成功（编者注：此处英文直译为“驯鹿吟唱的轻柔摇篮曲变成了一段脍炙人口的音乐”，借指芬兰这种轻松自由的教育方式获得了成功），这吸引了美国和世界其他国家的代表团蜂拥到赫尔辛基学习考察。“在亚洲，学生的学习时间很长——在学校的上课时间很长，下课后也要长时间学习。而在芬兰，学生上课的时间比美国更短。这是一个更吸引人的模式。”在OECD中负责PISA项目的安德里亚·施莱歇尔说。此外，芬兰学生的家庭作业也较少。卡拉提综合学校主要为16岁以下的孩子提供教育，在该校负责学生咨询工作的卡特加·托瑞说：“要想成为一名优秀的学生，一天花一个小时做家庭作业就足够了。这些孩子还有自己的生活。”
当然，学校也有校规。课堂上不允许使用iPod和手机，屋内不允许戴帽子。但也就这么多了。有一次，托瑞在课堂上发现一个孩子在发短信，她用带责备的眼光瞥了那孩子一眼，孩子很快就把手机收起来了。“除非你确实做了坏事，比如打了某人，才会真的受到惩罚。”托瑞说。
在既教育孩子又让其保留孩子的特性方面，芬兰拥有很多巧妙的计划。比如，理论上，一位老师会从一年级开始，一直跟随这个班级直到六年级。这样，老师就有几年的时间来了解这群学生的一些“怪癖”，进而因材施教。不过，芬兰教育能横扫千军，很大程度上归因于一个不是秘密的强大武器：他们的教师。“正是优质的教学促进了芬兰教育的成功。”OECD的施莱歇尔说，“在美国，教育已经成为一种产业模式，教师在当中只是一种用来传输预制品的工具。而在芬兰，教师本身就是典范。”
这也是为什么那么多芬兰人希望成为教师的原因之一。如此一来，芬兰可以从一个资源充足的人才库中精心挑选教师人选。据可查的最新数据显示，2008年，该国有1258名本科生申请参加一个历时五年的小学教师培训项目，只有123人被接纳，占申请人数的9.8%。这个很有代表性。另外一个事实是：在芬兰，每一位教师都必须具有硕士学位（芬兰人用“kasvatus”这一名词来称呼教育硕士，该词在芬兰语中有“抚育孩子成人的母亲”之意。）。教师的年薪介于40000到60000美元之间，每年工作190天。
“用五年时间来培训我们所有的教师，投资非常大，但这也使得我们的教师获得了高度的尊敬和赞赏。”赫尔辛基大学教师培训系负责人加里·拉沃伦说。外界很快就发现了这一点。“他们的老师在教授物理方面比我们准备得更好，然后芬兰人让老师们自由发挥，你不必为他们操劳。在美国，人们对待老师就像对待比萨店送餐员一样，还会就他们送比萨的效率作调查。”来自美国布法罗市州立大学的物理教师培训专家丹·麦克艾萨克说，他已经在芬兰考察了两个月。
芬兰人也曾走过一段曲折的历程。20世纪60年代，芬兰人小学毕业后有两套平行的教育体系，聪明一点的孩子接受一种教育，后进一点的孩子接受另一种教育。1968年，芬兰进行了改革，开始废止一个国家双重教育体系的制度。在20世纪80年代，芬兰终止了依据个人能力把小学生“分流”到数学和语言方向的做法。“在芬兰，不能根据聪明程度对人进行分类。”芬兰国家教育委员会一位顾问里杰·劳卡南说，“事实证明这一改变让我们获益良多。”
“芬兰是以公平为基础的社会，”劳卡南说，“日本和韩国则是高度竞争的社会——如果你不能比旁人做得更好，你的父母就会掏钱送你上夜校。而在芬兰，比旁人表现出色并不是很重要。每个人都达到平均水平，不过这个平均水平相当高。”
2)Helsinki known as the Deep East, a handful of 9-year-olds are sitting back to back, arranging sticks, 3)pinecones, stones and berries into shapes on the ground. The arrangers will then have to describe these shapes using 4)geometric terms so the kids who can’t see them can say what they are. “It’s a different way of 5)conceptualizing math when you do it this way instead of using pen and paper, and it goes straight to the brain,” says Veli-Matti Harjula, who teaches the same group of children straight through from third to sixth grade.
Educators in Sweden, not Finland, came up with the concept of “outside math,” but Harjula didn’t have to get anybody’s approval to borrow it. He can pretty much do whatever he wants, provided that his students meet the very general objectives of the core 6)curriculum set by Finland’s National Board of Education.
The 7)Finns are as surprised as everyone else that they have recently emerged as the new rock stars of global education. It surprises them because they do as little measuring and testing as they can get away with. They just don’t believe it does much good. They did, however, decide to participate in the 8)Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the 9)Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And to put it in a way that would make the non-competitive Finns 10)cringe, they 11)kicked major butt. The Finns have participated in the global survey four times and have usually placed among the top three finishers in reading, math and science. In the latest PISA survey, in 2009, Finland placed second in science literacy, third in mathematics and second in reading.
Which is why delegations from the U.S. and the rest of the world are 12)trooping to Helsinki, where world-class results are achieved to the
13)strains of a 14)reindeer 15)lullaby. “In Asia, it’s about long hours—long hours in school, long hours after school. In Finland, the school day is shorter than it is in the U.S. It’s a more appealing model,” says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the PISA program at the OECD. There’s less homework too. “An hour a day is good enough to be a successful student,” says Katja Tuori, who is in charge of student counselling at Kallahti Comprehensive, which educates kids up to age 16. “These kids have a life.”
There are rules, of course. No iPods or portablephones in class. No hats indoors. But not much else. Tuori 16)spots a kid texting in class and shoots him a 17)reproachful glance. He quickly puts the phone away. “You have to do something really bad, like hit somebody, to actually get punished,” says Tuori.
Finland has a number of smart ideas about how to teach kids while letting them be kids. For instance, one teacher ideally stays with a class from first grade through sixth grade. That way the teacher has years to learn the 18)quirks of a particular group and 19)tailor the teaching approach accordingly. But Finland’s20)sweeping success is largely due to one big, not-so-secret weapon: its teachers. “It’s the quality of the teaching that is driving Finland’s results,” says the OECD’s Schleicher. “The U.S. has an industrial model where teachers are the means for conveying a 21)prefabricated product. In Finland, the teachers are the standard.”
That’s one reason so many Finns want to become teachers, which provides a rich talent
22)pool that Finland filters very 23)selectively. In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, 1,258 undergrads applied for training to become elementary-school teachers. Only 123, or 9.8%, were accepted into the five-year teaching program. That’s typical. There’s another thing: in Finland, every teacher is required to have a master’s degree. (The Finns call this a master’s in kasvatus, which is the same word they use for a mother bringing up her child.) Annual salaries range from about $40,000 to $60,000, and teachers work 190 days a year.
“It’s very expensive to educate all of our teachers in five-year programs, but it helps make our teachers highly respected and appreciated,” says Jari Lavonen, head of the department of teacher education at the University of Helsinki. Outsiders spot this quickly. “Their teachers are much better prepared to teach physics than we are, and then the Finns 24)get out of the way. You don’t 25)buy a dog and bark for it,” says Dan MacIsaac, a specialist in physics-teacher education at Buffalo State College who visited Finland for two months. “In the U.S., they treat teachers like pizza delivery boys and then do efficiency studies on how well they deliver the pizza.”
The Finns haven’t always had everything figured out. In the 1960s, Finland had two parallel education systems after primary school; brighter kids went one way, 26)laggards went the other. Reforms began in 1968, 27)scrapping 28)two-tier education in favour of one national system. In the 80s, Finland stopped “29)streaming” pupils to different math and language tracks based on ability. “People in Finland cannot be divided by how smart they are,” says Reijo Laukkanen, a counsellor at the Finnish National Board of Education. “It has been very beneficial.”
“Finland is a society based on 30)equity,” says Laukkanen. “Japan and Korea are highly competitive societies—if you’re not better than your neighbour, your parents pay to send you to night school. In Finland, 31)outperforming your neighbour isn’t very important. Everybody is average, but you want that average to be very high.
在芬兰赫尔辛基市内被称为“里东区”的贫民区里，有一所卡拉提综合学校，一群9岁的孩子们正在学校的一块空地上进行课外教学活动。他们背靠背坐着，用树枝、松果、石头和浆果在地上摆出各种形状。他们要用几何术语来描述自己摆出来的这些形状，然后让背面看不见那些形状的孩子们来猜。“这是一种完全不同的数学学习方式，不是用笔在纸上画，而是通过这种形式将几何概念以最直接的方式印在孩子们的大脑里。”约里—马提·哈尤拉说，他是这群孩子的老师，负责从三年级到六年级的教学工作。
“户外数学”的理念最先由瑞典教育专家提出，而非芬兰，不过哈尤拉老师无需经过任何人的批准就能借鉴这一理念。事实上，他的教学自由度非常大。芬兰国家教育委员会设有核心课程大纲，只要老师能让孩子达到其中的基本教育目标，具体采用的教学方式不受限制。
在全球教育界，芬兰人俨然一颗令世人瞩目的“摇滚新星”，就连芬兰人自己也有点吃惊。他们吃惊是因为平时甚少对学生作测试和考核，能不考就不考，他们并不相信考试能带给学生什么好处。不过，他们还是参加了经济合作与发展组织（OECD）主办的“国际学生评估项目（PISA）”。芬兰人一向不争强好胜，但如果用一句让他们退避三舍的俗语来描述他们的考试成绩，那就是“牛逼得很”。这样全球范围的测试他们参加了四次，在阅读、数学和科学方面，他们通常都能进入三甲。最近的一次PISA测试是在2009年，芬兰在科学素养和阅读素养方面位居第二，数学方面则名列第三。
芬兰这种轻松自由的教育方式获得了世界级的成功（编者注：此处英文直译为“驯鹿吟唱的轻柔摇篮曲变成了一段脍炙人口的音乐”，借指芬兰这种轻松自由的教育方式获得了成功），这吸引了美国和世界其他国家的代表团蜂拥到赫尔辛基学习考察。“在亚洲，学生的学习时间很长——在学校的上课时间很长，下课后也要长时间学习。而在芬兰，学生上课的时间比美国更短。这是一个更吸引人的模式。”在OECD中负责PISA项目的安德里亚·施莱歇尔说。此外，芬兰学生的家庭作业也较少。卡拉提综合学校主要为16岁以下的孩子提供教育，在该校负责学生咨询工作的卡特加·托瑞说：“要想成为一名优秀的学生，一天花一个小时做家庭作业就足够了。这些孩子还有自己的生活。”
当然，学校也有校规。课堂上不允许使用iPod和手机，屋内不允许戴帽子。但也就这么多了。有一次，托瑞在课堂上发现一个孩子在发短信，她用带责备的眼光瞥了那孩子一眼，孩子很快就把手机收起来了。“除非你确实做了坏事，比如打了某人，才会真的受到惩罚。”托瑞说。
在既教育孩子又让其保留孩子的特性方面，芬兰拥有很多巧妙的计划。比如，理论上，一位老师会从一年级开始，一直跟随这个班级直到六年级。这样，老师就有几年的时间来了解这群学生的一些“怪癖”，进而因材施教。不过，芬兰教育能横扫千军，很大程度上归因于一个不是秘密的强大武器：他们的教师。“正是优质的教学促进了芬兰教育的成功。”OECD的施莱歇尔说，“在美国，教育已经成为一种产业模式，教师在当中只是一种用来传输预制品的工具。而在芬兰，教师本身就是典范。”
这也是为什么那么多芬兰人希望成为教师的原因之一。如此一来，芬兰可以从一个资源充足的人才库中精心挑选教师人选。据可查的最新数据显示，2008年，该国有1258名本科生申请参加一个历时五年的小学教师培训项目，只有123人被接纳，占申请人数的9.8%。这个很有代表性。另外一个事实是：在芬兰，每一位教师都必须具有硕士学位（芬兰人用“kasvatus”这一名词来称呼教育硕士，该词在芬兰语中有“抚育孩子成人的母亲”之意。）。教师的年薪介于40000到60000美元之间，每年工作190天。
“用五年时间来培训我们所有的教师，投资非常大，但这也使得我们的教师获得了高度的尊敬和赞赏。”赫尔辛基大学教师培训系负责人加里·拉沃伦说。外界很快就发现了这一点。“他们的老师在教授物理方面比我们准备得更好，然后芬兰人让老师们自由发挥，你不必为他们操劳。在美国，人们对待老师就像对待比萨店送餐员一样，还会就他们送比萨的效率作调查。”来自美国布法罗市州立大学的物理教师培训专家丹·麦克艾萨克说，他已经在芬兰考察了两个月。
芬兰人也曾走过一段曲折的历程。20世纪60年代，芬兰人小学毕业后有两套平行的教育体系，聪明一点的孩子接受一种教育，后进一点的孩子接受另一种教育。1968年，芬兰进行了改革，开始废止一个国家双重教育体系的制度。在20世纪80年代，芬兰终止了依据个人能力把小学生“分流”到数学和语言方向的做法。“在芬兰，不能根据聪明程度对人进行分类。”芬兰国家教育委员会一位顾问里杰·劳卡南说，“事实证明这一改变让我们获益良多。”
“芬兰是以公平为基础的社会，”劳卡南说，“日本和韩国则是高度竞争的社会——如果你不能比旁人做得更好，你的父母就会掏钱送你上夜校。而在芬兰，比旁人表现出色并不是很重要。每个人都达到平均水平，不过这个平均水平相当高。”