Lockdown Reflections: What I think about school

During this quarantine I have had a lot of time to think and reflect and I came to the realisation that school isn’t really what it ought to be in my view. Let me explain what I mean. I think school is a necessity for young children below the age of 12. Learning the basics of maths, language, reading and writing are crucial skills that are essential and need to be developed at an early age.

Once you reach the ages of 12 to 15, you have already developed the most and important and basic skills you need to succeed. Education has not changed from what it was like 50 years ago in most of our schools, yet the world has changed so much in that period of time. Nowadays you are taught what the authorities think you need to learn instead of what you need to learn. I think high school is no longer about learning, its more about passing and going on to the next grade. When you get good grades, it doesn’t mean you’re smart and when you get bad grades it doesn’t mean you are dumb. Teachers nowadays just want you to dedicate all your time to their classes and overload you with homework. You then spend hours of your day doing homework and hardly have any time for yourself or for clubs and sports.

Going to school doesn’t make you educated, you can go online and do your research and still know what you are talking about without a teacher informing you about it. I've learnt more about life on social media than I have at school. I have come to realise that a 5-minute YouTube video can explain topics better than most teachers can in a whole hour of class. We are mainly given assignments and tasks to do in school without much explanation on how to do so. Most of those tasks and assignments we get may not even be needed or useful in our real lives. For example, we learn how to solve complicated math equations, but they often don’t connect to real life issues students care about, unless one wants to be a mathematician.

School also discourages students from finding their passions outside of school because of the pressure it puts on us. One could want to be a fitness trainer or a professional chef and most things we are taught are not even relevant to our career choices, but we are forced to do those subjects. Many students tend to fail subjects they don’t like because they are not interested but then get pressured to and feel that if they don’t get good grades, they won’t be able to “succeed” because they can’t go to college. This is a huge weight to put on students and can distract them from actually learning for the sake of learning, since they’re just focusing on what they have to do to get a certain grade. The importance of learning skills for real life gets lost in this process.

This is why Finland has the greatest education system in the world:

1. They do not have standardized testing because what often happens is that students will learn to cram just to pass a test and teachers will be teaching with the purpose of students passing a test.

2. Cooperation not competition – While most countries see their educational system as one big competition, Finland doesn’t worry about this. There are no lists of top performing schools because they are all seen as equal.

3. They start school at an older age. Students start school at the age of 7 so they are given time to be free and to not be chained to compulsory education. It’s simply a way to let a kid be a kid

4. Finns wake up later. Research has shown that early start times are detrimental to students’ well-being, health and maturation. Students in Finland start school around 9 am and end around 2 pm. They have longer class periods and breaks in between them. The overall system does not cram information into their students

5. Less homework and outside work required. The purpose of getting homework is to continue learning outside of school and for your teacher to see if you can understand the topic. But after hours of learning at school, your brain just stops learning by the time you get to homework. Finns hardly get homework and when they do it does not take up most of their afternoon, most of the time it is optional.

Conclusion

I think Finland provides a good example of what school should be like and how it can help students learn in a positive way.it would be good if we can learn more things that will help in real life and get time for sports and clubs or things we are passionate about.