Finnish education

As the one of the best countries in the PISA-tests, the Finnish school system amazes with it’s results. In this blog post, I will reveal some points about it.

As you can see from the picture, Finnish education consists of five parts: basic education, upper secondary school, vocational school, university and polytechnic. Children usualy start primary school at the age of seven.

One of the reasons for the success of the Finnish school system is highly qualified teachers. Teachers in Finland have to have a master’s degree, in order to teach full-time (more in this video). An other thing is that no child in school is left behind. There are teaching groups for the mentally and physically disabled, for example for kids that have ADD or who are blind. Finnish schools offer free school food for pupils, which I think isn’t very tasty, but it satisfies my hunger. The food makes your brains work better in afternoon classes. In this article there are some more points about the Finnish school system.

Finnish schools are now  criticized that they don’t allow brighter students to shine. Because almost all students get the same education, better students often feel themselves bored at school. In the new WHO study and in an article I found (link), it turns out that Finnish kids are happy, but they don’t enjoy school. I think it’s because everything is so well with Finnish kids that they don’t think they need the education.

Gotland

Hi guys! I’m back!

I just had a nice week in Gotland, Sweden.

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I was there with the Baltic sea- course of my school. We left Saturday the 5th of May and we came back Sunday the 13th. Weather was very nice with sunshine and only little rain.

Nature of gotland is special with some species usualy seen in southern latitudes. Rocks and cliffs are rare limestone, which has fossils in it from 400 million years ago. You can find fossils as you are walking on beach among the other rocks.

We also had some spectacular sunsets:

We spent the week cycling, visiting points of intrest and enjoying the lanscapes and weather. One day we visited the University of Gotland.

Last full day of our journey we visited Swedens capital, Stockholm.

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So we had a nice trip to Gotland. If you want to read more experiences from the journey, feel free to read Antero‘s and Lauri‘s blogs, who also were there. Only downside was I had to speak Swedish… just kidding.

Happy May day!

Happy May day or first of May! I’ve been at home so I haven’t had one. Well if I had had a happy May day I would have woken up this morning in some ditch with a hangover, I like it this way it is now. Kids my age drink heavily on the day before May day. They want to release the pressure inside them.

I think they should spend the day like I did: windsurfing!. That’s right,  I was windsurfing today in Yyteri beach, Pori. The weather was very nice but the water was freezing. There was about 8 m/s of wind but no waves, the sun shone, and you could just go faster and faster. I was there with my dad.

On Saturday I’m going to Gotland with the Baltic sea-course. Gotland is an island in the middle of the Baltic sea. I’m going to be gone for a week, so I won’t be able to do a blog-writing next week. I will write one first thing I get off the boat back from there, if I can. See you then!

1st Weekly review

So this actually my first real weekly blog post. I’m trying to make these from now on sundays or tuesdays.

So what happened this week? I was in school of course. Homework, homework and homework… But it’s impotant to do them, because you review the subject of the day once more… Well I only did a part of them… Swedish is so easy…

I have been climbing a lot. It has been a very good week, I’m feeling strong and I have finished many hard but fun routes. Last one I finished just before I started writing. My fingers hurt!

In English class, we are going to start a project of making a video about our school. I’m looking forward to it.

These were some events which happened this week. It was quite shallow, but I hope you enjoyed it.

You are what you know

Knowing is a hard subject to explain. It’s just what we do, deliberately or by accident.

Knowledge can be aquired many ways, actually every thing you do gives you more information. It’s also knowledge to separate useful information from false and inrelevant information.

You are what you know. All the knowledge you possess makes you different and affects your visions and reactions. So I agree with my title. I think it’s true, according to my knowledge.

Education and the internet  are the main channels to children to acquire information these days. At school, the information is usualy pumped between your ears by your teacher, but on the web, things are different. You seek information. I, for example, spend a lot of time in Wikipedia.

In philosophy lessons I didn’t get the answer to the questions: What can you know? What is knowing?, so I’ll try to think about them now.

You know only what you know. It’s as simple as that. You don’t know things that you don’t know, do you? Human is a being, that seeks more and more of information to damp the thirst of knowledge inside him/her.

What is knowing? Biology says that it’s just electric singnals in your brain. But if you build an exact replica of human brain and jolt it with a battery, would it become self-conscious? I don’t think so. Knowing makes us what we are. It makes us human. It’s the most basic thing you can do. Brains think and know while you are asleep.

My hobby: Rock climbing

I’m a sixth-former, and as the title says, my hobby is rock climbing. I have climbed almost two years now. I climb 4-5 times a week. Climbing requires strength and control of your body.  During winter I climb indoors. Rock climbing is divided to three different climbing categories: sport climbing, boulder climbing and technical climbing. I do mostly boulder, but I also do sport climbing. Routes are graded by their difficulty, which is estimated by the difficulty of the moves in the specific route. The hardest part in a route is called a crux. In every form of climbing you need climbing shoes. They are usually made from rubber and leather, and they must fit perfectly.

 

Sport climbing is the thing most of people recognize as climbing. It’s climbed with a rope belaying system. You need climbing shoes and a harness to climb sport. The rope is attached to your harness by a carabiner or a knot, and your buddy works as a belayer, who tightens or loosens the rope as necessary. There are two different types of rope belaying, top rope and lead. In top rope, the rope is anchored to the top of the route you want to climb, and is tightened as you ascent, so if you fall, you will be hanging on the rope in your harness. Lead is a bit more complicated. The rope comes from below, and you clip carabiners as you ascent. If you fall, the last carabine you clipped works as your anchorpoint. If you use arms, you will break them. Sport climbing is done on tall walls, usually over six meters in height. Sport climbing without rope is called solo climbing, which is very dangerous.

I like boulder climbing the most.  It’s done on low walls, varying from two meters up to five meters, any taller is thought as solo climbing. In boulder there are no ropes, you climb on top of crash pads. The moves in boulder require a lot more strength, agility and flexibility than in sport, but the boulder routes are shorter and faster to climb. In boulder you need only a low wall or a rock and climbing shoes. I climb boulder in Turku in Bouldertehdas.

Technical climbing is climbing with hooks that you attach to the rock yourself. It can only be done outdoors, and the equipment costs over a thousand euros. I haven’t tried it yet, but people say everybody should try it once.

Competitions in climbing are assested by how high you get on a route. The biggest competition I’ve been in was the 2010 Nordic youth boulder championships in Stockholm, Sweden. I was there with the Finnish climbing national squad,  even though I don’t climb well enough to be a part of it. I obviously wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t the worst either. I was 20th out of the 23 competitors, and that was quite an achievement for a boy, who had climbed only half of an year. I have also been third in Finnish championships, and thanks to that I got a huge boost in my climbing skill.

Climbing is one of the basic things a human can do. We descended from trees, and a baby climbs before he or she walks. Climbing isn’t expensive, the cheapest climbing shoes cost under 50 euro and you can get a good harness for 60 euros. A general rule in climbing is to never buy second-hand gear, because it might be old or broken.

Travel incident

This week we had to write about a travel incident that happened to us. I’m going to tell about one that happened to me and my dad.

My dad and I were having a holiday up-north in Finnish Lapland. More accurately in Saariselkä. We did off-piste skiing and kite skiing in there.

We drove halfway up the mountain and stopped on a small, flat and snowy area beside the road.  The area seemed quite solid and we unpacked our car and started to assemble the kites. Then my dad decided to move the car a little bit. As soon as the wheels turned, the car was stuck. Our car was a Volvo xc90, a SUV, and it had 4-wheel drive, but still my dad didn’t get it out of the hole it made. Then we tried to dig it out, we had good shovels with us. After one hour of digging and pushing, the car was still stuck. Luckily a plow-tractor came and pulled us out. My dad drove the car to a better place, an we continued the assembly of the kites.

Young and Finnish

Adolence, or youth, is an important phase in growing up for all of us. It makes us what we are and what we will become. Today I’m going to write about being young in Finland.

The lives of young people are watched over by adults in Finland. I think they are over protective,   but it  comes with a reason. Young people are very exposed to bad habits. Some of my friends spend their weekends sitting on the pavement drinking beer and other alcoholic beverages. Many of my friends smoke. The youth in Finland suffers also from depression and stress from school. These two things also increase the drinking of alcohol and smoking.

I’ve given a dark and a bit sad description about the Finnish youth. But actually almost all of us live healthy lives. We have no worries, because parents feed us and do our laundry, they also give us money. Our biggest challenges are to do our homework and study hard. Finnish youth has been the best in the Pisa-tests many years now. The education system of Finland is one of the best in the world.

One week we were priviledged to get stundents from Singapore visiting our school for a week. We got to know about their country a bit. Singapore is overcrowded. The prices are high, salaries are a bit low and schools are strict. Schools start at 8am and end 4pm every day. Students also get a lot of homework, and thats why they don’t have much of freetime.

So I’m happy to be young and Finnish. Even if I think about the bad things in the second paragraph, if that is all we have to worry about, we’re doing well. We are healthy, active, creative and we work hard to get results. We are Finnish youth.

The tree I’ll remeber all my life

I’m going to tell you about a special tree. I used to climb it a lot. It’s a pine. It’s about 25 meters tall, and it has huge branches. The tree is in our backyard.

I climbed the tree first time, when I was six years old. I climbed only about three meters up, but still I was very afraid. Every week I tried to climb it even higher, but i couldn’t, because I was so small and too afraid. Then one day, when I was about eight, I got higher up the tree. I was so exited that I told my mother, that I climbed up the tree. She became furious, and asked my father to saw off the lowest branches of the tree. He removed all the branches he could reach. After that there were no branches under two meters.

Some kids would have given up on that point, but I tried still to climb the tree. If I jumped, I could reach the lowest branch. After I got on the lowest branch I started to climb again, and I got to the top. There was the finest of views waiting for me, beautiful fields and forests all around.

The tree made me realize, that you could achieve anything, if you tried enough. It also made me adventurous, and it made me start my rock-climbing hobby five years later.

My story of learning English

The first time I wanted to speak or even understand English was back in the summer of 2004. My parents and I were visiting some family friends from UK in their summer cottage. I got a lot of stress because I couldn’t speak or understand English at all. Luckily they spoke some Finnish so I understood them and vice versa. Mostly during the visit everybody spoke English and it made me feel very uncomfortable.

My first English lesson was in August 2004. The classroom was hot and full of 3rd grade pupils. Our teacher was an old lady with grey hair and great reading glasses. We started with how to introduce ourselves in English. At the start I wasn’t very intrested to learn new languages because I felt that I wouldn’t need any other language than Finnish.

As I learned more and more English I started to use the internet. It was like a drug, I couldn’t help learning new words and expression. I still learn most of my words from the internet. I also watch movies, like comedy films and action films, without subtitles. I also read English books. I like especially thrillers.

I think the importance of learning English is about understanding others. People need a common language to solve issues between countries, corporations and humans. And in the future everybody can speak English. It’s a backup language, which you use, if you don’t share a common language.