In Finland, Learning Matters More Than Education - The Atlantic

8/10/2016
InFinland,LearningMattersMoreThanEducationTheAtlantic
What If High School Were More Like

Kindergarten?
Students in the U.S. are being taught to focus only on becoming educated.
Brendan McDermid / Reuters
ASHLEY LAMB-SINCLAIR
AUG 5, 2016
EDUCATION
TEXT SIZE
I have a strange-looking, handmade bust of Yoda sitting atop my desk at

school. I made this statue in a high-school art class because the teacher asked
us to create a life-like bust of a human face. While molding my sculpture, I
was exploring a little and pulled the ears into a point. I laughed to myself
because it looked just like Yoda. Suddenly, the task transformed from a
school assignment to a fun experiment. When I finished, I proudly presented
my art to my teacher, who promptly failed me for not following instructions.
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As a 17-year-old kid, his response cut me to the bone. I had never failed an
assignment before, and I thought I would win points for creativity. My piece
stood out from the others, and I had taken a risk. This was art class after all.
Instead, I was chastised for not following the rules. Ive kept this Yoda on
my desk for 10 years now as a reminder that rules arent everything and that
sometimes people should receive points for trying something new, for
breaking the rules, and for engaging in playful curiosity. In the past few years
of my teaching career, Ive inevitably found myself facing a jury of
questioning teenagers who wonder why theyre doing something theyve
never had to do before. They arent used to play, and they want their
worksheets. Year after year, I give what I call my Yoda Speech. I hold up
my Yoda bust and tell the story of his creation. I tell my students that its a
reminder to always question the way things are, to take risks, to learn for the
sake of learning. I watch as their expressions change from frustration to
understanding to respect because theyve each encountered someone who
didnt understand when they tried to do something new. It is at this moment
when I think they realize how much they have missed learning as play.
Too often, I see high-school students break down in

tears over grades or pile on advanced and AP classes
because thats what colleges want to see.
I recently returned from a trip to Finland and the Hague with EF Education
First for the Global Student Leaders Summit. I traveled with five of my fellow
state Teachers of the Year and other educators from around the country who
wanted to learn about global education. During the trip, we spoke with
teachers, professors, and business leaders and visited schools. The entire
experience validated my Yoda philosophy of teaching, but one person in
particular spoke to my way of thinking. Lauri Jarvilehto is a former employee
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of Rovio (of Angry Birds fame) who has created a company called Lighneer,
which is focused on educational games. Lauri believesand I agreethat
education is important, but learning matters more.
Too often, I see high-school students break down in tears over grades or pile
on advanced and AP classes because thats what colleges want to see. In
fact, a recent survey of a nationally representative sample of 22,000 highschool students conducted by Marc Brackett at Yale indicated that highschool students felt stressed 80 percent of the time. Yet, companies have
begun to recognize that traditional education does not always equate to
success in the business world. Google has said that it has found no
correlation between GPAs and test scores and employees who thrive, and
therefore has stopped looking at those academic qualifications altogether.
Goldman Sachs has made an effort to hire beyond Ivy League schools,
finding that a top quality education didnt really provide top quality job
candidates. Some companies such as Deloitte no longer require college
degrees at alleven for professional positions. And if that werent enough
proof that traditional paths to career success can be misleading, seldom do
current measures of high-school success guarantee success in college. In
fact, according to a Gallup poll of high-school students, the No. 1 measure of
college success is a sense of hope for the future. How can Americas students
feel hope for the future when they are so stressed from trying to achieve
future success that they break down in tears?
After visiting a Finnish kindergarten, I felt anxiety thinking of my hyperstressed high-schoolers. The kindergarten classroom had little seating; in
fact, we were told that there were never more than eight chairs in it at a time.
Instead, there were pillows and small stools placed haphazardly around the
room. A large, beautiful, wooden tree created a canopy over a cozy carpet in
one corner. A nook in another corner provided a quiet space for students who
wanted time to reflect by themselves. Musical instruments, books, and art
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supplies were readily available at eye level for little hands ready to grab
them.
RELATED STORY
The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland
As I observed this student-centered classroom created for independent

learning and play, I wished it for my students; and even stronger still, I
wished it for my own 1- and 3-year-old children. Because even though I am a
public-school teacher who has an undying commitment to public education, I
still worry about my own children entering school. I worry that years of
driving toward academic achievement will morph them into tear-filled
teenagers who have forgotten how to play. In fact, according to a separate
Gallup survey, 79 percent of elementary-aged children feel engaged in
school, while only 43 percent of high-schoolers do. This breaks my heart.
Like Lauri Jarvilehto, I think learning matters more than education, and
somewhere along the way, students in the U.S. are being taught to forget to
learn and focus only on becoming educated. Even in Finland, many highschool students still find school boring, but Finland takes the issue of student
boredom seriously. Recently, the country has begun a reform to rid highschools of mandatory subjects altogether, leaning instead on phenomenonbased curriculum.
The same night we observed the kindergarten classroom, I went back to my
hotel room and saw a picture of my own daughter on her preschool
classrooms Facebook page. The class was studying the ocean, and my child,
whos not even yet 2 years old, was shown in the photo standing on top of a
table pouring water into a bin full of sand. The teacher assisted her, while
other kids around her watched. The finished product was a sand- and waterhttp://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/learningversuseducation/494660/
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filled bin with plastic sea animals the class created together. It was
collaborative and playful, and stretched the thinking of toddlers who had no
concept of ocean (we are landlocked in Kentucky, after all).
It reminded me of a classroom I visited this past spring belonging to a
phenomenal Russellville, Kentucky, elementary-school teacher named
Cassie Reding. By noon the day of my visit, her fourth-graders had planned,
measured, and cut wood for a raised garden bed, outlined projects to better
the habitat surrounding their school, reflected on their work at each stage,
used Googles classroom apps to manage their work, and spoke as if they
were adults adults with Kentucky state Senator Whitney Westerfield for a
campaign called Policy Together. And when our interview with Cassie and
her legislator was interrupted because students had set up an impromptu
band outside her door, Cassie didn't tell them to quiet down so adults could
do "important things." Instead, we stopped the interview cold and stepped
outside the room to enjoy the music. Here was a teacher who had masterfully
balanced play with high levels of learning.
I will strive to stretch the Yoda philosophy and put a

little bit more kindergarten into my high-school
English class.
There are schools in America doing play and learning for learnings sake very
well, and not only in elementary schools. Ive seen examples of secondary
classrooms in my home state where teachers place students humanity and
personal needs ahead of academic achievement. Ive visited a school that is
structured around a village concept, with students focusing on the subjects
that interest them more than traditional subjects mandated by adults. At the
beginning of last year, the faculty at the school set up a simulated plane crash
with an actual plane outside its building, while each village took on the
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necessary roles to manage the crisis. Media-arts students covered the

breaking news story while biomedical engineering students took forensic
samples. I can imagine that as more and more companies like Google and
Goldman Sachs recognize the need to divert from traditional methods of
hiring, students like those attending these kinds of schools will have an edge
over students from more achievement-driven environments. And the
students probably feel more hope for the future, too, because they are
engaged in learning, rather than bored and stressed. But these high-school
experiences are in the minorityacross Kentucky and the rest of the country.
So I will take my experience in Finland and the inspiration I have found in
American educators classrooms to my own classroom this fall. I will strive to
stretch the Yoda philosophy and put a little bit more kindergarten into my
high-school English class. Hopefully, my students will be a little less
educated and much more inspired in the end.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ASHLEY LAMB-SINCLAIR is a high-school English teacher. She is the 2016 Kentucky Teacher of
the Year.
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8/10/2016

What If High School Were More Like

Brendan McDermid / Reuters

I have a strange-looking, handmade bust of Yoda sitting atop my desk at

Too often, I see high-school students break down in

As I observed this student-centered classroom created for independent

I will strive to stretch the Yoda philosophy and put a

necessary roles to manage the crisis. Media-arts students covered the

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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