I can’t believe it’s been such a long time without a blog post! I’ve had many ideas I’ve wanted to share but I’ve also had the busiest spring term ever and I guess it has something to do with the radio silence here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozlady/
But now I’ve just read something that I really need to comment on and hopefully also discuss with you. Here it comes.
A recent study revealed that the writing skills of school children in Finland have deteriorated, especially among 9-grader boys (they are 14-15 years old in Finland). Moreover, children don’t like school and their motivation is on a lower level than before. This, of course, is bad news for us Finns, who have just learned that our school system is one of the best if not the best in the world! What has gone wrong?
Today’s editorial in Iltalehti, a major Finnish tabloid (in Finnish, sorry!) suggests a reason that, unfortunately, many are likely to buy without criticism. The writer believes that computers in schools are the problem and that instead of offering a healthy relationship with an adult, the teachers are hiding behind their computers. And I’m reading this just minutes after I’ve read a student of mine, an in-service vocational school teacher, write about his worries that vocational schools are being left behind in the knowledge society as they are not providing computers to all the teachers. The editorial says schools should offer a stable alternative to the chaotic Internet world. The vocational school teacher says there’s a gap between the real world and school’s working methods.
Which one of these stories is right? Are there too many or too few computers? What do computers have to do with this anyway?
The Iltalehti editorial suggests that the most important thing is school is a good relationship and cooperation of the teacher and the pupils. This I can agree with. But as I think back to my own school years, it becomes less straightforward. There were no computers in the early 80s when I went to school. Of course not. But, let me be quite honest with you, there was no good relationship and cooperation with the teacher either. In other words, the absence of computers didn’t guarantee a good relationship with the teacher. We were sitting in neat rows, obeying orders and being quiet. How was that a warm, close relationship with the teacher? I can’t avoid the feeling that the writer of the editorial is one of the people who find “the good old days” the best solution to just about anything. There’s a lot of that going on in Finnish politics these days as well.
The world has changed in many ways, and it’s true that the attention span of children is not what it used to be. I’m not saying it’s a thing to celebrate, but I don’t think we can stop the world from changing by “offering an alternative to the Internet” and sticking to traditional teaching methods. Shouldn’t we rather try and find new, innovative methods and ways of teaching, learning and collaborating in a meaningful way that doesn’t feel completely detached from the real world? With and without computers.
