Differences between the education system of Finland and Spain, also in the learning of languages<

Differences between the education system of Finland and Spain, also in the learning of languages

What can we learn from the educational system of Finland that is considered as the best one in the world? Maybe it is like this because various facts like curiosity, creativity, experimentation, and many other things are predominent. Teaching does not mean to give information that is being repeated until it is memorized. For the Fins, it is more important to learn by thinking instead of memorizing. It is not the government that decides what the educational system should be like, but every college is allowed to organize its own programme of studies.

Here in Spain, every government that is elected for a specific period of time adopts a new law for teaching without taking those people into consideration who are directly affected by this (students, teachers, and parents). In Finland, this educational system has been existing since the 1970’s. For organizing the lessons, the teachers make proposals and the parents participate in this by stating their opinion and informing about their interests.

In Finland, teachers enjoy many liberties concerning how they have to do their clases and which material they want to use. They are highly respected and also well esteemed, and in order to become a teacher you have to go to university for three years to get your diploma and two years of master. You need to have a refined grade (at least 9 out of 10) and you have to pass a very severe selection. The teachers give lessons in a very funny way with many games, using TIC courses, videos, comics, music…In Spain, professors had been less and less respected until a point was reached when teachers became aggressive with students and with their parents. The teachers could not do anything about it because they had become authorities of the law in order to combat their defencelessness (LAW 3/2012, 10 May 2012, ABOUT THE AUTHORITY OF TEACHERS).
En España, se le ha tenido cada vez menos respeto a los profesores hasta el punto de que se han dado casos de agresión a éstos por alumnos y por padres de alumnos, sin poder hacer nada al respecto, por lo que se han tenido que convertir en autoridades por ley para combatir su estado de indefensión (LEY 3/2012, DE 10 DE MAYO, DE AUTORIDAD DEL PROFESORADO).

Our educational system is based on the traditional, completely rigid method: the student gets a sheet of paper and is not allowed to make any mistakes (the mistakes are immediately corrected) and the lessons are hold in the mother tongue of the student. This stands in contrast with the communicative method that is used in Finland, where the student is the protagonist of the process teaching/learning; the student expresses his needs, he is allowed to make mistakes and to correct his own writings; furthermore, he can decide about his own process of learning himself. In Finland, education is based on trust. Parents completely trust the professors and the professors trust their students. By this, the teachers are free to be absent whenever they consider it to be opportune that the students work on projects on their own. There is no space for a system based on controlling. It is believed that people behave much better and achieve better results if they are being taught in an environment based on trust.

Spanish primary schools only have one break that lasts half an hour, whilst secondary schools have various breaks after every 2 or 3 hours. Children start going to school at a very young age and although the obliged basic education starts at the age of 6, some parents take their children to nursery schools at the age of 0 to 5 but this is optional. Even though people should start educating their children at home, they prefer to wait until they go to school. We all know the huge amount of homework that is put on the shoulders of the students during their first year at school.

The Fins have various breaks of 15 minutes in the open between their following classes and one class lasts about 45 minutes, for students are able to totally concentrate on their work for 45 minutes. Thus, they are not tired after the lesson and they can keep the things that they are being taught much better in their minds. Students have less lessons and school starts for them at the age of 7. The socialization of the children starts at home. There are never neither more than 20 students per class nor more than 500 in one school. They are forced to learn English and Swedish and they can optionally choose between German, Italian, French or Spanish. There are also more playful and artistic subjects like dance, cuisine, hockey,…The amount of homework for the first year at school is reduced to a minimum so that the students can participate in extracurricular activities.

Finnish adults know the importance of education and Finnish people can decide at a very young age if they want to have the “general education” (which prepares them for university) or the “vocational one” (a technical apprenticeship to get prepared for an office job). The students are highly motivated because of this. An average Finnish adult passes his exams at highschool with excellent grades, being able to speak English perfectly and reading one book per week. This is normal for Finnish people. In Spain, there is no motivation for this, due to the unemployment which is extremely high between young people. An average Spanish adult narrowly ends his time at school, speaking only a few words in English and without any interest in literature.

Another difference is that in Spain, people take off long weekends very often, while in Finland, if one school takes a long weekend off it forces the students to stay a bit longer at school during the days before the weekend in order to compensate the missing lessons. There are no repetitions and you only have the possibility to pass once; if you don’t, then you have to attend one more class every day until you are finally able to pass it. As soon as the teachers recognize that a student has problems with learning, the student gets help from a private tutor and he has to attend extra classes. In Spain, you can attend a curse only once during you whole career at school; the teachers used to go on with their lessons even when they recognized that some of the pupils had problems.

In Finland, you can always rely on the support of your teacher. The success of the teaching of English is based on the fact that all foreign television programmes, series and movies are shown in English, without any Finnish translations and only Finnish subtitles. Furthermore, you have a bunch of books (almost half of them) in the library that are written in English; there are also many newspapers that are written in English. In Spain, the tv series and movies are dubbed in Spanish, even though you have the opportunity to watch them in the original language with subtitles.

It is good to hear that nowadays, people are becoming more and more interested in Spanish. In fact, in Finland series like “No One Could Live Here” and “Los Serrano” are sold in the original Spanish version. On the other hand, there are many Fins who live Fuengirola in Spain, which has become a role model of teaching because the Fins haven’t adapted their way of teaching to the Spanish education system. They just don’t like it. The main object of their way of teaching is that foreign languages are an instrument to learn other things. This is what professors want to make clear to their students.

Finnish students receive all the necessary material for the lessons, they are brought to school, they enjoy food at school and at university for free and they don’t have to pay any matriculation fees. In Spain, you needt to pay for the material for the lessons every year and there is no support for public schools. The fees that you have to pay at university become higher every year.

So can everybody see the difference between the success of the Finnish education system and the failure of the Spanish one? Even though some attempts have been made to improve the way of teaching, it is urgently needed that the Spanish education system changes. The teachers need to know that the students themselves are as import as the subjects that they are taught. This is very important because young people need to have a good education. People need to be responsible of their future since the population is getting older and older; they must be competitive so that one day, they can say: “Spaniards for the world”.