Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments School in Finland gets more like homeschool

This is fascinating: Finland to Stop Teaching Individual Subjects

From the article:
Sounds like a way to make single-subject acceleration in math and other subjects impossible, and also to make ability grouping by subject impossible.

That's not an issue in Finland where there is already zero tracking/streaming before age 16.

I'd read that Finland doesn't really do gifted education. Culturally, they prefer everyone to be at the same level. They do an excellent job of educating everyone to the same level, but not necessarily to individual levels.

Agreed!

Some may say that the subject line "School in Finland gets more like homeschool" would be a highly inaccurate assertion, as homeschool students typically enjoy curriculum at their appropriate placement and pacing... not bundles of pre-packaged curriculum determined by other entities.

The job/vocational emphasis of the schooling described in the article seems to counter, or totally dismiss, classical education... a liberal arts education (literally, education for free people)... characterized by the trivium and quadrivium. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the content currently at this Wikipedia page does a fair job of describing it.

I understand that the article only refers to the Finnish lukio, or high school (grade 10 and up) which offers vocational and academic tracks. Up till ninth grade, Finnish schools strive to offer the same high level academic education for all I elementary school (peruskoulu). PISA results show that the high level is real, so high in fact that by 9th grade, half of all students will have been in special ed of some sort because they needed support to cope with the curriculum (Finnish teachers do not teach to the middle). Gifted children, though, are left to coast. There is no provision at all.
I wonder what's behind the change - a way to dilute vocational and academic tracks? I don't buy the 21st century rhetoric. Learning languages as part of a course on the European Union? Really?

Maybe we should stop using Finland as the gold standard of great education?

Subjects are grouped together for a reason. Why reinventing the wheel? How are these topics superior to subjects? God fordid the US educators pick up on this.

Agreed!