Finland winland

A friend of mine emailed me earlier asking about life in Finland. She is from across the Atlantic has has lived in Europe for nearly a decade with her European husband and their child, in a few different cooler climate countries. They have previously visited Finland and were wondering if the things they say about Finland are true, especially regarding the primary education.

My husband came home for lunch just as I was reading her message. My instant reaction was not to be sure what to answer, as I've been living outside Finland for a decade, so I turned to him for a second opinion. He has never lived in Finland, but he has been vacationing there a lot. So much that at one point we calculated the time he has spent in Finland would be several months all put together, so he surely has a somewhat idea what the country is like from a foreigner's point of view. All he said though was "I guess it can be tough if you don't know the language." Although a lot of the younger generation speaks fluent English, learning Finnish is essential if you ever want to feel like you're part of the society. Our daughter overheard our conversation and started to cry. "I want to move to Finland," she managed to verbalize. Our life is very good in the Netherlands, but I understood her sentiment.

To answer my friend's question: everything they say in this clip is more or less true. The only part that is often enhanced in the foreign media is that the students get little to no homework. This is often true. The homework doesn't take three to four hours of your time after school like in Italy for instance. In Finland you're done in 10-20 minutes daily. Some days you get none, other days you might have to write an essay that takes a bit longer, but compared to many other countries you can safely say the amount of homework is not very much. You'll learn things at school and free time is meant for other activities to balance the life.

The good teachers care about your happiness and are the for you, but of course not every teacher even in the Finnish schools is going to be great. I have had really awesome teachers in my time, but I also had some that made me feel bad about existing. The suitability to become a teacher or remain one definitely needs some more attention in the future, just as my Finnish teacher stated last week on Facebook (yes, I'm friends with my former Finnish teacher on Facebook), but the quality of teachers and thus teaching is overall quite good. The teacher training is very popular in Finland and only the best are accepted setting the bar very high, which is evidently very good for the students as well.

I slacked off studied one year in an Italian primary school and in Italy it was all about authority and books while in Finland it was about discovering things and learning a multitude of traits, because it's really meant to prepare you for life by introducing the possibilities. In a Finnish elementary school you study all the regular subjects, but a lot of extra, too. During the nine years of elementary school you'll learn to do math and speak at least two foreign languages (I learned three), but you'll also learn how to iron, bake a bread, play baseball, you'll learn about economics and history, but also how to sew a button, ski or make a butter knife. You'll learn to research for information and how to use the computer. When I was about 10 years old, my school was one of the first ones to get internet access in the city and we learned how to make homepages back in 1995. These days they are talking about skipping to teach children write cursive at school (they will still learn how to write with a pen, but they are kissing good-bye to the oldskool cursive that nearly none of us use as adults) and instead use this time to teach the students how to code. Again, they are pioneers in what to teach the kids.*

The language is awesome, but one of the trickiest in the world to learn.

This autumn the Finnish primary school underwent a renewal. I'm glad to see the school is not sticking to one thing in this ever changing world. What changed: computers will be used in every subject and on every grade. It's not a primary tool, but it's a part of how kids will learn. Kids are taught to search for information and subjects are intertwined in the future by doing projects that combine subjects to each other. Introduction to computer coding will start at the second grade (age 7-8). I am extremely sad my kids are not a part of this experience. Moving to Finland is just not written in the stars for our family. (We tried for years to look for the right path to be able to move to Finland, but now for many years we haven't tried at all.)

To sum it up: even though I don't agree with everything in Finland and I know I would miss things like early spring and seeing the Sun during dark winter months, I would move to Finland for the primary school alone. And when you move, the best part is that you don't really even need to shop for school, unlike in the Netherlands. In Finland you'll enroll your kids to a school closest to your house.

Bonus panel: want to introduce coding to your kids? A Finnish coder, Linda Liukas, wrote a book for children about coding, downloads available too. See more information about it here.

*Not to mention that they will open the first secondary school in Finland where you can study eSports. Damn those Finnish pioneers.