What we should, lean, towards, in, education, but do we? HECK no, we’d, returned, back to the, one-test-determines our futures means from before, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
The new curriculum set up in Taiwan stressed the core values, the abilities of different fields of studies, coincides with the new curriculum posed by Finland back in 2016. The UDN papers interviewed the founder of the FB page: “Come for a Chat: chasing the dreams in our studies in Finland”, the fans group is set up by a mom who was once an elementary school teacher here for more than a decade, documenting her fourth-grade daughter’s daily life in learning. The following is a first-person interview:
Based off of the elementary school level, the biggest difference of education in Finland and Taiwan is that the Finnish elementary schools don’t care about the grades at all. The schools in Finland didn’t want learning for children to become a pursue of higher grades, the school my daughter attends, for the first three years of elementary, the means of evaluation is qualifiable, and, avoiding the tests. After third grade, there would be the in-class quizzes, but without the mid-terms, the finals, nor would they list out the placements of the class members based off of their scores on the exams.
the students, actively engaged in their learning processes in a Finnish classroom setting…photo from online
The Finnish grading system only focuses on the number of questions answered correctly, not passed off of the scoring systems of a hundred, nor would they compare the students to one another based off of the scores they made. Some of the exams had the sections, with the varied levels of difficulties in answering, from the simple-to-answer, the reading comprehension, to the higher up critical thinking, and the evaluation system would show the parents which questions out of which sections were answered correctly by the students, for the parents to know, what the kids had, learned from the classes.
The teachers wouldn’t use the scores to label the students as good or bad, to prevent the competitions among the peers. They would hand the graded exams to the students individually, and wouldn’t call out the grades to the rest of the class, you are the only one who will know your progress of learning, the grades you’d made. That way, the students wouldn’t losing that sense of self-worth, based off of the bad grades they had made, and they get to see each other’s advantage, what they are different in skillset. My daughter came home, and shared with me, that A sings well, B plays sports, C knew a ton of plants, she wouldn’t tell me who is intelligent, who scored high on the exams, the children are encourage to develop a wide variety of interests, and they became, more and more self-confident, naturally.
The designs of the education systems, the atmosphere of the society, is what made it hard, for Taiwan, to not let go of that stubbornness of grades. It isn’t until the college age, does Finland have a unified system of standardized testing for the students; the kids here in Taiwan are most quite happy in the elementary years, but as they entered into the all-star middle schools, high schools, they are forced to live up to the expectations of the standardized testing systems.
I won’t say to the parents in Taiwan, that grades aren’t, important, because as students and parents, we are faced, with many kinds of tests, big and small, we need to, advance in our, education. So, how can we tell them, to not care about the grades? I’m only, adding in the means of moral considerations in education, but it’s still, centered around, “testing”, I’m not saying, that the schools should do away with testing entirely, but, are there, other possibilities we can, use, to evaluate the progresses of children’s learning? That’s, worth, contemplating.
And so, this paints a totally different picture of education, and, the students here are taught, that if they scored high enough, then, they’re, better off than those students who couldn’t make the grades, but, grades aren’t everything, if you don’t teach your children the right values, if they aren’t socialized to learn to get along with all kinds of people in school, how do you think they will adapt to the world when they’re out of those four walls? They won’t, and, we’re all going to have, huge problems on our hands then. So, stop thinking, that GRADES mean everything, because they don’t, grades only show, how you ca, regurgitate the materials the lecturers teach in class, critical thinking abilities (among other skills!), are way more important than being able to, “bubble in the right answers”!