Reposted from Time Magazine, April 11, 2011
...In a clearing outside the Kallahti Comprehensive School, a handful of 9-year-olds are sitting back-to-back, arranging sticks, pinecones, stones and berries into shapes on the frozen ground. The arrangers will then have to describe these shapes using geometric terms so the kids who can’t see them can say what they are.
“It’s a different way of conceptualizing math when you do it this way instead of using pen and paper, and it goes straight to the brain,” says Veli-Matti Har-jula, who teaches the same group of children straight through from third to sixth grade. Educators in Sweden, not Finland, came up with the concept of “outside math,” but Harjula didn’t have to get anybody’s approval to borrow it. He can pretty much do whatever he wants, provided that his students meet the very general objectives of the core curriculum set by Finland’s National Board of Education. For math, the latest national core curriculum runs just under 10 pages (up from 3 1/2 pages for the previous core curriculum)…...Finland has a number of smart ideas about how to teach kids while letting them be kids.
“People in Finland cannot be divided by how smart they are...Finland is a society based on equity.”
as seen in the Hockinson UFKBAS Newsletter (Thanks Fran!)
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