This infographic illustrates the various trajectories students can follow to become educated, socially valuable, successful members of their society -one of the high points of what I have seen in the months I have been here… Enjoy!
Educator of the Week Spotlight
guest blogger at:
Most liked posts by an educator’s re-education
an educator's re-education 
thanks
I think it might be time to move to Finland! Thanks.
Tomasen
Christine,
How do you do these infographics? They’re awesome!!
ha! Photoshop. Thanks. It helps when you can count the number of friends you have in a whole country on your fingers…does wonders for my productivity 🙂
Finland also does not have an Education Review Office / inspectors / Ofsted (call it what you will) which is a sniffy pontificating gang of stickybeaks officiously checking up on what their professional teachers do to tick off sacred “key performance indicators”.
Or a revenue-gathering gang of tick-box checkers called a “Professional Teachers’ Council” who issue teacher authorisations every one, three, five or ten years if the boxes are ticked.
They actually TRUST their teachers in Finland to behave as real professionals without layers and layers of snooperdom.. And they pay their teachers professional wages equal to that earned by doctors and lawyers.
Finland is a country where adults treat other adults as adults.
“Finland is a country where adults treat other adults as adults.”
I couldn’t agree more! Thanks for reading and joining the conversation, btw.
Pingback: Finland’s Choice-Based Educational Structure [re-blog] – @ THE CHALK FACE knows SCHOOLS MATTER
Christine,
This is a very European education system. Germany has something very similar, where students can attend a more academic high school, as preparation for university, or a vocationally oriented school. Here I think the problem is that the idea that you have to go to college to get a good job has been grossly oversold. Thus we tend to underemphasize vocational schools, which may be a better chioce for a number of students. There are simply too many students in colleges and universities who are simply unprepared for that academic experience and would do better in a vocational setting.
Richard
Pre-K, early childhood development. That’s where advanced knowledge and experience is MOST needed. That’s where we should expect those MOST teachers to be. Minimum Master’s degree in Childhood Development, Child Psychology. Including a directed internship within a preschool as part of the teacher development program. Minimum three to five hundred hours in a supervised teacher internship. Don’t equip the early childhood environment with the LEAST prepared. I’ve had many parents over the years tell me: now that my kids are in school, I can go back to work (yes, some need to, even while the kids are younger than school age) and now that their in middle school, I can have more time for myself…..Wrong. That’s exactly wrong. Parents need to be parenting for life. Realistically, at the very least, being there through high school. I’m dismayed when I read where Pre-K is offed to those least qualified. Maybe an undergrad degree in Early Childhood Development or Child Psychology, at least.
Pre-K, preschool, is where the rubber hits the road. Development of language and thinking skills require a load of social experiences, language, and working groups. A teacher needs to know the cognitive milestones for language, social, and emotional development. We don’t want to be sending a young person with any deficiencies in these areas ( and others) into the academic settings to come. They will struggle and not be advantaged to optimal outcomes.
I always cringe when people begin talking about starting any form of school younger, because to me it seems so inhuman. Kids need to be able to be kids. They need supervision, not direction. Before school age, they need to be taught by their parents, not educated by their teachers.
Early Childhood teachers teach language. Doing things. Being active. The problem with your response is that your view seems limited in that, in our world of such great inequities and inequality of opportunity, you seem to be talking about those parents who have the time and capacity, the income, access to good housing, medical care. Lower income kids come into Kindergarten with one fifth the language skills than those coming from middle class homes and environments. Pre-school does not teach academics. It brings language acquisition in the forefront of their activities. Many parents lack the skills to teach their kids such skills. Many parents lack the time and availability to teach their kids anything. Read Marie Montessori. What I said in my post pretty much re-creates what she believed children need. It takes skills to provide those activities that provided for optimizing a child’s future. And language skills is preeminent to successful progression in and out of the classroom.