August 28th, 2014
The EDiversity “We Need Choices” Education Conference is taking place on October 11 and 12 at Hong Kong University. Yesterday, Nick interviewed one of the speakers, Mr. Niko Lindholm. Formerly with the Finnish National Education export program — “Future Learning Finland”, he consulted policy makers in Saudi Arabia and countries in East Asia. Mr. Lindholn is currently a Visiting Scholar at Fudan University, Shanghai, a PhD Candidate at University of Tampere, and working for Tribalearning, bringing Finnish developed personalized learning to the world. He holds a master degree in Social Sciences from University of Turku in Finland specializing in politics of education reforms in East-Asia.
The UN ranks Finland no. 1 in education, no. 1 is technological advancement (US is no. 2). It has high living standard, almost everyone can travel and have a house and food to eat. School doesn’t start until they’re 7 years old, there’s virtually no homework, a typical 9th grader (Form 3) has may be just 3 hours of homework a week. There is no tests for both students and teachers. Yet Finland consistently place no. 1 in PISA and other international tests! Think about how hard Hong Kong parents push their children to study from a young age to a point where children lost all their interests in learning. People had coined the term “High score, low abilities” to describe recent graduates in Hong Kong. How is it that Finland’s late start, no tests system could consistently beat us not only in tests, but also producing “high abilities” citizens? Mr. Niko Lindholm shared with Nick his perspective, follow 100 Village (Twitter, Facebook), and EDiversity (Twitter, Facebook ) to watch the video interview next week.
Seats are selling out fast for the EDiversity “We Need Choices” Education Conference! To listen to and meet Mr. Niko Lindholm, please register now.
Originally published at blog.100village.org.