William Doyle is a 2015-2016 Fulbright Scholar and award-winning New York Times bestselling author and TV producer from New York City.
I have seen the School of Tomorrow.
It is a place where children and teachers are safe and happy.
It is a school where children are encouraged to be children, to play, to daydream, to laugh, to struggle and fail, to assess themselves and each other, to question and learn.
It is a school where teachers test their students every day, not with low-quality standardized tests or faceless screens, but with constant face-to-face observations and teacher-designed assessments.
It is a school where teachers are highly trained, treasured and respected, and given the freedom to teach at their best.
It is a school where teachers collaborate and experiment with ways to help their students learn better.
It is a place where technology is the servant, not master.
It is a school where children are prepared for life, not only with the fundamentals of language, math and science, but with play, arts and crafts, drama, music, ethics, home skills, nature, physical activity, social and emotional support, warmth and encouragement.
It is part of a school system that delivers world-class educational results and educational equity to hundreds of thousands of children.
I have worked at this school. I have watched my own child learn and play there.
I have seen the school of tomorrow.
It is here today, on the top of the world, at the edge of Europe’s biggest national forest.
How did I, a lifelong New Yorker, wind up living on the edge of the Western world in Joensuu, Finland, the last, farthest-east major city in the EU before you hit the guard towers of the Russian border?
In 2012, while helping civil rights hero James Meredith write his memoir, we interviewed a panel of America’s greatest education experts and asked them for their ideas on improving America’s public schools.
One expert, the famed Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, told us, “Learn from Finland, which has the most effective schools and which does just about the opposite of what we are doing in the United States.” After researching this unusual idea, I eventually decided I had to give my own now-eight-year old child a public school experience in what may be the most child-centered, most evidence-based, and most effective primary school system in the world.
As a Fulbright Scholar, I “embedded” myself in the Finnish public school system, and taught university courses on media and education at the University of Eastern Finland as a lecturer. And I observed classes at my son’s elementary school, the teacher training school at the university.
Now, after watching Finnish educators in action for five months, I have come to realize that Finland’s historic achievements in delivering educational excellence and equity to its children are the result of a national love of childhood, a profound respect for teachers as trusted professionals, and a deep understanding of how children learn best.
Children at Finnish public schools are given not only basic subject instruction, but learning-through-play-based preschools and kindergartens, training in second languages, arts, crafts, music, physical education, ethics, and, amazingly, as many as four 15 minute outdoor free-play breaks per day, no matter how cold or wet the weather is.
Educators and parents here believe that these breaks are a powerful engine of learning that improves almost all the “metrics” that matter most for children in school, including test scores.
Some of my favorite Finnish sayings on education are: “Let children be children,” and “Children must play,” and “The work of a child is to play.”
With a “whole child” approach, by highly training and trusting teachers, keeping a strong focus on educational equity and collaboration, and not wasting time and money on mass standardized testing and other ideas with little evidence to support them, Finland has flown to the stratosphere of global performance. When you factor in the fact that Finland’s children spend less time in school and less time doing homework than most other developed nations, one could argue that Finland has the world’s most efficient school system.
American politicians and philanthropists are spending, or are about to spend, vast fortunes on trying to develop “scalable” education reforms that can transform and improve American public schools.
I have a suggestion for anyone who wants to improve children’s education. Start by coming to Finland. Spend some time in Finnish schools, talking to Finnish educators, students and parents.
If you look closely, you may see the School of Tomorrow.
William Doyle is a 2015-2016 Fulbright Scholar and award-winning New York Times bestselling author and TV producer from New York City.
He co-produced the hit 2014 PBS documentary film special NAVY SEALS: THEIR UNTOLD STORY, and earlier served as Director of Original Programming and producer and writer for HBO and A&E networks. He has written 12 non-fiction books.
As a political commentator and expert on the American presidency and American history, he is a frequent guest on CNN, National Public Radio and Fox News.
Last year he was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholar grant and traveled to Finland with his family to study its world-renowned school system and joined the faculty of the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu to lecture on “The Schools of Tomorrow” and the future of global media.
William Doyle’s article in the Helsinki Times:
Diane Ravitch's blog 