I am confused by people who use this as a derogative.
I learned drafting, how to type, welding, library science, color theory, woodworking, BASIC programming, the internal anatomy of a piglet, resume writing, how to play the cello, calculus, and how to sing the names of all 50 US states in alphabetical order in middle school and high school.
That is not childcare.
edit: forgot darkroom photography, yearbook editing, extemporaneous speaking, and Robert's Rule of Order.
Yes. Former teacher here to tell you I cared about the children. :)
But seriously, in the United States teachers are considered "In loco parentis" which "refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent. "
* Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have made significant cuts to education and the general wellbeing of younger generations.
* Modern schools are increasingly built like open plan offices with dozens of students crammed into "learning spaces" instead of traditional classrooms. This reduces building costs and is also sold as a trendy new innovation in pedagogy.
* Special needs and gifted students are no longer put into special classrooms where they can receive the extra attention and care they need. Instead, they are put in with the other kids to the benefit of no one except the state budget, but at least it feels more "inclusive" to some research professor in their ivory tower.
* The amount of immigration and share of children speaking Finnish as a second language is rising and they are statistically more likely to perform worse (https://yle.fi/a/74-20018233, https://yle.fi/a/74-20016772).
In EU only greeks are less satisfied with the availability of healthcare. Our unemployment rate is pretty similar to Greece and Spain as well. This is what right wing governments want I guess.
https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20158685?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x...
It's usual in Finland to let babies sleep outside in the strollers (even when it's cold) but in this case no one checked how the child was doing for 3 hours.
In the news he/she was called a baby.
Politically, isn't this the ultimate fate of most developed nations? I haven't yet see an answer to this. How do you deal financially with this? The obvious answer is for people to be in charge of their own late stage health but is that possible for the average minimum wage worker?
As a "smart kid" it sometimes felt like waiting for everyone in class to grok something before moving on was a waste of time and that personally I'd learn very little, but ultimately I think it worked very well to ensure that everyone was on common ground.
At some point it was deemed that the current system wasn't inclusive enough so the special education for the troublemakers was gutted and they were put back into regular classrooms. At the same time, due to lack of funding and lack of teachers, class sizes ballooned from <15 to up to 30 or even 40 students per class in larger cities. I think there's some critical point where that system breaks down and now we're past it. The teacher has too many students to make sure everyone is up to speed, and giving too much individual attention in such a large class wastes everyone else's time.
Immigration has also played a role I think. Finland used to be quite monocultural, but that has changed. There are now more and more students who speak Finnish as their second or third language and as such have trouble keeping up. I don't think the solution is to stuff them into their own schools either as that promotes segregation and makes integrating into the society as an immigrant harder, and I don't pretend to know the perfect solution (if one even exists), but one thing's for sure: the Finnish school system was 100% unprepared for it.
A class of five can handle darn near anything; a class of fifty needs everyone to be as nearly identical as possible.
You can artificially increase the number of “teachers” by combining classes of different grades sometimes. 12 year olds can do great assisting 6 year olds.
By the time you're 16, I'd say a significant amount of school time is decently geared toward learning, and you're old enough to supplement that yourself during spares or downtime if you want to.
At younger ages though, it definitely seems like more of a daycare service than a learning focused environment. The free daycare is important, but I do feel bad for the kids who are stuck in that absurd environment. Someone can come up to you and stab you with a pencil for no reason and that's just par for the course.
After 10 years of mandatory school most states have what is called "Berufsschulpflicht" until you are at least 18 years old.
That means you have to learn a job, which is not the same as working full-time and still considered education.
Claiming that 16 year olds "can not work because they have mandatory school" is false.
Where us the drinking age 16?
Hopefully not at the same time.
Trust is a privilege that must be earned not given. Prove to me you're trustworthy and I'll give you trust.
One untrustworthy 16 year old can cause hell chaos in a group of trustworthy teenagers. I've seen it when I was a youth worker.
> Depends on what. I can't even trust the 40 year developers in my team at work. "Hacky if foreach loop will fix later"
Whenever people make statements like this, I always wonder what their peers think of them. This dismissive attitude is so off-putting.
I want working maintainable code to enable me to do my job. If people dread submitting a PR because they can't write code with effort, good. I like my ships built strong not weak like your ego.
If they fix their problem, good. Trust given, more than happy to salute however time and time they've proven to me they don't.
These developers have proven to me they won't. These are developers who are those who do not fix the issuing code and will just move on to the next problem hacking it to make it work.
If you've never worked with such, then lucky. If this sting for you, time to grow up and put effort in to your work.
Blag the senior with bullshite of: "I will fix this in the next revision, it works for now" and don't.
Even the people you consider peers will abhor that you think and speak like this about people.
Looking at your past comments: "Perhaps self-reflection is in order", I agree. You're very hostile, angry? You should look in to that.
I wish you the best in life, I truly do, you have some growing up to do.
Neither of these things was suggested or raised so this is quite a bizarre rant to go on.
Even if you care about neither of those things, what your peers think of you still matters because you must work with them.
Where I work in enterprise your peers change daily. With my role and importance to the company implementing hacky code puts me at risk and so I will of course push back. The people I knew last months may not even work in the company.
The view of I must be a horrible person comes from the Comment OP being angry at me for having a reasonable standards to an Enterprise standard of code. "It works im done. Next please"
If their code isn't up to scratch I will tell them and reject it. The issue I have is lazy developers who implement hacks and don't actually go and fix the code.
I am being made the bad person from someone's angry hospitality. All I was saying is that lazy developers are lazy developers and that I axe their work because it's sloppy and doesn't deserve to be on show.
Now your left with a code base forever with tech debt because of a hacky foreach if loop.
You're telling me you've never worked with anyone who does half arsed work? Where you need to pick up their slack? Lucky you.
Because if you can't do a proper job at least on elementary level then what do you do then when they refuse to fix their mess?
This sounds like you have some very specific trauma around a very specific "foreach if loop", because I would personally never throw around such a specific-but-not-specific example of tech debt. Tech debt is extremely contextual.
Most school days are way shorter than that. The curriculum seems to keep my kids intellectually engaged. Commenting as a finn.
In Finland 16 olds are not allowed to drink and access to alcohol is state controlled.
IMHO learning foreign languages, math, history, biology and physics is not child care.
This is in preparation to getting access to upper secondary education (vocational or academic). Usually you start this at 16.
This is not a simple question but one part of the answer is that students are a) ready for upper secondary education b) their grades can be used to grade access to schools with top upper secondary schools being extremely hard to get into.
Ofc if you ask “why would a society do this” I guess the reason is that an educated population is expected to be more productive AND because the law requires schooling up to 18 it also implies all students must have access to free schools with close to zero material costs. So it’s intended also to level the playing field for all social classes.
Is this worse or better than germanys system is impossible for me to tell.