http://www.sciencealert.com/no-more-physics-and-maths-finland-to-stop-teaching-individual-subjects

No more physics and maths, Finland to stop teaching individual subjects
The future is all about learning by topic, not subject.
FIONA MACDONALD24 MAR 2015
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Finland, one of the leading educational hotspots in the world, is embarking on one of the most radical overhauls in modern education. By 2020, the country plans to phase out teaching individual subjects such as maths, chemistry and physics, and instead teach students by ‘topics’ or broad phenomena, so that there’s no more question about “what’s the point of learning this?”

What does that mean exactly? Basically, instead of having an hour of geography followed by an hour of history, students will now spend, say, two hours learning about the European Union, which covers languages, economics, history and geography. Or students who are taking a vocational course might study ‘cafeteria services’, which would involve learning maths, languages and communication skills, as Richard Garner reports for The Independent. So although students will still learn all the important scientific theories, they’ll be finding out about them in a more applied way, which actually sounds pretty awesome.

“What we need now is a different kind of education to prepare people for working life,” Pasi Silander, the Helsinki’s development manager, told Garner. “Young people use quite advanced computers. In the past the banks had lots of bank clerks totting up figures but now that has totally changed. We therefore have to make the changes in education that are necessary for industry and modern society.”

The new system also encourages different types of learning, such as interactive problem solving and collaborating among smaller groups, to help develop career-ready skills. “We really need a rethinking of education and a redesigning of our system, so it prepares our children for the future with the skills that are needed for today and tomorrow,” Marjo Kyllonen, Helsinki’s education manager, who is leading the change, told Garner.

“There are schools that are teaching in the old fashioned way which was of benefit in the beginnings of the 1900s – but the needs are not the same and we need something fit for the 21st century,” she added.

Individual subjects started being phased out for 16-year-olds in the country’s capital of Helsinki two years ago, and 70 percent of the city’s high school teachers are now trained in the new approach. Early data shows that students are already benefitting, with The Independent reporting that measurable pupil outcomes have improved since the new system was introduced. And Kyllonen’s blueprint, which will be published later this month, will propose that the new system is rolled out across Finland by 2020.

Of course, there is some backlash from teachers who’ve spent their entire career specialising in certain subjects. But the new blueprint suggests that teachers from different backgrounds work together to come up with the new ‘topic’ curriculums, and will receive a pay incentive for doing so.

Finland already has one of the best education systems in the world, consistently falling near the top of the prestigious PISA rankings in maths, science and reading, and this change could very well help them stay there.

Source: The Independent

Will they be able to do hard maths / physics at the end though

Dropbear said:

Will they be able to do hard maths / physics at the end though

I very much doubt that it will be used in tertiary education.

sibeen said:

Dropbear said:

Will they be able to do hard maths / physics at the end though

I very much doubt that it will be used in tertiary education.

Occasionally they do maths / physics in high school, or they used to

Dropbear said:

Will they be able to do hard maths / physics at the end though

I think the plan is to integrate it into the curriculum as part of an overall theme.

Dropbear said:

sibeen said:

Dropbear said:

Will they be able to do hard maths / physics at the end though

I very much doubt that it will be used in tertiary education.

Occasionally they do maths / physics in high school, or they used to

Fair dinkum :)

I feel that you can do a lot of crossover in those subjects at a secondary level. At the tertiary level there’s a lot that needs to be done in one subject before you can understand another, at least in my experience.

I’ll expand. When say you are learning the first steps in calculus a decent instructor will put it into a physical environment. A canon firing and the slope that the shot takes…or whatever. They are easily worked together.

In my tertiary studies in circuit analysis, for the first parts of it you needed to know basic calculus and that was about it, so they could have been taught together. Once you hit a certain point, which wasn’t far into the course, you then needed to understand ordinary differential equations, then LaPlace transforms + Fourier analysis. There’s no way, IMHO, that these can be taught concurrently; you need to have a fair grasp on the maths before you can move onto the circuit analysis.

Fair enough good points

sibeen said:

I’ll expand. When say you are learning the first steps in calculus a decent instructor will put it into a physical environment. A canon firing and the slope that the shot takes…or whatever. They are easily worked together.

In my tertiary studies in circuit analysis, for the first parts of it you needed to know basic calculus and that was about it, so they could have been taught together. Once you hit a certain point, which wasn’t far into the course, you then needed to understand ordinary differential equations, then LaPlace transforms + Fourier analysis. There’s no way, IMHO, that these can be taught concurrently; you need to have a fair grasp on the maths before you can move onto the circuit analysis.

j totally agree

diddly-squat said:

sibeen said:

I’ll expand. When say you are learning the first steps in calculus a decent instructor will put it into a physical environment. A canon firing and the slope that the shot takes…or whatever. They are easily worked together.

In my tertiary studies in circuit analysis, for the first parts of it you needed to know basic calculus and that was about it, so they could have been taught together. Once you hit a certain point, which wasn’t far into the course, you then needed to understand ordinary differential equations, then LaPlace transforms + Fourier analysis. There’s no way, IMHO, that these can be taught concurrently; you need to have a fair grasp on the maths before you can move onto the circuit analysis.

j totally agree

Ja :)

sibeen said:

diddly-squat said:

sibeen said:

I’ll expand. When say you are learning the first steps in calculus a decent instructor will put it into a physical environment. A canon firing and the slope that the shot takes…or whatever. They are easily worked together.

In my tertiary studies in circuit analysis, for the first parts of it you needed to know basic calculus and that was about it, so they could have been taught together. Once you hit a certain point, which wasn’t far into the course, you then needed to understand ordinary differential equations, then LaPlace transforms + Fourier analysis. There’s no way, IMHO, that these can be taught concurrently; you need to have a fair grasp on the maths before you can move onto the circuit analysis.

j totally agree

Ja :)

notwithstanding, I’m still more of an iFan

seems a good idea

it would get rid of the physics teachers once and for all

diddly-squat said:

notwithstanding, I’m still more of an iFan

Realistically it was an Euler ‘invention’, so the word should go to him; but, in electrical world it makes sense to use another letter as the acronym.

I would like to see making tafe / uni units easier to access online, like say the unit for life drawing and complete the unit online

CrazyNeutrino said:

I would like to see making tafe / uni units easier to access online, like say the unit for life drawing and complete the unit online

in most places TAFE is over

>it would get rid of the physics teachers once and for all

enjoyed physics, tough goin’ it was for the teacher did notice
only thing ever stole from school were a physics book
still got, doubt would’ve missed it’n anyway went to good use
after first term of first-year-high math little ol’ not good
made some ground re that way later, correspondence course
still a math dunce but got to count ‘toes each my foot
turned out there’re total eleven which to others be no surprise
achievement it little ol’ appearin’ more stupid than look
work of art so reconcilin’ expectations’n givin’ up the gifted life
wife too math genius together on tape measure a hoot
nothin’ add up, simple turn algebra so she do hers’n I do mine

no depth

“What we need now is a different kind of education to prepare people for working life,” Pasi Silander, the Helsinki’s development manager, told Garner. “Young people use quite advanced computers. In the past the banks had lots of bank clerks totting up figures but now that has totally changed. We therefore have to make the changes in education that are necessary for industry and modern society.”

But…..I hope they actually do still teach ‘totting up’ somewhere in there. Because when the power goes off and the computers go down, younger people are already not good at adding up or counting back change. And they simply don’t know how to do it. It’s not their fault. My 19 year old casual girl has to sing the alphabet to put things into alphabetical order. All her school life she’s just pressed a button. The computer age is a very, very thin veneer and if you take it away (war, major natural disaster etc) you need some of your population to start it up again.

Great story.
Society and technology are evolving, so should education.

What they are describing sounds very appealing to ‘my’ brainwaves, although I did ‘ok’ in high school results, I did struggle with the format/style/technique of classroom subject learning and homework allocation.

I love this idea and I’m saying that as a 40 something who has been through Australia’s education system.

All the kiddies need to be taught is how to use Google and that coal is bad.
No need to clutter up their brains with useful facts, that way they wont suffer from what’s it’s name when they get older.

Time for a return to the trivium and quadrivium perhaps?

Trivium: Language, logic and rhetoric.
Quadrivium: Arithmetic, geometry, music and science.

mollwollfumble said:

Time for a return to the trivium and quadrivium perhaps?

Trivium: Language, logic and rhetoric.
Quadrivium: Arithmetic, geometry, music and science.

Never heard of ‘em

)

I suppose if they don’t have a reasonable understanding of science and maths by the time they graduate they won’t finnish finish