Free lunches, brain breaks and happy teachers: why Estonia has the best schools in Europe
Free lunches, brain breaks and happy teachers: why Estonia has the best schools in Europe
How did a small, relatively poor country become an educational powerhouse? Creativity, autonomy and a deep embrace of the digital age
I just don't understand why not all countries are investing heavily in schools and education. Today's kids are the future tax payers and citizens. It should be one of the most important things to invest in and yet, school buildings are falling apart, text books are either worn and outdated or massively overprized, teachers are overworked, underpaid and disrespected, staff is never enough, digitalization is nothing more than a hopeful wish because there simply is no funding to implement it, buy the hardware or hire IT experts to introduce and maintain it
The (over)simplified reason: Students have no lobby. They pay no taxes and generally create no public or monetary values while going to school. Investing in them might be a really good idea for the wider future, but a legislature is only so long and noone wants to invest a fortune only to get nothing back. Later when the students grow up, they forget the struggle or even romanticize it. Then it's "today's kids" that just seem lazy and demanding. So the people that used to go to school have no intention of changing the system either. Of course there are exceptions. That's probably the only reason things are changing at all. It's happening, just way too slow.
And they're not a voting block to be won.
Because educated people are harder for authoritarians to control.
Exactly.
I agree completely - same for stuff like free school meals, sure there's some complexity in the implementation - but the idea shouldn't be controversial to provide all children with healthy food and a level playing field.
But it's the same situation in healthcare, law enforcement, etc. too - Europe is just in a steep decline right now.
Thanks. Really interesting article! I wish school in germany was more like this.
I especially like that they value music, Art, Sport and this hobby subject more. Its so true that -while the knowledge itself is not needed in many Jobs- you do learn a lot of softskills. I never understood why we cut these subjects More and More. And i was not even a big fan of Art and Sport at the tine.
It depends, I wish the students would have more freedom of choice.
Like I hated doing Sports class but liked when we had the gym - but we couldn't choose that, it was just assigned each term.
Likewise for choosing subjects, as soon as I could I studied only science and mathematics. I really liked Music before too, but being forced to do Art and English poetry (in England) was horrible, I'm terrible at Art and never cared for poetry - or for the assigned literature compared to what I would just read myself.
Stuff like that just makes people hate school and not want to take part.
Huh, who would have guessed. Try to make people enjoy what they do and the job less stressful and productivity increases.
Must've changed a lot in the decade I've been out of school. I remember teachers in particular being stressed and underpaid. As a student I also had bigger workloads and similarly long days compared to being a working professional in the software industry - the only saving grace being that I had excellent grades without doing homework and written homework that was to be graded, I'd usually do in recess, as I don't think I'd've survived finishing my homework at 6 PM when my school day started at 8 AM.
Truly, I've never worked so hard as when I were still in school
Except there are no free lunches, literally.
Parents still have to pay for part of the lunch.