Agatha Muci Salazar

Finnish School and Subject Education

Opposite ends of the spectrum: Venezuela and Finland

The education system in Finland has become famous all around the world in recent years
because of its constant outstanding scores in the PISA tests. Even though their performance has
declined a little in the last examination, what is most remarkable is how they manage to get such
good results by using a very different teaching method. The way of teaching in Finland differs a
great deal from the traditional approaches employed by other countries with the top scores like
Singapore and Japan, and for me the Finnish do it undoubtedly better. Thus, it might be
constructive to compare it against the education in my country, Venezuela, to see what things
could be done better and what needs to be changed in the future.
Before being able to compare specific differences between the education in Venezuela
and Finland we must address the current situation in Venezuela and some basic differences
between education policies and how education is perceived in both countries.
Venezuela used to be one of the richest countries in South America; however, following
Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in 1999 the economy started declining (Hausmman & Santos,
2017). During his time as president, the price of oil, which is Venezuela’s primary export and
source of income, reached its highest price. Then, oversimplifying things, we could say the
government had a lot of money and it used it to start many different programs and subsidies
which were not sustainable. The country started spending more than what it was earning so it had
to go into recession and debt after the prices dropped (Venezuela’s deepening crisis, 2017).
Some education programs were launched but these will be explained in detail later. Nowadays,
because of Chavez’s policies and now Nicolás Maduro’s (his successor), the country has an
unpayable debt and has the highest levels of hyperinflation and insecurity which has forced
Venezuelans to flee the country (Faiola, 2018). This government is basically a dictatorship under
the disguise of socialism, it only cares about maintaining itself in power and going against
anyone who is against the regime, even recurring to torture and political persecution (Martel,
2018; Faiola, 2018).
 The above is relevant when talking about education for several reasons. Firstly, since the
government tries to hide the real situation from Venezuelans and the international public, official
data and statistics have not been released since 2009, which difficults comparisons in any area.
Secondly, it helps explain the poor conditions of most public institutions, especially in
infrastructure. Thirdly, it also explains the conflicts between higher education institutions and the
government, since most of these institutions are part of the opposition. Finally, it needs to be
considered because the current curriculum is filled with political propaganda (Nagel, 2014), a
change that started in the 2009 curriculum reform and with last year’s curriculum transformation.
Moreover, what is said in the curriculum hardly resembles the reality of the education system;
because of this I will be relying primarily from my experience and news articles for this essay. It
is worth mentioning that the 2009 curriculum was the one in practice when I finished high school
so my experience stems from that one, and that the most recent changes have not been applied
yet.
That aside, it is possible to start talking about education in both countries. Some of the
cornerstones of the Finnish education system are the perception the society has about the role of
education and its teachers, and equality for everyone in accessing quality education. Education is
seen as a priority in the country; because of its history of war and poverty, the current Finnish
society was built on the idea that quality education for everyone was needed for the country to
develop (Lonka, 2018). This is why basic education is free and the image the teaching profession
has is so respectable; because they recognize its value. Something totally different happens in
Venezuela.
First, let us have a closer look at the Finnish system. It allows everyone to access good
education by making it free, offering transportation, food and materials, which shows the
important place education is given within the society. Even private schools are financed by the
government so that they can be free for its students. Even though some schools have higher
standards and so they are more difficult to get in, there is trust in the system that no matter the
school, the educations is going to be good. That is why parents normally take their children to
the nearest school.
In Venezuela, on the other hand, the differences between private and public schools are
tremendous. Since there is a lot of inequality in the country, the same goes for education. Any
family that can pay for private school for their children, will do so; any private school is
considered better than the best public one (Abadi, 2018). The private schools’ tuitions have a
very wide range, thus, the facilities and quality of teaching also varies. The curriculum is
centralized and private as well as public schools have to follow it (Goon et al., n.d.), but unlike
Finland, there is no space for local curriculums or community involvement. Said curriculum
states that food and transportation are provided in public institutions but recently even food
cannot be provided or children are just given a bit of rice. In fact, 24% of the most poverty-
stricken students that miss class, do so because they do not have anything to eat at home or at the
school (Encuesta sobre Condiciones de Vida, 2017; Polanco, 2018). This is a result of
hyperinflation, the country’s currency is so devalued that most families struggle to buy enough
food for their family.
Regarding public schools, it needs to be said that various programs or ‘missions’ were
opened during Chavez’s time in power that successfully increased literacy rates and the number
of people enrolled in schools and in higher education. Nonetheless, the quality of education has
actually gone down. When talking about education those indicators do not tell the whole story,
quality and not quantity is what matter and in Venezuela, productivity or research levels have
gone down (Nagel, 2013; Otis, 2017).
Another difference is the number of youth that want to go into the teaching profession
when they enter university and the exclusivity and high requisites to enter the training programs.
In Finland, both reflect the view of education as a priority and something desirable. Actually, the
teaching programs are the most selective when accepting students, admitting only the best:
“There are several thousands of applicants to teacher education institutions every year, and only
8–10% of the applicants will enter universities to start their studies” (Statistics of VAKAVA,
2014, 2015). Additionally, a master’s degree in education is necessary before a person can
become a teacher in Finland. This shows that Finnish people recognize the importance of quality
education and great teachers in the development of a nation.
In Venezuela, conversely, the situation is much different. Teachers are not appreciated or
respected in most schools. In my experience, saying you want to become a teacher in high school
will only make your friends laugh and try to change your mind. This happens because education
is not a priority for the government and it reflects in the whole system, society and culture. Of
course there are plenty economic and political factors affecting Venezuela right now and
government spending in education has not been sufficient for a long time. Thus, a teacher or
professor’s salary is really low, very close to the minimum wage, which right now is not enough
to even support one family for a week. In private schools the pay might be a bit better but still
not good and they get less benefits. As a result, many teachers have also emigrated, other
teachers also have to miss class because of food shortage and in some places parents are asked to
fill in for teaching positions without any prior experience or knowledge on the subject
(Sarmiento, 2018). This leaves the whole educational system in crisis.
Another issue is the selectivity of education programs in university. In Venezuela there is
no national exam for higher education, each university has its own entrance tests and procedures.
However, in many of these universities the education program has the lowest grade required for
admission or does not require any exam at all. This means that students that did not get
satisfactory results on the test and were not accepted in any other program, choose to become
teachers, the total opposite of Finland. This is really problematic because it really lowers the
quality of the teachers, most students do not take the career seriously and are not prepared to
assume the responsibility it has. It also forms a vicious cycle, since it means teachers in
classrooms are not as good and they make plenty of mistakes, this makes them lose the respect of
the students, which in turn discourages them from wanting to become teachers themselves.
In contrast, teacher training education in Finland intends to make teachers research
oriented. According to Niemi et al.(2016), this has numerous meanings, like having a
constructivist view of learning and knowledge building, being well acquainted with educational
and pedagogical knowledge and research, being able to cooperate with others and accept
feedback and more. Ultimately the authors say it boils down to: being aware of personal values
and how they influence the teacher practice, recognizing how the cultural context shapes
learning, participating in the development of the curriculum and any school changes, being able
to solve practice dilemmas in the classroom and being responsible for their own development,
striving for self-improvement. In other words, Finnish teachers are trained to justify their
practices with research, they are flexible enough to use different methods whenever it is better
and constantly reinvent themselves and their practices. This has really set Finnish education apart
and has separated them from traditional ways of teaching.
In Venezuela, higher education now has a really bleak future, not only in teacher training
and education programs but in every area. In the country there are mainly three types of
universities, private ones, public ones and relatively new public ones founded by Chavez called
Bolivarian universities. The latter are totally controlled by the government and though they
helped increased the number of people enrolled in higher education, the academic standard is
poor and they are full of the regime’s propaganda (Otis, 2016). On the other hand, since the
bigger public universities openly reject the government, the estate has totally neglected them. In
reality, most universities do not even receive half of the budget they asked for (Fermin, 2018),
what they get is barely enough to pay faculty salaries, so there is nothing left to spend in
maintenance, equipment or infrastructure (Reisz, 2017). Besides, all the professors need to have
another job, be it at another university or in the field, because the salary is not sufficient to get
by. As a result, many scholars have left the country and it won’t be long before more of them do
so, since sometimes they need to spend money to keep teaching instead of earning it (Becerra,
2018).
As I mentioned before, the way the educational system works in Finland shows the
important role it plays in its society. Mostly by being accessible to everyone and by thinking of
becoming a teacher as a valued profession, but also by the way it always tries to improve itself.
In Finland, the curriculum has been reformed every ten years, indicating the significance that
keeping up with the society and recent research have here in Finland. In Venezuela, the
curriculum is largely the same as it was in 1969, with only some minor changes done in the past
and the biggest reforms coming in 2007 and 2015 - 2016. Nonetheless, these last reforms were
mostly political, a structural change was made in the last one but it still has not been
implemented because of lack of resources and bad conditions in the country. Indeed, what is
written in the curriculum stays on paper because the teachers are neither qualified nor trained to
teach the competences it asserts and there are not any mechanisms to ensure they do. Now we
can go into differences inside the classrooms.
What I have seen in Finnish classrooms is that they do not uphold the teacher-student
hierarchy and the image of the students that teachers have here is very different from the one in
my country. Here, learning is student-centered, most classes have their desks in groups instead of
just facing the teacher to the front and student participation and collaboration in class is highly
encouraged. Moreover, the new curriculum gives students more freedom and multidisciplinary
experience with phenomenal learning (Lonka, 2018). At the center of this is the image that
teachers have of their students and the purpose of their practice. They see students as whole,
independent human beings, whose opinions and interests matter, no matter what age. Likewise,
they see their role as guides to help them reach their whole potential, self-fulfillment and teach
them thinking skills (Niemi et al., 2016). Having this as their goal gives them the flexibility to
try different things that might be better for their students and not prioritizing memorization of
content over learning and personal abilities.
Meanwhile in Venezuela, classroom practices are far away from the research. Teaching
is teacher-centered, students are expected to stay quiet, pay attention and take notes while the
teacher is giving a lecture. Even though better ways of teaching like collaborative learning or
inquiry-based learning are taught in university and there is plenty of research about this, these
methods are not applied in schools. Most teachers have no experience and are fresh from
university since there are not many to pick from. They focus only on rote learning, the goal is the
memorization of the facts that the teacher imparts. If the teachers see their purpose as the
formation of integral citizens with learning skills, with a global and scientific view like in
Finland; it really does not show on their way of teaching. It needs to be said, though, that the way
the system works in Venezuela does not give much space for teachers to try new things or
participate in the making of the curricula. In fact, the schools pressure them to go over the
required content according to schedule so they cannot be flexible.
The materials teachers can use is also a point of divergence between the two systems. In
Finland, institutions and sometimes teachers, have the freedom to choose whatever resources
they deem best for their classes, be it books, videos or something else (Niemi et al., 2016).
Whereas in Venezuela, the new reform establishes that all educational materials shall be
provided by the state. Which consists of books made by the government that center on instilling
nationalism and the government’s ideals on the students. All of the above demonstrates the vast
differences in how educations is conceived in Finland and Venezuela.
The difference is more distinguished in smaller children, particularly in the lower grades
of primary school. I have had the privilege to sit in some classes in Finland and it does not
resemble my experience in Venezuela at all. It can be said that children are allowed to be
children here, whereas in Venezuela they are expected to be quiet and still all the time, which is
not really natural for them. Even more when they only have one 30 to 45-minute or two 15-
minutes breaks in the 7-hour, or longer, school day. Here in Finland, the new curriculum
specifies that a 15-minute break should follow every academic hour, or a 30-minute recess every
two academic hours. This would be mind blowing for students in Venezuela who are not used to
have fun in schools or while learning.
In conclusion, there are very clear differences in classroom and teacher practices between
Venezuela and Finland, many more than the ones expressed in this essay. However, I believe
these differences, like being teacher-centered instead of student-centered, employing passive
learning instead of active, focusing on memorizing facts instead of learning how to learn or life
competences, and not being flexible with their methods and materials, are not the real challenge.
I think those things will not change if we cannot change how we, as a society, think about
education and teaching. The reality is that the Venezuelan society is stuck in a damaging cycle
for education: the society does not see the value in it and how critical quality education and
teaching is for the country to develop; this affects aspiring teachers who choose other careers and
good teachers are scarce; which results in outdated classroom practices and ways of teaching that
leave such a bad impression on students that it only makes them lose more respect and hope in
education and the cycle is maintained and strengthened. The deterioration of the education in
Venezuela has been ongoing for a long time, but it is at its worst right now because of multiple
factors affecting everyday life in the country. I believe that to break the cycle of bad education
we need to tackle it from different angles: improve teacher training so we can have better
teachers worthy of respect, and having a government that cares enough to do what is necessary
for education; maybe this way people will start believing in education and give it priority once
again. Then again, me and many other have already lost hope of something like this happening in
the near future, much less with the situation getting worse every day. But until then, it is
impossible to do a proper comparison between the educational system in Finland and in my
country, right now they are in opposite sides of the continuum. Though, I do hope we can follow
Finland’s example one day, and I will love to have my part in it.

References
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