Peguam dan Orang Tua

Taken from A Joke A Day
A New York lawyer went duck hunting in eastern North Carolina. He shot and dropped a bird, but it fell into a farmer's field on the other side of a fence. As the lawyer climbed over the fence, an older man asked him what he was doing. The lawyer responded, "I shot a duck and it fell in this field, I'm going to retrieve it."
The old farmer replied. "This is my property, and you are not coming over here."
The indignant lawyer said, "I am one of the best trial attorneys in the U.S. and, if you don't let me get that duck, I'll sue you and take everything!
The old farmer smiled and said, "Apparently, you don't know how we do things here in North Carolina. We settle small disagreements like this with the NC Three-Kick Rule."
The lawyer asked, "What is the NC three-Kick Rule?"
The Farmer replied. "Well, first I kick you three times and then you kick me three times, and so on, back and forth, until someone gives up."
The New York attorney quickly thought about the proposed contest and decided that he could easily take the old southerner. He agreed to abide by the local custom.
The old farmer slowly climbed down from the tractor and walked up to the city feller. His first kick planted the toe of his heavy work boot into the lawyer's groin and dropped him to his knees. His next too kicks caused the lawyer so much pain that he just about gave up. However, the New York lawyer summoned every bit of his will and managed to get to his feet and said, "Okay, you old redneck southerner, now it's my turn."
The old North Carolina farmer smiled and said, "Naw, I give up. You can have the duck."

Inside the best school in the world Shorter days in class, long holidays, respect for teachers: it's the formula for excellence

Alex Duval Smith in Helsinki
Sunday September 25 2005
The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/25/schoolsworldwide.schools

Juxu Herka, 13, kicks her Adidas trainers into a pile of assorted Nikes and Pumas and walks to her English class in her socks - a morning ritual at Arabia School in Helsinki which gives a clue to why Finland has the best state schools in the world.

This land of vodka and Nokia phones has more graduates than any other country and its 15-year-olds are the best at solving maths problems, according to the latest education survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Juxu and her classmates have no league tables or Sats, they enjoy short school days, free hot lunches, lots of music, art and sport, and 10-week summer holidays. In a country where 60 per cent of the people are university-educated, the children have the world's best education.

The US, Britain and all other European countries are far behind Finland in the survey, along with such educational hothouses as China and Japan.

'We believe school should be an egalitarian place and an extension of home, not a cold, forbidding environment,' said English teacher Riitta Severinkangas, an English teacher at Arabia.

'In every Nordic home, children and adults leave their shoes by the door. So we do the same in our school, to make it homely, though teachers are allowed to wear indoor shoes.'

In Juxu's English class, as in many others at this combined primary and secondary school, textbooks are virtually redundant. 'I get them to do a lot of illustrated essays,' said Severinkangas. 'Their homework today is to write about "my favourite pet". It is always better to try to get the pupils to relate to something in their own lives.'

A three-headed dog may turn up in the essays. Pupil Victor Sund is a Harry Potter fanatic and is reading the 600 pages of The Half Blood Prince - in English. 'It has not been translated into Finnish yet,' he says, matter of factly. Not to be outdone, classmate Ville Luostarinen shows off his weighty Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide - also in the original language. These pupils are all 13 and have been studying English for just three years.

Since the OECD's first major education study, in 2000, Finland, with a population of five million, has led the world in literacy.

'We were not astounded by that result,' said Jouni Valijarvi, professor of education research at Jyvaskyla University, 'because we have a tradition of reading and using libraries. It dates back to Christianity's arrival in Finland 400 years ago. Priests used to test couples' literacy. Those who could not read from the Bible were denied marriage licences.'

The 317 pupils at the school - a building without corridors, designed around a spiral staircase and an open-plan cafeteria - are from a cross-section of Finnish inner-city families, with few from ethnic minorities. Those with special needs belong to ordinary classes but also have three teachers of their own.

Nico Kalja, 14, sits in a corner of teacher Jorma Kuittinen's special needs class and says - in English - that it's all 'bullshit' and he would rather be on his PlayStation or listening to Metallica.

Yet Kuittinen has interested at least two of the eight children in a history lesson. Inez Kaukoranta, 14, enjoys films and acting; she is taking notes on Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator. One of the boys prefers military technology and is making a collage of Second World War bombers.

Headteacher Kaisu rarely uses her office, preferring to be in the staff room with colleagues. 'We are informal and talk a lot, sharing ideas,' she said.

Lately, Karkkainen's time has been taken up showing foreign education experts around. 'They all want to know what our secret is. I say it's our teachers. In Finland, the teaching profession is highly regarded. Education is considered a science and there is such competition that only about 13 per cent of applicants a year are admitted to the teaching faculty. You do five years and qualify with a master's degree. We do not have teacher training colleges.'

Arabia school is twinned with a British comprehensive in County Durham, which Karkkinen has visited. 'The methods are the same, the children are the same, but in Finland we are trusted by the authorities to find the best solutions and do our job.'

But Valijarvi, the education professor, fears Finland's success will tempt politicians to 'tinker', perhaps introducing UK-style league tables. 'The competitive approach tends to lower the overall level,' he warned.

'Our poor students do extremely well, so the gap between them and the high performers is small compared to that in other countries. But we know you have to work extremely hard with those students. If you stress competition, they will be the losers and the gap will widen.'

For now, however, Juxu and her friends can go on leaving their trainers at the school door, knowing that they are knocking the socks off the competition

Cuma pelajar yang terbaik berpeluang menjadi guru di Finland

The Hechinger Report is a nonprofit news organization that is focused on producing in-depth education journalism.

http://hechingerreport.org/content/an-interview-with-henna-virkkunen-finlands-minister-of-education_5458/

An interview with Henna Virkkunen, Finland’s Minister of Education

By Justin Snider , 

MARCH 16, 2011

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The Hechinger Report:  It’s well-known that Finland’s teachers are an elite bunch, with only top students offered the chance to become teachers. It’s also no secret that they are well-trained. But take us inside that training for a moment – what does it look like, specifically? How does teacher training in Finland differ from teacher training in other countries?

Virkkunen: It’s a difficult question. Our teachers are really good. One of the main reasons they are so good is because the teaching profession is one of the most famous careers in Finland, so young people want to become teachers. In Finland, we think that teachers are key for the future and it’s a very important profession—and that’s why all of the young, talented people want to become teachers. All of the teacher-training is run by universities in Finland, and all students do a five-year master’s degree.  Because they are studying at the university, teacher education is research-based. Students have a lot of supervised teacher-training during their studies. We have something called “training schools”—normally next to universities—where the student teaches and gets feedback from a trained supervisor.

Teachers in Finland can choose their own teaching methods and materials. They are experts of their own work, and they test their own pupils. I think this is also one of the reasons why teaching is such an attractive profession in Finland because teachers are working like academic experts with their own pupils in schools.

Henna Virkkunen, Finland's Minister of Education

The Hechinger Report: How are teachers evaluated in Finland? How are they held accountable for student learning?

Virkkunen: Our educational society is based on trust and cooperation, so when we are doing some testing and evaluations, we don’t use it for controlling [teachers] but for development. We trust the teachers. It’s true that we are all human beings, and of course there are differences in how teachers test pupils, but if we look at the OECD evaluation—PISA, for example—the learning differences among Finnish schools and pupils are the smallest in OECD countries, so it seems that we have a very equal system of good quality.

The Hechinger Report: How does Finland incorporate immigrants and minorities into its educational system?

Virkkunen: We haven’t had so many immigrants in Finland, but we are going to have more in the future—and we need more because we have an aging population. In some schools, in the areas around Helsinki, more than 30 percent of the pupils are immigrants. It seems that we have been doing good work, also with the immigrants, if we look at PISA results. Normally, if children come from a very different schooling system or society, they have one year in a smaller setting where they study Finnish and maybe some other subjects. We try to raise their level before they come to regular classrooms. We think also that learning one’s mother tongue is very important, and that’s why we try to teach the mother tongue for all immigrants as well. It’s very challenging. I think in Helsinki, they are teaching 44 different mother tongues. The government pays for two-hour lessons each week for these pupils. We think it is very important to know your own tongue—that you can write and read and think in it. Then it’s easier also to learn other languages like Finnish or English, or other subjects.

The Hechinger Report: What roles do teacher unions play in Finland? In the U.S. right now, unions are seen as a big problem standing in the way of reform. What’s it like in Finland?

Virkkunen: It’s a totally different situation in Finland. For me, as Minister of Education, our teachers’ union has been one of the main partners because we have the same goal: we all want to ensure that the quality of education is good, and we are working very much together with the union. Nearly every week we are in discussions with them. They are very powerful in Finland. Nearly all of the teachers are members. I think we don’t have big differences in our thinking. They are very good partners for us.

The Hechinger Report: What do you think the U.S. can and should learn from Finland when it comes to public education?

Virkkunen: It’s a very difficult question. An educational system has to serve the local community, and it’s very much tied to a country’s own history and society, so we can’t take one system from another country and put it somewhere else. But I think that teachers are really the key for a better educational system. It’s really important to pay attention to teacher training, in-service training and working conditions. Of course, the teachers always say we also have to pay attention to their salaries. But in Finland, it seems that the salaries are not the main reason it’s an attractive profession. Teachers aren’t very badly paid. They earn the average if you look at other academic professions.

The Hechinger Report: In the U.S., it’s estimated that 50 percent of new teachers quit within five years. I suspect it’s different in Finland. Is teaching seen as a lifelong career in Finland?

Virkkunen: Teaching is a lifelong career in Finland, but right now we are doing an evaluation of why some teachers leave their jobs. The rate isn’t very high. It’s often men who leave, as they find jobs with higher salaries. We have to develop some kind of mentoring system because the new, young teachers need support. Often the feedback I hear from young teachers is that it is not easy to cooperate with parents, for example, so that is one of the areas where young teachers need support from their colleagues.

The Hechinger Report: What’s something important but not widely known or well understood about public education in Finland?

Virkkunen: We teach all pupils in the same classrooms. We don’t have really good, top schools and very poor, bad schools. We are quite good at giving special support to students with learning difficulties. About 25 percent of our pupils receive some kind of special support, but in regular classrooms—often the teacher has an assistant in the classroom. We also think it is very important that there aren’t too many pupils per teacher. We don’t have legislation limiting class size, but the average class size for all grades is 21. In first- and second-grade, it’s 19.

We think we can have equality and good quality at the same time—that they are not opposites.

Our students spend less time in class than students in other OECD countries. We don’t think it helps students learn if they spend seven hours per day at school because they also need time for hobbies, and of course they also have homework.