Finland Finland and Israel Schools

FINNISH SCHOOLS TO EMPLOY ISRAELI METHOD OF LEARNING…….

 

While Israel is inventing cures for cancer, it’s also exploring other ways to better mankind, for instance in teaching better learning methods, even to the top school system in the world.

H/T: Barry Rubin

A Unique Learning Method Originating In Israel

Yediot Ahronot 17-4-2012

Translated by yonatan silverman

A Unique Learning Method Originating In Israel Will Be Employed Soon In Finland’s Advanced Education System

ISRAEL WILL INSTRUCT FINLAND

The Scandinavian Country Whose Education System Is Considered The Best In The World Has Decided To Employ A Program For Acquiring Thinking And Learning Skills That Was Developed By Israel Prize Winner Prof. Reuven Feuerstein.

By Tamar Trebelsi Hadar

Finland constantly receives top grades in the ranking of educational systems in the world and represents a model to be copied and admired with respect to learning achievement – but now the Nordic nation has decided to adopt an educational program that has been developed here in Israel.

The Israeli educator behind the program is Prof Reuven Feuerstein, age 90, a researcher in educational psychology in Bar Ilan U, who founded “Feuerstein Center For Advancement Of Learning Skills” and winner of The Israel Prize in Social Science. The program covers acquisition of thinking and learning skills, and it is employed already in hundreds of schools and educational frameworks in Israel and 40 other countries, including the US, Holland, France, Brazil and Indonesia. It is adapted to the personal objectives of students – including students and soldiers from Ethiopia in an IDF framework, treatment and rehabilitation of head injuries, excellent and gifted students, students with Down syndrome and also the aged. Hebrew U and Bar Ilan U accept students for studying in the prestigious faculty on the basis of a diagnosis that is done through the Feuerstein method – that focuses not on the student’s abilities but on his potential learning and tries to acquire for him a thinking and learning strategy instead of predicting his future.

For the last 20 years the Feuerstein method has been employed in the framework of special education in Finland as a method of treating autism and learning disabilities. In recent years the method has been employed in the framework of preparing unemployed youth for work, through orderly acquisition of thinking and learning skills that will enable them to be integrated more efficiently in change of career courses. On account of its great success the educational authorities in Finland decided to employ the program also with kindergarten students and elementary schools – and there have already been trips by Israeli experts to Finland to explain to teacher’s groups there about the program.

According to Prof. Feuerstein, the method that he developed stresses the idea that people have the ability to change themselves, and the key to that is in discovering the factors that hold them back and their points of strength to develop learning skill and advance their intelligence. “This is the language of learning and thinking, “ he explains. “We employed it for the first time in 1952 on children who survived the Shoah, to help them get integrated. Since then we have taken children and adults from many countries in the world, some in difficult situations, and we have helped them reach advanced levels of learning and success. The secret is that we do not teach content – but acquisition of a strategy for learning and thinking.

Prof. Feuerstein’s research and programs are underwritten in part by the US Government, and he himself heads an international center for advancing learning ability. This evening in his honor there will be a gala in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in which President Shimon Peres, retired supreme court judge Yakov Tirkel, and the Hebron Muchtar Sheikh Jabari – who trained 20 teachers in Hebron in the Feuerstein method – Israel Prize winner Dov Lautman, business leaders educators and attorneys will take part.

Link to Prof. Feuerstein’s institute website

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