The global trend is to move away from cramming knowledge into learning and toward learner-centered learning. Teachers who nurture independent learners need qualities on a different level than chalk-and-talk classes. Teachers who nurture independent learners need qualities as learners, expressors, and helpers. Teachers need to have the qualities of a “learner” who can experience the joy and fun of learning independently and convey it to their students, a “expressor” who can learn various expressive techniques, including physical expression, and guide learners, and a “helper” who can tangibly and intangibly encourage learners’ independent learning. An independent learner is someone who has knowledge and rich learning experience and has acquired the etiquette of learning. It is necessary to create a system that produces many such teachers.
In Japan, there is a culture that it is difficult to receive recognition for a job that normally takes 10 hours to do, even if you achieve the same results in 7 hours. In the world of education, Finnish education has been attracting attention. In Finland, there is no overtime or club activities. Teachers work from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. In Finland, students are required to learn two languages, such as English, Russian, and Swedish, during compulsory education. The level of language ability required of students is the ability to present their own country’s culture to foreigners. During the summer vacation, teachers do not go to school while children are on vacation. With this short working time, Finland has become able to provide the world’s highest level of education. The Japanese education world is world famous for the amount of overtime. This overtime mindset needs to be changed. This mindset needs to be changed at the individual, workplace, and national levels.
Finnish education seems to produce high results because of this slack. It may be an unnecessary addition, but machine tools need slack. If a high-performance machine tool is operated at 100% of its capacity, products can be made without waste. However, if there is only one production machine, if it breaks down, production will be zero. In the long run, it will be more productive to reduce the operating rate a little, check it occasionally, and perform maintenance. In some cases, if the production equipment is operated without sufficient operating capacity, the disadvantages may become greater. What Japanese teachers need is to secure this leeway. In this leeway, it is also necessary to understand and solve current problems, and to create prescriptions for future issues and how to deal with them.
