我们都应该向芬兰学习——世界上最幸福的国家可以教会我们教育孩子、人工智能和生活

We Should ALL Learn from Finland 

The happiest country in the world can teach us a lot about educating our children, artificial intelligence and life!

When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, I learned about Finland (the small Nordic country) as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone maker. I’m still in love with Nokia 3360. But lately, Finland is getting attention in different areas; an excellent education system and perhaps the happiest nation on earth. And not because of Nokia!

For the 4th year in a row, Finland topped a list of countries evaluated as the happiest country in the world. In my work at ReadyAI, I have interacted with Finns. Finland has one of the BEST free intro AI courses, thanks to Teemu Roos and his team at the University of Helsinki.

I urge you all to look at the World Happiness Report. The report uses data from interviews of more than 350,000 people in over 95 countries and conducted by the polling company Gallup. The actual rankings are not based on factors like income or life expectancy but on how people rate their happiness on a 10-point scale.

Questions in the report are fascinating and include: “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?”, “Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?” or “Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?”

There are questions related to trust. Someone who believed the police or strangers were “very likely” to return his or her lost wallet had a much higher life evaluation score than someone who believed the opposite.

Let me go back to Finland. It is an egalitarian society; people tend not to be fixated on “keeping up with the Joneses.” People do pretty well in social comparison. And this starts from education; everybody has access to good education. Income and wealth differences are relatively small. Finns also tend to have realistic expectations for their lives. But when something in life does exceed expectations, people will often act with humility, preferring a self-deprecating joke over bragging. Finns are pros at keeping their happiness a secret.

Once again, I urge you all to read the report. All of the countries ranked in the top 10 — including the four other Nordic countries — have different political philosophies than the US, №14 on the list, behind Ireland and Canada.

Finland is far from perfect. Like many countries, far-right nationalism is on the rise, and unemployment is 8.1%, higher than the average unemployment rate of 7.5 percent in the EU. But there is a lot about the country that is indeed great. The country’s public school system, which rarely tests kids, is among the best in the world. College is free. There is an excellent universal healthcare system, and child care is affordable. And the country has been one of the least impacted European countries by the pandemic, which is attributed to the high trust in government and little resistance to following restrictions.

Yes, Trust… People trust each other. Each morning, it is common in Helsinki to see kids as young as seven walking by themselves with their backpacks to school, feeling completely secure. That epitomizes Finnish happiness. There is something they’ve done right, and we can all learn from it.

When it comes to education, we should learn from Finns. Since the 80s, the main driving force of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, location, or income. For Finns, education has been seen as an instrument to even out social inequality and not as a way to produce star performers.

When JFK made his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon in the 60s, many said it couldn’t be done. But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King, just a few years later had a dream. Yes, those dreams came true. Finland’s vision of a good public education for every child came true, even though main Finns said it couldn’t be done at the time.

It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important — as a challenge to our way of thinking in my home country — America about education reform. Finland’s experience proves that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not only on competition but also on cooperation, not on choice, but equity, dignity, and justice.

When I think about AI education in America, the problem we are facing isn’t the diversity of the population but the inequality of society. This is precisely the problem that Finland education reform addressed. More equity at home might be what we need to be more competitive aboard.

There is a lot we can all learn from Finland in educating our children, artificial intelligence and life! And yes, NOKIA 3360 is still my favorite phone.

Let me leave you with a Finnish proverb: “Happiness is a place between too much and too little.”