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.
