RV Eunice M.

Garcia
MAEd – SpEd

Exemplar of Educational Systems

1. Write a reflection paper about the video presented and compare it with your experience/s
in our system.

Today, The Philippine School system is said to be one of the largest in the world. By this,
the State shall protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality education at all levels and
shall take appropriate steps to make such education accessible to all. Further, Establish and
maintain a system of free public education at the elementary and high school levels. Without
limiting the natural right of parents to rear their children, elementary education is compulsory for all
children of school age.

2. What makes Singapore and Finland educational systems successful in developing their
citizens to be a productive human capital?

In Singapore’s limitations forced it from the beginning to be competitive, give priority to

economic growth, develop new institutions, build human capital before resource distribution. State
capitalism is alive, well, and productive in Singapore. In order to survive, we had always to be
competitive. Singapore is still a work in progress” (need to understand) that vulnerability, that
fragility of our society and keep it in cohesion” (started off) “with multiple peoples, no common
language, no common culture … but “created” a very rare society where people of all races live in
the same tower blocks and now speak a common language which is not their native language.

  Finland built a strong educational system, nearly from the ground up. Finland was not
succeeding educationally in the 1970s when the United States was the unquestioned education
leader in the world. Yet this country created a productive teaching and learning system by
expanding access while investing purposefully in ambitious educational goals using strategic
approaches to build teaching capacity. To imagine how that might be done, one can look at
nations that started with very little and purposefully built highly productive and equitable systems,
sometimes almost from scratch, in the space of only two to three decades. In a typical classroom,
students are likely to be walking around, rotating through workshops or gathering information,
asking questions of their teacher, and working with other students in small groups. They may be
completing independent or group projects or writing articles for their own magazine. The cultivation
of independence and active learning allows students to develop metacognitive skills that help them
to frame, tackle, and solve problems; evaluate and improve their own work, and guide their
learning processes in productive ways.