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Welcome guys to episode 311 of Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week I'm extremely excited to welcome on the
show educator, speaker and author Pasi Sahlberg.
Now Pasi is originally from Finland where he grew up in a family of teachers and then
became an educator himself.
Then found himself traveling to America, currently lives in Australia and really got a global
perspective of what was working and what was not working in different areas of education
around the globe.
So he began to do talks, began to write books.
His most recent one, Let the Children Play is the one that I read prior to this interview
and I personally as a father, as a parent who has tried to be very involved with my
son's school, have observed some things that we do very well here and some things that
I think we could do better.
As with the prison systems in Norway and the drug policy in Portugal, topics that we've
covered in the past, I think that much of what Pasi talks about really brings the solutions
to some of the problems that we're having in the UK, in the US, Australia and I think
we can do it better and that's the whole point.
We want our children to be educated, we want them to be inspired, we want them to want
to go to school and I don't think there's any better time than now when so many of us
are now homeschooling our children.
So this is a great time to reflect.
Please take the time to listen.
I think there's so much great information out there that empowers us as parents, empowers
our schools, our teachers to just start questioning some of the ways we do things, some of the
history behind those ways and how we can learn from other systems, other countries and improve
our own.
So before we get to that interview, as I always say, please just take a moment, go to whichever
app you listen to this podcast on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback.
I love reading your feedback and then leave a rating.
The five star ratings really do make us more and more visible for people looking for a
podcast like this.
And as I said, this is a free library.
So it's for you, the listener, use it personally, use it in your department.
And all I ask in return is just to help share.
The more people that hear these incredible stories, including Pasi's, the more positive
change we're going to make in the world.
So that being said, I introduce to you Pasi Saalberg.
Enjoy.
So Pasi, I want to start by saying thank you so, so much for taking the time to come on
the Behind the Shield podcast.
Thank you very much, James.
It's my pleasure, really.
Right.
So let's get to the first question, where are we finding you on planet Earth today?
I just woke up in Sydney, Australia.
This is where I live now.
I've been here a year and a half.
So this is a beautiful sunny morning in the May morning when we are heading towards the
winter here.
But it's not that much of the winter compared to where I come from, which is Finland.
Yeah, perfect.
Well, let's talk about that.
So I'd love to hear about where in Finland you were born and what your family dynamic
was like, what your parents did.
Yeah, I was born a long time ago in the northern part of Finland in a small town called Oulu,
where my parents, where my father was a teacher and my mother was a teacher actually as well.
And we moved when I was about two years old to a small village about 100 miles south from
Oulu, but still very, very much north where I was raised in a family of teachers living
actually in a village primary school.
So education has been a big part of my life ever since.
Right.
Now in one of your talks, you mentioned about your grandfather and how he came to the US.
Yeah, I have a kind of interesting connection to the United States.
My grandfather, my father's father left Finland like many, many others in Scandinavia in 1914
just before the war and went to New York, settled down in New Jersey and got a great
education in Brooklyn, I guess it was, and then happened to come back when Finland became
independent in 1917.
So he returned back just to see his father and some relatives in 1920s and then met his
wife, my grandmother and never returned.
But he was an American citizen until really the second world war when he decided to give
the citizenship away so that he could stay in Finland.
So that's my connection to the US.
We have his grandfather was another amazing person.
He traveled in 1839.
He left Helsinki and went all the way across around South America to Alaska.
That is now of course the part of the United States, but that time it was part of Russia
and Finland was part of Russia as well.
So he went there.
He was a passionate natural scientist and medical doctor.
And he was curious about the nature and the bugs and birds and others.
And I guess, you know, when I look at my past, I probably got much more from those, my grandfather
and great, great grandfather than actually from my parents regarding this kind of a tribe
that I have internationally to go from one place to another.
That among many other places took me here in Australia a few years ago.
Yeah.
I think it sounds like the curiosity side is probably something you got from them to
try and look outside the box as it were.
Absolutely.
Yes.
All right.
Well then I know obviously Finland is more of a northern country.
What did your kind of sports and athletics that like when you were in school?
Well, you know, if you grew up in an environment where I grew up, it's a little bit like asking
Canadians, what sports did you do when you were young?
There's only one answer.
And that's ice hockey.
I used to do a lot of all kinds of winter sports because that was really the thing to
do.
That time they were not really indoor facilities for doing something like basketball or anything
else.
So it was ice hockey and football in the summer.
I was doing a lot of sports, riding my bicycles.
I still do, but I was a passionate cyclist that time as well with my little bike went
all over the place.
But my best memories are of course from playing ice hockey outdoors in the middle of the winter
when it's really cold and you can be together with your friends and just play hockey.
Yeah.
That's funny.
I think every single Canadian I've had on the show so far has said the same thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
Then what about career wise?
So you had parents who were both teachers.
Were you already planning on teaching when you were still in school?
No, I didn't actually realize that very much until I had been teaching for a few years.
Of course in Finland if you decide to become a teacher, it's not such a question that it
is in the United States, for example, where the common reaction would be that you didn't
really figure out anything better to do.
Because back home if somebody wants to become a teacher, it's like a noble thing.
The question that why did you become a teacher was not really asked often as it is in many
other countries.
But of course afterwards now when I think about it, being born and raised basically
in a school building, living in a school building and having 100% of your time surrounded by
things related to school and teaching and learning and then having parents who do that
for profession.
Of course it left a kind of a positive mark in me when I started to think about what to
do in my life.
But my first love really was mathematics and science.
This is the natural sciences, physics and chemistry and all those things that you can
see around.
That's of course something that I had no idea where this comes from until I studied a little
bit about what all my ancestors had been doing.
My father's side of family is full of these natural scientists and biologists and others
who had been traveling around the world 150 years ago.
So afterwards when I started to think about how did I ended up doing what I do, the answer
was easy that the environment where I was raised as a child, a very positive one, I
really loved having space and having a privilege to not just go to school but live in a school.
And then on the other side through the DNA, this passion to look at the nature and environment
and mathematics as well.
It took me to study mathematics and naturally if you can combine the passion and love that
you have into one to teach mathematics and science, that's exactly what happened to me
and that's how I ended up in doing what I'm doing right now.
Yeah.
So I know you mentioned in one of the conversations that Finland didn't have all the answers when
it comes to education a few decades ago.
So when you were at a school age, I'm assuming around 40 or so years ago, what were you seeing
there and then kind of walk us through Finland's actual evolution in their education system?
Well, my own school, Memories Room School, referred to very traditional schooling and
it was not always fun.
I guess my primary school was somehow fine and okay.
My father was for a couple of years, he was my teacher and then when I moved to middle
school and high school, I think schooling for me became more and more kind of a place
that I didn't quite understand why we are doing these things in a way.
We were doing very traditional things, teachers teaching and you had to remember stuff whether
you liked it or you were interested in that or not.
So one thing that really pushed me to teach in the end was my personal challenge that
can I do this teaching better than my own teachers?
I remember thinking sometimes when I was in high school like this, there must be a better
way to teach English or mathematics, not so much mathematics but many other things like
foreign languages for example.
And this all said that the school system and the culture of schools teaching and learning
was very traditional all the way until I guess when I entered school as a teacher myself
somewhere in the late 1980s when being a teacher myself, I was kind of a, I don't know if a
word rebel would be right but you know together with some other young teachers, we were challenging
many of the traditional things like why do we speak so much?
Why do we give students a voice or never ask them whether you're interested in these things
or how would you like to learn this?
What are the things that you want to learn in school?
So I guess that the Finland's education system began to open up a little bit to this new
ideas when I just entered the school and certainly in the early 1990s when many other big changes
happened around like the Soviet Union collapsed and the whole kind of a daily reality in Finland
changed completely that we didn't have the Soviet Union anymore there and then we started
to you know seriously think about being part of the European Union and many other things
that maybe this is a good reason also for asking these fundamental questions in the
school as a teacher but how do we teach and what is the role of the students and how do
we run the schools?
What is a place called school?
How children learn and what is knowledge?
All those basic fundamental things came into the surface of the daily work and lives of
teachers and I was really privileged to be part of that time when this happened and that
was the that I often say that was the one of the important parts of the history of Finnish
schooling.
Yeah and I think that that's an incredibly important point to make is to look at something
and before we start recording I talked about Portugal for example and their drug policy
and them completely reinventing that and having incredible success is getting to that point
where you realize doing the same thing over and over again isn't working and having the
humility to say we need to take a step back we need to look at you know what we're doing
maybe find other places countries whatever it is that appear to be doing it better and
maybe start implementing some of those ideas into our own system.
Absolutely yes and the and the United States of course for me has always been a part where
I have found the most interesting and and pulled ideas for education.
I remember when I did my when I studied to be a teacher in this was at the University
of Helsinki and then when I did my PhD a few years later you know most of the literature
I read most of the books and articles were written by the the people in the United States
and I came to you as often and I vividly remember you know this was a time when the internet
was not really that well developed yet you you couldn't have the library access or journal
articles available in the internet but you know I came I went to United States at least
once a year with I left Helsinki with an empty suitcase and I came back with my suitcase
full of books and resources and materials and they were all American ideas and I was
not the only one there were a lot of other people who did the same when they went to
conferences in the US or or spent time at the universities we always came back with
the with the new ideas and and novel thinking about education and schooling and you know
we made the best use of those those things not everything but you know having such a
rich collection of thoughts and ideas from from American colleagues was absolutely critically
important in you know thinking about taking this Finnish education journey journey forward
and you know this is something that I often think about is that the US the United States
was actually from the education perspective also built on foreign ideas from Germany and
Europe in the 19th century and 20th century as well but the but the United States overall
has been much very different in this respect of you know learning from others and seeing
what the others do than Finland or the Scandinavian countries overall and that's why I often say
that you know big reason why why we Finland came up in in near 2000 after 20 years ago
as a as a high performing successful education system is exactly because of these these new
ideas that we were able to transport from the US and think about them and consider them
in our own context and then say that you know we don't need to reinvent the wheel again
you know this is a great idea let's do something about it and this this really happens in the
United States anymore because everything is thought to be discovered in America and and
that's kind of an exchange of of ideas when it comes to education and thinking about what
works and what do we need to do is something that is very different today than it was earlier
in the United States and Finland as well.
Yeah I remember a story and I might have a president wrong I think it was President Roosevelt
but after World War II they were posturing to put universal health care here in America
and they ended up putting it I believe in Japan and I think it was Germany as well but
then the I think he you know he passed away and then the successor basically got rid of
it and you know so obviously that in my opinion coming from England where I think that health
care system is incredible if it's supported properly by the by the people that fund it
it seems like politics got in the way now you refer to several pioneers in education
that were American and you showed clips of some of them talking in in one presentation
that I watched what were the barriers that these great American education thinkers weren't
able to get their ideas implemented into our system here in the US or for example say the
UK?
That's a that's a good question that I think people people who have longer and deeper understanding
about these cultures can can answer I I've never really figured out for example in the
United States where I've lived almost 10 years in the two different times and so I I know
something about the US but I still don't understand this particular fact that there are so many
world-class really brilliant thinkers and doers in the United States that are basically
ignored when it comes to their advice and understanding and insight into education.
Just to mention one Howard Gardner who with who I had a had an honor really to work at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education a few years ago repeatedly said to me that he
is he is regularly invited to advise prime ministers and education authorities around
the world about education and reforming you know rebuilding education but not in the United
States he said that no no US states educational authorities let alone the federal Washington
DC educators you know those policymakers have asked him to come and have a conversation
about you know what his science and research findings would mean from for for the United
States and that you know this list is long that they are they are scores of American
scholars and people who have been reforming education influencing education around the
world who spend most of their time working overseas and helping assisting others but
not in the US and you know this is this is something that I really don't understand why
is that it may be that education is more politicized in in the US is much more politicized than
in many many other countries meaning that these big decisions you know who can who can
have a word who can have an influence are much more decided by political figures in
in administration than educators and that's that's the big big thing and in England as
well I often think that maybe it's because of the something to do with this political
system where where the countries that have basically just two possible large parties
that people can vote red or blue or black and white whatever they are often find themselves
in a situation where education decisions cannot be built on the kind of a previous political
ideas because that's that would be dangerous politically to do but in Scandinavia for example
if you look at Norway or Finland or Sweden any of these wonderful countries that when
you have a multi-party democracy where where there are no no two major parties that rule
it's easier to end up in a in a kind of a situation where you can build consensus or
think across the the political boundaries and just you know identify good ideas whether
they are your own country or somewhere else and then then move on I I would say that the
the education education is political everywhere but it's much less politicized in in countries
like the Nordic countries are than it is in here in Australia or or Canada or United States
or UK or England I must say yeah and I think it's it's tragic and like I said I come from
England myself originally in Umber as a young boy watching the two sides as you mentioned
just waving papers and shouting at each other seemingly getting absolutely nowhere and then
you know we come come here to the US and even even the political elements the the commercials
that they're allowed to have here is nothing but the other person is an idiot that's it
you know it's it's not not even any content you don't even learn about what these other
people stand for and I think that it does completely get in the way and and issues that
they are arguing about I believe you can solve when our nation our children whether it's
addiction mental health violence I mean all these elements and yet there doesn't seem
to be a focus of proactively trying to positively affect our you know boys and girls so then
they in turn are going to bloom and flourish mostly into you know higher functioning citizens
that's right right well then I would love to firstly and then again generalizing Australia
the the UK the US what are some areas that you are seeing like common denominators that
you think are creating a negative impact on children's you know their learning ability
their mental health physical health all these elements that you're seeing yeah that's it's
a great question I think I think you know the language here plays a a big role because it's
interesting if if you if you take a look at the education thinking and and kind of a models
of schooling in the countries where English is is the first language and often the only
language that people speak they interestingly share many many similar things in my books
and writings I've been speaking about the global educational reform movement that comes
is a kind of a set of collection of educational principles and ideas that are common to countries
and education systems that interestingly have not been able to create or generate any any
positive significantly positive or successful outcomes and those those are often exactly
the countries and the systems there that you mentioned so so it may be that there's something
in the language that it's easy to it's easy to take ideas or policies or or things from
England for example and then transport those to Australia and the United States New Zealand
Canada South Africa other places where the language is already there it's much harder
to take a British idea in education and take it to Norway or Finland because they have
to be translated and you know still people in many other countries they don't they even
if they can and read and understand English but they don't use English in in a way that
most people think like like many Americans think that everybody understands English but
it's a global and the best language in the world which is not true but but English is
not used in the same way in different different countries so so that's why I think it's a
kind of a interesting that we can see some of those ideas that have been spreading around
the English-speaking world world and at the same time now when we have more evidence and
data from different education systems partly because of the the organizations like OECD
and UN organizations and partly because the education research has been much more focusing
on those things that that you know some things that originally came from places like England
or the and then have been intensified in the United States like the role of standardized
testing that in in theory is a good thing but in practice when it's implemented often
turns out to be not so great or the strong accountability for schools and teachers that
is often linked to the standardized tests or standardizing teaching you know having
this idea that we we need to have clear and high enough standards for each and every child
so that we can make sure that every every child will learn what they need to learn in
a school around the world and you know many of those ideas that have that they have been
accepted almost as if they were universally true that forms this essence of the the global
educational reform movement that has turned out to be a problematic for for the education
systems outcomes or success but also has caused a lot of unintended consequences at the level
of individual learners and children and teachers as well like for example most of these
countries that you mentioned the US, England, Australia here many others have had now for
several years a kind of a chronic issue with the the teaching profession that has turned
out to be something that nobody wants to do that nobody wants to be a teacher very few
people actually want to seriously like I did consider teaching as their their life career
and profession and it's often it's not not primarily because of the pay it's not primarily
because of anything else it's mostly because teachers feel they are forced to do things
that are no good for for the children or their families or the communities for example testing
children with a standardized poor standardized tests that have very little to do with the
with the children's learning or well-being or happiness or life in general so so that's
you know I would associate much of this rapid and fluent transfer of these often bad ideas
in education to the language and when we had a internet's commonly available for policy
making and and educators 20 years ago 25 years ago it just accelerated the spread of these
ideas around the world and you know when I teach my doctoral students here or anywhere
I always I kind of insist them to also code and look at the literature in other languages
it may be maybe French or Spanish or Chinese or or German or Swedish or Portuguese whatever
it is just to realize that how different the the narrative about the education often is
in different countries like if I give you example here in the from the Nordic countries
for example if you if you're a student here in Australia or the United States and you
only read English language literature books and journal articles you get a very different
idea of what's happening in the schools around the world then if you for example if you were
able to read and understand Swedish or Finnish or the Scandinavian languages and you call
what what the people writes there that is you know primarily about students well-being
and health and and even before the this coronavirus pandemic that it was all about you know happiness
and well-being and health and play and you know the role of us and music and physical
education all those important things and you completely miss if you are not able to understand
and read the the other languages so that's why I think language is extremely important
for anybody who really wants to understand the world of schooling to go and look at what's
what's happening in different parts of the world now it's easy because you can basically
Google translate much of the stuff if you want to do that just to get an idea what's
happening there and we could have avoided many of these things that we now see we are
kind of stuck in the United States in this standardization testing accountability trap
and the same thing here in Australia and England and many other countries if we had had this
luxury of you know having a broader look at the world and what the other countries are
doing yeah and it's it's very interesting with standardized testing my little boy is
12 now and we have what's called the FSA is here in Florida and he has gone from from
struggling academically to working his way up where he's kind of mentally caught up now
and he's been getting A's and B's on the honor roll they call them here and then still
doing horrendously on the standardized tests and it really kind of and I asked that the
kids they don't enjoy the testing I mean these poor some of these kids are like eight and
they're sitting in front of a computer for four hours taking these tests which is just
ridiculous the teachers hate the way they have to teach the parents aren't happy either
because of it so I've yet to find anyone in this group that actually likes standardized
tests yet they've been a part of our education for years and I kind of almost parallel it
to the cholesterol numbers from 20 years ago where if you had a cholesterol and it was
this number then you immediately get put on on medicine and now they've realized that
was complete rubbish complete crap and that your number doesn't dictate your health and
if you were a perfectly healthy person with good blood pressure and good body weight that
happened to have a cholesterol number this way it didn't mean that you are going to automatically
get a heart attack.
Yeah that's right I often say that the standardized tests are often often like measuring your
body temperature with a teaspoon that it doesn't really it doesn't really tell you much but
at the same time I think we need to be we need to be mindful with this conversation
about standardized tests because they are I think that the the standardized assessments
are important in order to you know tell us how the system education systems are working
but the problem is that standardized assessments in the United States and certainly here in
Australia are misused they're used in the multiple purposes that they were never never
designed to do and they often come with the unintended negative consequences that you
mentioned as well so so so this conversation about the question whether standardized tests
are good or bad is a wrong question I think the the right question is that what would
a a good modern high quality standardized student assessment look like for example at
the level of the state of Florida or here in Australia and rather than say that we have
to abolish everything and and you know for example the the case of Finland we often hear
this what I call fake news about Finland that we don't have standardized tests there but
that's not actually correct because there's a lot of standardized assessments going on
but they are they are designed in a way to have zero stakes for teachers or children
or the schools because they these tests are carried out as a kind of a sampling sample
based assessments where just like when when we are asking whether the people are healthy
in our country or nation or not we are not testing everybody for example use the cholesterol
thing that we are not testing everyone we are testing as kind of a sample of represent
of the sample of people and this is exactly what more advanced education systems are doing
when it comes to standardized testing that they they take the represent of this sample
of kids they they run a high quality assessments that are looking many more things than just
less reading and mathematics and science on these children and then analyze the data and
just like in a health we are saying that you know this is what what the state of health
in this particular issue is in the country we can say the same thing that you know this
is how the kids in our country are learning it's a little bit like the the NAPE the the
National Educational Assessment Program in the United States that is testing testing
sample of kids not all of them and that's a good there's a good way to carry out standardized
testing but just simply saying that standardized testing is bad idea it's a too it's too too
fast conclusion actually yeah and that makes perfect sense so it's so the the way that
you use it in in Scandinavia is a standardized test is a litmus test to to get an overview
of how effective the overall system is doing but it's not being used to allow a child to
move up a grade or to to send funding to a certain school for example yeah or they determine
the quality of schools that are often seen in different countries like here for example
that there is often media but but also the the the authorities and and parents are kind
of determining concluding the how good schools are based on the standardized test results
of the kids and you know the basic thing in psychometrics is that that you cannot you
cannot say anything at all about the quality of school or teaching in the school by looking
at the the standardized test results because the the test results actually reflect the
so many other things than what the teachers or what the school is doing including the
parents role and the family background and the community and many other things yeah and
obviously that's another entire conversation that i want to kind of interweave yeah because
i mean that's right now i think people are being made more aware than ever about their
role in their child's education because we're all at home with our children i think the
ones that have always been hand-on are probably doing okay and the ones that haven't are probably
realizing the value of the the schools they've been sending their children on the yellow
bus for the last 10 years yeah right so then um i want to get to to play in a moment but
just speaking of standardized testing because it kind of it it aligns to this next question
um we have a lot of reports here where for example uh a lower um income area of you know
a city or a county uh sometimes doesn't get the same funding as other areas and i'm correct
me if i'm wrong i believe in the book you kind of address that that that there should
be you know and it makes perfect sense there should be the same amount of funding if not
more for areas that are struggling to support those children that maybe don't have as good
support at home to make sure that it isn't an economic bias when it comes to these formative
few years of our school children so what are some of the things that finland does to to
address some of the poorer areas when it comes to education
uh yeah absolutely on spot with the um uh with this question and and the introduction to this
question as as well um and the you know the united states is not the only place this uh this country
here australia has for many years had a kind of a funding arrangement that is is um giving more
money to actually those schools that would would be okay to do with a little bit less
and then there are a lot of a lot of schools mostly mostly public schools in this country that are
heavily underfunded given the the kind of students and and communities that they serve but
you know finland finland is a different story because uh this this was already in the 1970s
when when again the the the political political decision was concluded um and it was not easy it
was a conclusion after a a number of years of debates and and considerations that since
uh finland is a small country and uh it doesn't have natural resources like many others have
norway for example oil and gas or fish that we the only thing we have if we want to if we want to
you know catch up the the other advanced economies and countries is to cultivate
our human capital the people that are in a country so that's why that's that's how the the the
the argument for importance to have a education good education system was late of about 50 years
ago and then of course the question is that how do we how do we make sure that all these people
you know finland that time had about four and a half five million people uh how do we make sure
all of them are well educated and of course this the the conclusion was the same kind of a similar
thing that the united states had had long hundred years ago about the equality of educational
opportunity or even even more than that i think cause um cause back to president jefferson or
something even longer than that um and i i think the the basic understanding was that you know if
we really want to be successful with every child all the children that was a assumption and
requirement in finland then we have to understand that some kids and some communities need different
type of education or more resources and more support and help and arrangements to support
their learning than the others and the only way to do that is to make sure that the the the funding
how the schools are funded in different communities is based not on how many children there are
uh or how well they do in the school as it is in some some places still but where they come from
and who are they who are these children and the and this is how the how the system was designed
um or changed in the 1970s and 80s that the schools basically received resourcing and funding based on
the children and and parents and communities that they were serving that led then very quickly
particularly in urban areas like helsinki for example there is the biggest
local education system in finland um where they now speak about they call it a positive discrimination
of schools which means that the schools within the the city of helsinki will receive a very
different amounts of money based on what type of children they have there are some schools where
the vast majority of children are non-finish speaking or swedish speaking children they were
born somewhere probably outside of finland and they speak different languages at home
immigrants refugees and others and those schools get significantly more funding to make sure that
funding to make sure that they're able to do good things and necessary things with these kids compared
to communities and schools where these characteristics of the the student makeup are
are different so i think is critically important and this is well understood in the united states
as well there has been a work going on this this equitable funding in different states
um for for several years already and it's a big conversation here in australia now so it
basically people understand and it's a common sense that you know if you have
you know if you if you have a school where most of your children don't speak english or finnish
or if you have a school where most of the parents are not employed permanently or if you have a
school where the the level of income in the family income is not high enough to kind of maintain a
steady and safe family circumstances of course you need more the schools need to do more and
schools need more resources not only money but they need people different types of people there
and you cannot do that if the the schools continue to be funded based on how many how many children
they're serving or how good the kids are learning in the school so that's that's why it's absolutely
critically important and there's probably no more important thing to make american schools
more equitable and when they come more equitable meaning that the children's family background
wouldn't determined and be the reason for educational failure or plot the success
um so so that's that's a kind of a key to towards the becoming world-class education system that
many people in the united states kind of a desire and that's at the same time that has been one
reason why finland has been so successful is to take this equity and equality of opportunity
literally and seriously and starting from funding funding is not the only thing but starting you're
making sure that the schools get the resources and funding based on who they serve who are the
people there and then build on all the other things on that yeah well that's great to hear and i think
that there's something i talk about a lot as a firefighter paramedic you know we see a lot of
these homes and i've worked most of my career i worked in the poorest areas of the cities or
counties that i worked in and you know you see these these little boys these little girls and
girls and not saying that there's a lost cause but you can tell that the the the chances the
probability of them finding themselves around a positive path is definitely less than for example
myself i grew up on a farm in england i was i was guided very well towards not being a criminal not
being an addict not being going into prostitution you know gangs whatever it was and so the way you
break the cycle is again at the schools and if you invest in these young men and women and their
backgrounds and like you said if they're immigrants creating an opportunity for them to learn and
communicate then that next generation is gonna is gonna is gonna minimize the amount of people
that then take that that stray path when when they have children but if we move funds away from those
those children you're allowing that cycle to repeat itself which long term for the country is
going to cost them a huge amount and it's going to increase crime and and it's you know it's a
completely horrific vicious cycle instead of investing in your communities now so that you
know the the world that our grandchildren grow up in is completely different than the one we are in
now yeah yeah absolutely and and you know the um i often hear people there especially in the
united states saying that there's nothing we can do that you can never you can never fix these
underlying inequalities in the society and poverty and and you know those things but
that you know this is the only thing that we can try and this is the only thing that we know works
to make sure that the schools where that is basically the only place where all the children
will spend significant time of their lives that the schools would be prepared to provide all that
help and and support and unnecessary things that the kids need and you know this is where we
where we also come come to the conversation of what is the purpose of the school what is the school
for in in a communities like this we cannot we cannot assume that uh when the school is having
a lot of children who come from fragile or broken um home circumstances that they would be able to do
similar things in the same way as the affluent school in another neighborhood that the school
needs to have strong focus on students health and and health and well-being and and mental
kind of services and support and dental help you know all these things that the many other kids
are missing when they are when they are at home or the for for any reason that the the family is
not able to to do that and this was this is exactly the thing they thinking that finland and this all
the scandinavian countries had already long time ago that if the kids if the kids don't get what
they need at home for any reason whatever it is the school is the place to do that and and rather
than send children away from school to be helped or taken care by some mothers the beautiful thing
in the finnish and scandinavian system is that the schools are offering all those services to
children every day everywhere so that the kids don't need to move and and go to another place
to be helped that that's the school that does that but it's still you know in many places i
remember spending time in the united states when i when i was in the conversations like this people
said but that's not what the school should be doing the school is a place for teaching reading
and mathematics and some other things and then we have you know the other institutions that will
you know provide the other help i said why why you say that you know why the school couldn't
be the place where where we we would look at children holistically like a whole child thing
not just a you know teaching them something that you know helping them to
learn to live a good life and heal themselves and and make sure that the conditions to learn
in the first place would be there and there are countries that are doing that systematically and
have been doing that for a long time and and and those education systems are often places
where there is more equity and there's more well-being that is becoming a big kind of a
measurable thing as well when we are comparing education systems so it's not just a literacy
and numeracy but this is also students' well-being and engagements interest in in schooling that in
the future will will make a difference when we are answering the questions that where are things done
in in a good way when it comes to schooling yeah no i agree 100% i think if you ask anyone
what is who is your favorite teacher and you are you know they say whoever and then you ask them
what was it about that teacher it was probably that their lessons were fun or they were engaging
or they took the extra time to help you learn you know it was that human element it wasn't it was
never that they were amazing at algebra you know it was it was the fact that they filled more of
a mentor role than a teacher role that's right that's right right well speaking of enjoying
classes i think it's a good segue then to get to play so the book you wrote was let the children
play and obviously the the title definitely in itself you know speaks volumes about i think many
of the things that we see wrong with with the system and i want to be very clear i love the
teachers my my son's teachers are incredible but the system they work in so tell me about um you
know the the importance of play and and where again it's it's suppressed in some of our school
systems around the world yeah yeah thanks for bringing this this on to this conversation
we we wrote with william doyle who is a who is a father and author living in manhattan
um new york city uh about four years ago three years ago we started to work on this um you know
the the the thing that really triggered uh us to first think about this topic and then write it
the write an entire book about this was the the um notion that we had made in the united states
that was when i when i was living i was living in massachusetts that time that we realized that
there are more and more places where um and and educational places like preschools and
kindergartens and primary schools where children have less and less time to play we read a lot of
statistics and studies and research and we realized that you know this is happening everywhere
that that the the time children have to play it when they're in school or in the institutions like
like in education was in decline and it had been declining steadily during the last 20 years
um and then we went to see that you know what's what's what's happening in the families and it's
the same same thing that we we read studies and we spoke to uh tens or hundreds of parents who
regularly say that yeah when i was a child myself i used to play much more than my own children play
than my own children play today and you know there are good reasons to to um explain why this is
happening some parents say that it's a safety issue some others say that this school is taking
so much time then there were those who say that my children spend so much time with the technology
and media and entertainment that they don't have that they don't want to go out you know you name
it there's a lot of things like excuses how it happens but then we came into this kind of a
fundamental question that what does it mean when this is happening that the kids don't play anymore
uh as they used to play when they were in school the school is much more serious stuff focused on
on performance and learning and competing and accomplishing things and going from one one place
to another and and the same thing at home that the the kids are staying indoors more than more
than ever they spend less time in the parks and playgrounds and forest and uh you know the the
when we realized that what these kids are missing it really we we have to sit down and say that this
is this is worth you know writing a writing a book to to uh parents and educators and others that we
are we are doing something that is ultimately really going to be really harmful for kids and
you don't need to spend much time in looking at the research when you realize the the benefits
that the research around the world really has proven of high quality play to have on children
not only for the physical development and and well-being but also social
um emotional and also interestingly cognitive uh development than the kids when they play when
they engage in high quality play daily and regularly that they also learn things that they're
supposed to learn in school uh i mean conceptual things science and mathematics and uh this kind
of hard stuff that is hard hard to teach better than if they don't uh if they don't play let alone
the the other important skills that we now call 21st century skills like communication and
negotiation and empathy and problem solving and creativity all those things they often come with
a high quality play so that's that's what we kind of uh said okay let's uh let's look take a look
around the world and see what's what is happening not only in the united states but
around the world and we put together the story of the power of
play how how play can benefit all children if we take it seriously and this is not this is not
just a call for schools to let the children play more but this it's it's equally targeted to to
parents and grandparents uh when they raise their own children or grandchildren to remember that
you know whereas schooling of course is important and what the kids learn in school
can make a big difference but probably even more important for for all the children is the the
time that they spend on high quality play and i deliberately say high quality play because not
all the plays is giving these these benefits that the research and our book is is is sharing the
high quality play is where where we are allowing children to decide you know what to do when we are
allowing them to be driven by their own intrinsic motivation and and you know enjoy what they do and
use their imagination and come up with the you know go with the flow rather than um you know
compared to play that we often see in in schools for example or preschools where the the adult
whether it's a teacher or somebody else who is you know putting the limits and saying that this is
what you must do and this is what you cannot do and you have five minutes to you know complete this
and and you will be tested or assessed in the end you know this is not what the the high quality
play looks like so that's the kind of a that's the kind of a story of the behind the play and then
i think the in the end we really wanted to see what the not just the educators because
many of the educators think like this what i've been saying here that the play is important it's
a it's a part of the children's natural growth and development and they learn many things and
they can develop many of these important things but then there's this well-being and health part
and the you know the group of people that are very important for children's lives and families as
well are the children's medical doctors pediatricians and this was one of the one of the most significant
findings that we did while writing the book that when we spoke to pediatricians in the
united states and around the world they all said the same thing they all they they all went to
the states and around the world they all said the same thing they all they they all were concerned
about the the lack of time that children have to play particularly play free play outdoors
and they all almost using the similar language were talking about the benefits that the play
has on children's overall developments and growth and learning and and that's why that's why we have
this little section in the book called the doctor's orders because the pediatricians are actually
they have been the most vocal in in reminding teachers and and parents about the importance
of play and why is it important and we can often we can often ignore what the teacher is saying to
you um even even um even about your own children your own child you can say that but you're just a
teacher you know i know my son or my my children better than you do but we rarely say when the
pediatricians medical doctors are giving us orders or advice how to how to raise all or help our
children we tend to kind of take what the doctors are saying fairly seriously and and often do it
very literally what what they are asking to do and that's why i think the the role of
pediatricians and medical and well-being experts and health health people today when we think about
schooling and educating our kids particularly of course this covid 19 mess that we are living in
in now is that we are listening to medical experts advice i think we should have done that much more
earlier but we we need to listen to that very carefully and and hear what they say and then
conclude what to do as parents or teachers regarding our own children yeah no i couldn't
agree more i think there's there's all elements of health that we need to pay a lot more attention
to when it comes to our children but you you just kind of triggered a thought um in the books that
i showed you before we start recording by one of my other guests is coming up soon yohan harry
he talks about one of the biggest um elements of mental health is the feeling of having control
over your own life and it kind of occurred to me that play is that open play like you're talking
about not like organized sports where you're being shouted at by a coach and you know have to do
things um under their control but the the play that my son actually is very fortunate enough to
do we live in a community and he goes off on his bike for hours at a time with his friends
they get to make the rules and it's funny because that probably even parallels how the teachers
feel in some of these more um english american standardized testing environments are there and
they want to be imaginative they want to get these kids you know imagination fired up but they have
to stay in these parameters of some of these standards that they have to teach so in in both
of those lanes the the creativity the ability to take control of your own learning i think is a
very very important thing that a lot of us miss it is it is very important and that's uh that's
what i've seen through my own children as well and um and this this is actually something that
i understood only after i left classroom teaching as a teacher that why some some young people were
behaving as they as they were behaving they were basically just asking a little bit more room for
their own self-regulation and trust you know trusting them to do to do the right things and
that's exactly what comes with the with the high quality play just like you said that you know just
just take your children to the forest or playground if you can do that and you know let them let them
hang around i think they in in finland and nudic countries we are much more tolerant as parents
and educators to accept that you know sometimes sometimes you know accident may happen and
there are risks associated to free unstructured uh play or or learning um but you know there are
many people like myself and i know many parents who say that you know this is exactly how the kids
learn when you when you fall down from the tree and you you hurt yourself that's you probably
don't do it again and if you never do that you know if you never put uh in a situation where
there's a where there's a kind of a minor risk of you know failing or getting even getting yourself
hurt how on earth you can survive in this life that is full of you know surrounded by risks every
day when you when you step out and go to the city you take a risk of you know being hit by somebody
or or getting into accident if you don't know if you don't know how to how to you know behave or
control your emotions or yourself in a situation like this that's that's a very important thing
and that's that's all that comes with the um with the high quality um even even risky play there are
some playgrounds here in sydney now that they call it called the themselves risky risky play
playgrounds where you can you can really actually as a child you can hurt yourself like a pig type
if you if you don't if you don't know what to do but you know the interesting thing is
that when you go and see what the kids do when they when the children realize that you know there's
a there's a kind of a danger here that i may hurt myself they don't they don't go to these things
they can they kind of they have much better ability to judge what is safe or how to behave
safely what to do not to hurt yourselves that we parents often believe i'm not talking about
100 of kids but most of them and this is it's the same thing in the school that most of the
most of the kids in the school could could you know take much more leadership and ownership
uh about the things that would lead to better learning outcomes and well-being than we actually
expect because we or the system is so much afraid of you know mistakes or or failure
that kind of standardized and put all the safety cards that are possible rather than you know
providing the safety that is is a kind of a minimum necessary thing for kids to do and that's why we
you know we take away this uh opportunity for kids to self-regulate and self-control themselves and
understand you know how to how to behave and that's that's a kind of unfortunate thing again
this goes back to this the power of play thing because the good high quality play outdoors
unstructured free play often comes with these elements of of life that the kids can only learn
if they go through them by themselves yeah and i think that there's there's a lot of
intrinsic reward from challenging these these children i think that's the the reason that
crossfit gyms and some of the the mud runs you know the the the races where they do all the
the you know climbing ropes and climbing over a big you know military walls and that kind of thing
you see a whole bunch of adults that are basically reliving their childhood and the same playing that
and the same playing that they did so you know you look at the google headquarters where they have
you know all kinds of games and richard branson i've already referred to before who by the way
i would love to get on the show one day if you're listening richard um but you know he's he's always
hot air ballooning and and kite surfing and you know so i think that that's in all of us to
suppress that is crazy and even as firefighters on the fire ground we want to make mistakes in the
training ground so that in the real world when there's a fire when there's a life at stake we've
already made those mistakes and that's what the playground is to me it's the forging ground to
create resilient intelligent young men and women yeah yeah exactly right well then speaking of
physical exercise um another topic that i've talked about a little bit is is nutrition in schools so
with you traveling all over the globe i i personally don't think that we do it very well in
america at all i don't think pizza counts as a vegetable personally um what have you seen as far
as but officially it does it does yes according to the research but what have you seen as far as
the impact of good nutrition in focus and energy levels and a good body weight in in schools around
the world well you know this is kind of a silly topic to talk about because you don't need to go
further than you know ask your mother or grandmother about how important a healthy good daily nutrition
and meal is for you and you hear the truth that we don't we we should not ask for more research
research on that but you know this all said it's it's a kind of interesting that
there are there are not many countries or education systems around the world that would would do that
uh systematically to all the children i mean provide healthy healthy school meal for
for all children without without labeling them to um to their family income or where they come from
just do it kind of kind of a basic service for children who the school wants to grow up
healthy and happy and and and good learners so uh you know not even all the Scandinavian
Nordic countries provide a school free school meal today and so the evidence you know we we
don't need to and there is evidence there are studies in the United States the Brookings
Institute did a study in in California kind of a controlled randomized controlled
um experiment that showed the benefits of healthy meals for children particularly those who come from
more disadvantaged families and backgrounds so but i i think that what people often
often miss in this conversation of school meals and nutrition and importance you know even accepting
that it's important is that um you know the school meal can be much more than just you know filling
empty bellies in a school that is often sorry for example here in Australia where where the
where the children are bringing school food school within their in their lunch bags that
it's just a it's just a quick moment to fill your stomach and that's it the kids don't learn anything
about healthy eating the the kind of a table manners how to have have a lunch or dinner with
other people and have a conversation about things um you know most people don't even know where they
where the carrot comes from or or cheese or some other things so so i i think that it's important
to think about more broadly about this school school meals and and nutrition as a as a part of
the almost like a part of the curriculum in a school that kids will learn while they have the
school lunch provided by the school um that they learn you know all these other things you know
including the um things related to environment how our eating or or leaving food on the table waste
how it's impacting our environments um or the global um global issues so i think you know if
anybody would think about school meals more holistically again that is it's uh of course
uh of course it's important for for the health and well-being and learning of children in a school
but it's also teaching children what it is what the healthy meal and eating looks like
or what a situation where where we get together to a social occasion regularly every day with other
people in our community what does it look like when we do it and use this this opportunity of
togetherness around the school um school meal so there's much more potential there that we can do
than people uh people realize but i think as i said earlier that this question whether healthy
daily meal is is good for growing young people who are supposed to learn in the school and do all
kinds of other things whether it's good or not i think that's something that we should not be
discussing because everybody knows that that is the thing and if you don't believe that just go and
just go and take a look at the what children in those school systems like here
what they carry with them to school that they call a school lunch i wouldn't no grandmother would
recognize that as a kind of a good idea to have a white bread and sugared liquid and candy bars or
something or chips there in your lunch bag and call that a lunch every day i mean every day and then
expect that the kids are able to study and move and learn six hours every day with that give me
a break so so that's why i think i i think this whole whole school meal thing has to be discussed
uh not just the you know feeding children but teaching educating them to understand and respect
what we eat absolutely absolutely and obviously that's why i brought it up but there's a phrase i
love don't wait for science to prove what you already know and i think this is a perfect topic
for that and when you think about let's say for example in america by the time a child graduates
they've been in the school system for 13 years five days a week for you know that the school
semesters there is so much opportunity to educate children like you said like not just food but how
you know what food is how to prepare food having actual home economics classes so that we can
address the obesity epidemic because it's heartbreaking seeing some of my son's school
friends they're already like literally 100 pounds overweight and as a paramedic i know what that
child's gonna look like if they carry on down that road someone's gonna be shoving a tube down their
throat at the age of 41 and their life is over so i think it's it's it's a disgrace that we as a
nation serve those foods and like you said do not educate our young boys and girls on what nutrition
actually looks like i'm normalizing a good diet not saying oh this is healthy this is normal this
is what our diet should look like and and i've packed my son's lunch for years and years and
years and years because i want him you know i can't change the school at the moment at least i can
change what's in his lunchbox but i think it's a very very important conversation and as you said
we don't need any research it's just common sense yeah yeah that's absolutely right i often hear
people saying certainly in the united states and here it's too expensive that we're going to do that
that it costs too much money well you know in india india is the country that has the largest
school school meal school lunch program they feed 100 million children every day every single day in
school in finland we have been we are eating every every child 100 of them without any
any cost we have done that since 1943 and this is one of the one of the parts of the education
system that we would probably let out go last i think i think the authorities and parents would
be willing to pay for textbooks and and school bus and you know all kinds of other things
but not the school meal because it's so so important and you're so it so it cannot be the
cost i think that you know anybody who said that we cannot afford we don't have money to do that
in a country like america you know one of one of the wealthiest countries in the world
you know having designing a system where where the school meal would cost probably about three
or four dollars a day every day it's not much you know for the country like this given the
the the positive benefits and then the the the kind of a cause that comes afterwards that you
mentioned yourself the having having issues with health and and many other things simply because
a lack of good nutrition this would be a really smart smart thing to do i i know that there's
there have been the presidents or the first ladies in the united states who have kind of taken this
issue of school meals a little bit more seriously but the next president probably could take this
as a promise to make sure that all the children in american schools would be given a healthy
healthy school meal every day by 2025 that would be a great that would change the american
not only schools and the performance and standings in the international league tables
forever but also probably turn the the health and well-being of american young people into
a new positive more positive course absolutely there's a there's an english chef jamie oliver
who i think i think he was successful in england if i'm not mistaken but he tried the same thing
in america and they did a kind of like a reality show following him but he showed how for the same
budget of all the process crap they were serving they were able to teach the people that worked in
the kitchens in the school to prepare fresh food you know clean protein and some vegetables
and for the exactly the same budget so it's not even the money and i mean that's the sad thing
is if you bulk buy fresh clean food it's actually cheaper than probably most of the process things
that they buy yeah i think you can you say that you're gonna change the the schools or the country
i think you can probably launch a campaign there maybe in florida or some some parts of the states
to really start to to do this you know think again because you know how many how many children we
need to lose in in terms of their health or other things before we take this seriously
don't don't think like this just uh just launch launch a good campaign for for the the schools
meals in the community for example in the school and show people that how positive it can be yeah
i agree 100 well well speaking of the pandemic you touched on before um an observation that i've had
and something i talk about a lot in in my profession and the firefighters and paramedics
and police officers is sleep deprivation because obviously we're working shifts we're working nights
but in my son's school the the elementary in the middle he's had to wake up about 6 a.m to go to
school they start 7 30 ish and then go all the way through till two o'clock and since this pandemic's
hit he's he's right on the kind of puberty age now he's 12 that's turn 13 and he's been sleeping
for about 12 hours so clearly you know uninterrupted not not on his phone before he goes to bed or
anything and so it's kind of made me realize that that age group especially does need more sleep
and i've heard you know people talking before about the the the hours that kids go to school
in different countries in the world and even the length of the school day again what have you seen
as far as making kids wake up very early to go to school versus maybe different models where they
go to school later maybe even having a shorter school day yes i don't know how much we have
researched about the the the um the timing when the school starts but i i know that in in finland
for example there has been some of the psychologists and health experts also have been proposing or
wondering whether the school should start a little bit later now the school starts about
eight thirty or nine o'clock in the morning just saying that the the teenagers particularly
teenagers they they tend to to like to sleep a little bit later but i don't know you know the
counter counter argument there is that why why it should be done that way why not try to make sure
that everybody would go to sleep earlier just like you you told about your own son that you know this
exactly they need they need about 10 to 12 hours sleep to grow up healthy and you know learn all
those things that are done so i don't know i don't know about that that particular question
but the the fact you know what is interesting is that when when we look at the the length of
school days or number of hours that young people and children are expected to be in school there's
a huge variation from country to country in the world and and that's one one thing that we do
one thing that we do know that's after a certain number of hours in an intense intensive education
and pedagogy that children just can't adopt anymore they can't they kind of stop learning
and and you know finland again is one of those education systems finland sweden and i think
norway as well where the the number of instruction hours weekly for children that are required is a
relatively less than in the oacd countries or the wealthy countries on average let alone places
like australia for example or the united states where the kids are spending much much longer in
the school so you know i would i would say that if you ask my opinion i would say that we we
probably need to to consider again that how much we expect our children to be actively engaged in
in serious learning in the school every day and make sure that the school days are not
not too long or too packed that we are we are not you know asking young people to do
too much the other related thing is the homework this homework
question that is a huge thing in the united states that that what is the role of homework
and how much do we ask young people to take their time you know after their hobbies and
other activities that they want to do in sports or music or whatever they do and then do hours of
homework so for me the the more important thing really is to probably start to consider the the
whole question of how important and what is the role of the homework in the first place i'm not
talking about you know students reading and studying when they are towards the end of the
high school when when the questions of going to college or further studies become active but
particularly primary school and middle school kids that could could we have a school system where
the the children would have a little bit less time during the school day when they're really asked to
learn and understand stuff like science and mathematics and social studies and other things
and and probably have more time to to play and do physical activity or arts or other things that
would be balancing a little bit this and then really think about the the homework thing that
i think that the homework should never be an excuse for for adolescents for example to
stay up late not go to sleep because there's so many so much homework so i think i would start it
from from that those questions before before really considering what what time of the day in
the morning the kids should go to school and and try to make sure that there's there's a good
balance between high quality high quality sleep daily and the students school related duties and
recreational activities at home every day so that they the balance would be there and some of the
systems are doing education systems are doing doing this quite well and the others are putting
a lot of pressure and burden on on students in terms of how they spend their times
in terms of how they spend their times yeah well i can attest personally so observational evidence
my little boy in elementary school up till fifth grade so up to fourth grade was getting a huge
amount of homework you know a very very young boy at that point one point he had two teachers that
kind of split their time with that one grade his one class so they both gave him homework so he
would literally spend a two a solid two hours at god what was he now that nine nine years old eight
years old doing all this homework and i saw a huge detriment well in the fifth grade they announced
that they were gonna kind of you know take take some of the influence from scandinavia and other
areas and they were gonna get rid of homework in elementary school and there was you know there was
resistance there were people that were for it i saw him literally do a 180 where his actual school
work where he was engaged at school was so much better because he didn't have to worry about he
was gonna have to you know but i think subconsciously have something in the tank to then do another hour
or two hours of work at home so and then in the middle school they've really gated down on the
homework they used to give so he'll have you know maybe an hour at the absolute most and i personally
have seen so much benefit in his academia in his self-confidence pulling back on that homework
rather than you know burying them in it yeah yeah yeah there's a there's a lot of a lot of
advocates in the united states like alficon for example he's been writing he's been writing about
this uh homework issue and and how little value it actually has um and how much how much parents
and many adults think that it does a positive things that it doesn't um so the research research
evidence is very clear that homework doesn't really account too much of anything when it comes to the
students success or failure in a school so it's not about that it's exactly as you said it's it's
about you know finding a balance and understanding how the kids children learn i understand that you
know there are some kids who probably benefit from you know having this regular rhythm at home that
you you know take a half an hour hour and just focus on your school stuff but most most students
don't really find it beneficial at all and a school you know school should be placed like in
finland for example where where most of the schools have the policy that that the students
people should be able to complete whatever is required by the school next day or next week
while they're still uh while they're still in the school during the school day rather than
taking taking tasks and things uh with them to be completed at home yeah no i agree 100
so i want to just cover kind of one main topic and then we'll move to some closing questions
but a big thing that i talk about in this podcast is mental health as well and i know it's not
purely in the schools of course there are all kinds of elements that contribute to this
but what are some kind of systems that you've seen where it appears to definitely nurture
positive mental health in our schools and what do you think are some of the contributing factors to
to negative influences of mental health um yeah i think you know my my first remark would be that
would be that most education systems most countries that i know around the world
are just about now waking to to understand that mental health issue among young people is a huge
thing and also realize that when there are more more children coming to school every day with the
all kinds of mental and psychological and social challenges that being successful in this situation
is is getting very difficult OECD for example that is regularly doing comparisons of different
countries is now increasingly focusing on you know looking at how different education systems
are addressing the the health and well-being and particularly mental health of young people that
indicates that it's becoming an important important thing you know i don't i don't probably
i don't have enough information and knowledge right now exactly what countries are doing
are doing doing this well and and what is what is happening in each and every education system
i know very well what the nudic countries have done and what they do and i can say one or two
things about there but i i leave these two commentators from your listeners who are
listening this this conversation in in some other countries to to probably respond to you how things
are done there but i think that what the traditionally what the nudic countries have done is that
that we have had we have had a long tradition to to focus on what we call the whole child
whole child development in in schooling that means that that the school is not just looking at the
academic or narrow academic development of of children in many cases referring to reading and
mathematics and science but looking at children as a kind of a holistic holistic entities where
of course the well-being and health are extremely important things so i i i would argue that that
all the nudic countries have done a really good job including iceland by the way iceland is is
one of those advanced countries in this respect where the the whole purpose of schooling is defined
not just through the academic learning and performance but the overall
holistic healthy development of of children including mental mental health
that i i think that those countries who have defined the purpose of schooling more broadly
and the success of a school of or a individual student through the different types of characteristics
of of learning and growth are and have certainly done a good job in in addressing
um addressing the mental health issues that have been increased increasing in finland and
sweden and norway and i guess most most countries around the world right now so this is a really
has become an important issues i know that there are countries that are doing doing wonderful things
as well but as i said i know i know the nudic countries better than better than anything else
my guess would be that as we move on and if the children's mental health issues continue to
get worse as it may happen after this pandemic when we gradually return back to new normal
that it may be that the schools and education systems have to think about this issue even
even more closely and more carefully than than before rather than asking children who are
returning back to schools after the school and classroom closes to catch up and and try to hurry
up to make sure that nothing is lost rather than doing this that i think the school many schools
and school systems probably will realize that it's more important to to rethink the school as a place
where all these children who have been locked locked in their houses and spent weeks or months
just with their parents and siblings will have a safe and secure and healthy environment in the
school also to to make sure that their mental health will be good and get better if they are
be good and get better if necessary and again i think that the countries will will be very different
in in this respect that they are they are probably education systems where where the narrative will
be much more about closing the gap that has been created by kids not being in the school
or kind of a catching up but then there will be school systems where that really understand
how important the health issue is and use school as a place to heal and make sure that
you know no children and and adults as well would significantly suffer from this very difficult time
that they are going through right now yeah no i agree 100 i had an interesting conversation with
my son's counselor he went he went through some some uh mental health problems either side of
of christmas and it was definitely aligned with some trouble in his his mother's home i'm divorced
now um which is now resolved which is fantastic but um the counselor called him a couple of times
since this pandemic since school is closed and i asked her i'm like what are you seeing
you know confidentially what are you seeing with um someone who's been in a relationship
some of the other kids that you normally saw in the school and she said actually i'm seeing an
improvement in mental health at the moment and it's interesting because i had a couple of people
that specialize in mental health with children one one helps in a foster uh system and then one's a
child psychologist and they were talking about that social pressure and especially social media
being a huge contributor to mental ill health with children and right now they're taken away from
um having to look cool or you know whatever the pecking order is in their particular school
um so i hope that we glean lessons from that too that we like as you said encourage more about the
whole holistic health of the child but also kind of figure out ways where we can remove some of
those elements the the social with some of the damage that social media seems to do in some of
our children yeah i think that when when young people eventually when they return back to school
that they they probably value more than they did uh before this crisis the this face-to-face
human relationship rather than using social media for that so it may may have some positive
positive consequences this uh this extremely difficult time we have yeah i hope so all right
well i want to transition to some closing questions so i can let you go you've been so generous with
your time today and i do appreciate it um no worries so before i ask you i'm gonna ask you
about someone else's book so let's talk about your book first so the most recent one is let the
children play which you did with william doyle so where can people find that
yeah that that book is easy to find in north north america this is published by oxford university
press and this should be widely available certainly in amazon but probably also in the in the book
stores i'm not absolutely sure but the you know if you amazon customer that's the easy
easy easy place to get it brilliant well i just want to say for everyone listening as well so
to me it's it's the positive side of a double-edged sword so you've got the common sense like you said
we shouldn't have to really prove that obesity is bad for children but you also have all these
studies all these anecdotes all these these stories and examples from around the world that really do
substantiate and back up the things that you're talking about so even if someone was questioning
the value of play for example in schools or physical education or you know the recess times
not only is it is it told in a very great storytelling way but you do have all these
studies to back it up as well so i highly advise anyone that's curious about this topic to to
purchase the book thank you right so then first closing question is there another book that you
love to recommend it can be something to do with what we've discussed today or something completely
different um what should i say uh that's a hard one you know i'm reading i'm reading so much uh
uh students students works now that i haven't um uh well you look
let me let me let me give you an answer that is not kind of probably predictable because there's
a lot of there's a lot of literature um in the past that i often kind of refer to as important
and important books for me and there are some books as you know that you know some books come
and go people write them i hope that left the children play is not not one of those
but then there are some of some of those books that really remain and stay and people read it
and find it more and more kind of accurate and it's interesting that some of the books that have
been written already long ago only now will begin to kind of resonate and people find it kind of a
the importance and essence of that one of my my all-time heroes really and and the the the people
who have really influenced my my thinking as a teacher and educator who was a late seymour
sarason who passed away already more than 10 years ago he was a yale professor of educational
psychology a psychology for basically all his life and he published about 45 books and many of his
books were not really they were widely read but not not not that much understood but one of the
books i would actually recommend to you to read any of the seymour sarason's books probably his
most seminal work was the book that he wrote first in 1971 and then it was republished in 1996 it was
a 25th anniversary of that edition is still a great book to read and i i always recommend it to
my students who are in the field of improving education and understanding schools it's the book
is called the culture of the school and the problem of change that really is a book for those who
wonder about the same things that i do and it's basically the where we started this conversation
that you know why why things why the why the schools and education systems don't really
change even if we try to do that and why some education systems change are able to make progress
faster than others but seymour sarason really in this kind of a book long story is able to
you know talk about those important things that are still probably still more relevant than at
the time when he was writing it the first time in 1971 so the culture of the school and the problem
of change by seymour seymour sarason is uh is the book here that i would recommend to anybody
in this field to read excellent well thank you for that it's definitely one i've never heard before
so i'll look that up myself um what about a film there any films that you love
uh yeah i'm a film film freak i've been disappointing disappointed by the by the films
uh coming about more more recently i think what i try to say is that i less and less frequently
really find see a kind of a good film that really stops me the other day you know that my all-time
favorite film is martin scorsese's taxi driver i remember i wrote a number of essays about that
film when i was in high school students i i think i even wrote in my my exam paper in high school
about that film and i just saw that a couple of nights ago here in australia on tv
and that's that's one of those films i love the music i love the whole story and of course
robert de niro as a young young actor there in the very early part of his career does a brilliant
phenomenal uh parts as a taxi driver but i i like the hidden message in that scorsese's
storytelling from new york new york city it's a story about the new york city and the beauty and
the the kind of ugly side of the city but also uh also the time in the 1970s of people
disturbed by many things in the society um through this character uh the taxi driver and
and there's everything i think for me it's a kind of a pure package of art and storytelling that he's
able to do in a in a in a beautiful uh beautiful style i can watch the film again and again
uh you know regardless of the some of the violence that is there at the end of the film
i think it's a beautiful story new york has a special place for me because you know anything
about new york city because of my my cron it was my grandfather's uh home for a while it's kind of
a resonance in my somehow in my dna i don't know what it is brilliant did you ever see the new
um film they made the joker no i know the film and many people have said positive things about
that but i haven't seen that yeah i think that's another i would parallel that with tax drive not
saying it's the same kind of film but again it's it's taking this you know this this comic style
character but putting such a human element on it and you probably find it fascinating because
there's this childhood trauma involved and this is you know this is the path it took because it was
never addressed and there's a systemic problem with what makes him worse so very very deep
psychological film and much much more depth than you think of a normal superhero movie
all right good all right so then what about uh documentaries have you seen any documentaries
that interested you uh yes um do you want to want to have like one example of a documentary
yes yeah one or two whatever whatever you want to suggest yeah yeah i watched the um
um what's a new one that was uh in um available in youtube i think it still is there that was
about the the it's called the the planet the planet of the humans or something like this it's
a new this about the critical view of the korean korean energy movements um uh and i watched it
because there was a lot of media a couple of weeks ago about about the film how it's critical about
the things that people should not criticize i mean the renewable energy and those things i think it's
an interesting interesting piece of work it's not on the kind of a top list of my uh my documentaries
but one one other documentary is that it's really something that i probably will never forget is the
is called uh search search for sugar sugar man i don't know if you have heard about this it's about
the south african artist the singer and songwriter called roteriges it's a swedish guy who made the
film about 10 years ago something like that so he found this uh south african singer called
rodriguez that everybody thought was dead and he was able to uh follow the trace and locate
this oldest singer now in detroit new york it's a beautiful story it's amazing it's actually
unbelievable documentary about the thing that can happen if you if you're sensitive to good stories
that are around um so i i recommend that to to anybody i think it's a searching for sugoman or
something like this but it's a documentary film about south african singer called rodriguez the
beautiful story brilliant i will look that up i've genuinely watched so many of the documentaries
that people suggest because like you you know i'm 46 now so it's not that often that a brand new
movie is made with a great script and it's something different than you know you and i
watched when we were 20 or 30 so but the documentaries with the true stories i tend
up i tend to watch so many more of those now so i'll definitely add up thank you for the suggestion
all right so then next question is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a
guest to speak to the first responders military and associated professions of the world
right if you can if you can get richard branson now that he would be great i know him a little
bit i was on his island a couple of times in the caribbean and he he will be hard he will be hard
hard to get but i i don't know you know i'm more and more the older i get i'm more and more trying
to uh find places for young people to speak so i would i would definitely
uh you know even even having an unknown young person uh and and you have a you have a wonderful
young people there in florida some people who would kind of see the future in a positive way
i know that the uh these horrible school shootings there in florida triggered a movement
of young people who want to um um who want to lead the way and try to do good things
who want to lead the way and try to do good things you know if you if you can if you haven't had any
any young people there are really like young youngsters high schoolers or or students
try to find somebody and give give her or him a voice um and just you know talk about these
things that would be wonderful i'll definitely listen that story yes no absolutely a great idea
and actually funny you say that my son has been on the show my stepson and my wife so different
times and different questions but but yeah my son and my stepson were both involved in a code red
where they thought they had a shooter in a school so you know it's interesting hearing that but but
the parkland shooting that we had in florida yeah that's absolutely right i think that would be a
a great conversation with someone that was you know either still at school or maybe has just
graduated now but it was around that time because yeah i mean i i hate the fact that our children
have to know a drill that involves hiding in the dark under a desk because someone's trying to
murder them that disturbs me so much i want to say thank you so much for being so generous i know
that we've gone you know past the 90 minutes um i want to make sure that everyone knows how to
find you online and how to reach out to you if they want to on social media or the internet so
what's the best place for people to find you uh the best place i have my own website it's called
www.passisalberg.com i'm not extremely active there but there's a lot of stuff about my writings and
my speeches and some other stuff this will be there your your podcast will be there for sure
or you can follow me in social media and twitter it's passi underscore salberg easy to find there's
only one person as uh as i know it that has exactly the same name as i do so just google me and it
comes to me so i'm very happy to have happy to have a chat or conversation with you if you uh if
you're interested in brilliant well again thank you so so much this is something that conversation
i wanted to have for a long time because you have been out there teaching the world about some
solutions to some of the problems that we have so i just truly appreciate you being so generous and
um you know thank you so much for for telling your story thank you very much for giving me
this space an opportunity to have conversation you're doing great things you're part of the
change and you know keep it that way stay safe and spread the word