Tag: education

Our modern-day schooling system was designed to train children into becoming the perfect employee, to sit at a desk perhaps, or follow orders effectively for when they are old enough to enter the workforce. The hours, little time for play, taking instructions from a person with authority and unfortunately, leaving little room for exploring creative abilities.

We spend our formative years in school, developing our rational minds, but our emotions receive no formal attention. High divorce rates, job loss, employment stress, accidents, deaths, personal struggles, changing hormones, financial problems and health issues challenge everyone’s emotional health. Yet, as a society, we stubbornly treat the development of our emotions as a low priority. Since emotions are invisible, they are treated as if they don’t exist.

Though children in both countries suffer from low activity levels, a key difference exists between Finland and the United States: Hundreds of schools across this tiny Nordic nation are now endeavoring to keep kids active throughout the day through a relatively new government initiative called “Finnish Schools on the Move.” This experiment could serve as an example of what America, where problems such as childhood obesity are on the rise, could do to get kids more active.