Finnish Education Does Not Believe in Examinations
Professor Pasi Sahlberg

"Why is it that if you know how to cooperate, you would know how to compete? 'To compete, you must first know yourself and know others. Know yourself, then know others. Know yourself and have confidence in yourself. Knowing others and understanding their strengths and weaknesses is usually learnt through the process of cooperating with others. Through ascertaining who is better during the process of cooperation, the ability to compete is developed. The world is full of competition, but how should we adapt to this competitive world? Our view is that we should learn how to compete from the process of cooperation, rather than from the process of competition,' he said.

'A person's ability to innovate is a quality for survival in a highly competitive society. This ability is derived from activating one's own imagination and having an open spirit of risk-taking. This quality must be cultivated in an environment of warm cooperation with others, and not in a brutally competitive environment. In an environment that is too competitive, people do not wish to share or take risks in order to maintain an optimal state. How then do they have creativity? Hence we teach students to learn from and share with one another so as to mutually inspire new ideas.'"

- From Early Educators: A Journal of the Association for Early Childhood Educators (Singapore), Issue No. 18: December 2011

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