Leea Lakka spent a year sitting at the back of the class and found that schools need to expect more from pupils.
Lakka, a doctoral researcher, set out to find out why pupils sitting in the back row were disengaged from their classes. After observing these teens for a year, she came to the conclusion that schools should not pander too much to what kids want.
Back-row students aren't interested in studying, according to Lakka. These children have their own little world, which also alarmingly reflects youth inequality," Lakka told Yle Radio Suomi.
For her dissertation, Lakka spent an entire school year sitting in on ninth grade classes at two schools. She wanted to investigate how the students seated at the back were managing.
Generally, back-row students are those the least interested in schoolwork. During the course of the year, Lakka discovered that these kids actually used a lot of time and energy to avoid doing their work.
"They were really putting in the effort to slack off. Instead of writing, for example, they imitated the movement of a pen in the air," Lakka explained.
Avoiding work also had a social component, according to Lakka. It was a way to be part of a friend group. This meant it was also difficult for students to shape up because they would be ostracized by their fellow slackers.
Avoiding studying is nothing new, Lakka pointed out. Smartphones, however, make it so much easier than it used to be.
"We've all been distracted in class, but phones now are a source of long-term entertainment. How many of us would have decorated the margins of our notebooks or scratched our desks for very long?" Lakka asked.
Lakka said that schools shouldn't only consider how phones can be used for learning, but also how they affect the overall atmosphere of the classroom.
"I feel that we wouldn't lose much by giving up the phones," she said.
Family matters
Ultimately, however, smartphones are not the root cause of the problem. Some kids are interested in school, others are not — and these differences are deep seated and concerning.
Lakka, for example, pointed out that boys living in larger cities read significantly better than those in sparsely populated areas.
Many of the back-row boys she met didn't see reading or learning as very important. It was clear to them that they would go on to vocational school after ninth grade. They were not interested in things that weren't directly beneficial to their future jobs.
That said, Lakka noted that politicians should pay more attention to the varying degrees to which families value and support their kids' education.
If parents don't value education, that attitude also impacts children. At the same time, not all parents are able to support their children in school to the same extent as others.
"It's entirely different to grow up in a family that travels and reads compared to a family where these things don't happen," Lakka said.
Schools should also insist that studying doesn't depend solely on kids' interest, as not everyone has an equal opportunity to be interested in things they haven't been exposed to.
Young people must be required to take some responsibility," Lakka explained. "Schools should stick to the goal that it is their job to teach things that may not always interest the kids."
Yle News' All Points North podcast has explored Finland's relaxed attitudes toward kids and smartphones.
Listen to the episode via this embedded player, on Yle Areena, via Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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