Craig Vezina Interview with Saku Tuominen, May 5, 2020

Craig Vezina: As someone with a huge passion for education, maybe a good place to start is what do you think is the most important ingredient for a great education?

Saku Tuominen: It’s a great question. I’ve been visiting hundreds of schools here in Tibet for six or seven years in various countries and whenever I’m discussing with teachers I’m always asked from them how they see what is the purpose of education and surprisingly often many of them say that’s a great question. I have been thinking about this during the past years. For me the essence of a great education, the purpose of education is to help every child flourish in life no matter what happens. And interestingly I think that this time the COVID is a great example about the world we are living in at the moment meaning that everything is extremely uncertain and we can quite easily say in the future we will need these and these skills, but to be honest there will be so many skills that will come as a surprise. So I’d say that it all comes down to growth mindset meaning how do we create a genuine love of learning. So what I’m seeing quite often is that if kids are leaving school so they hate learning. Lucky I don’t have to be studying anything anymore. School is over. I think that’s the worst possible mindset you can have in the fast changing world.

Craig Vezina: Yes, and in this particular moment when people are doing schooling and learning in a new way by no choice of their own what do you think is the greatest opportunity for education?

Saku Tuominen: I would almost say that what could have been the biggest opportunity because I think that we didn’t use it not even nearly as much as we could have. I sympathize with teachers and I sympathize with many of those in education, all education stakeholders. I think that all of this happened so fast is that it’s been a struggle to organize everything. But still I would say that we are talking about real world relevance. We are talking about project based learning. We are talking about living in the moment and so forth. I think that it would have been brilliant if all the countries would have had the courage to almost drop totally the traditional curriculum and say that we don’t even try to pretend that we will continue the day school was one week ago, two weeks ago. And instead what we could have done is that we could have been using COVID and everything that is happening as a massive, exciting, passionately learning experiment meaning is that it could have been studying biology. We could have been studying global movement. We could have been studying empathy, mental wellbeing, resilience and so on. So what I would have done now also when you have a bit more perspective I would have said is that let’s concentrate on the moment and let’s concentrate on what is happening globally and let’s use that one as the essence of education during the COVID.

Craig Vezina: Yes. I agree and I’d like to come back to that maybe at the end of our conversation in terms of what the opportunity still may be. You also I think are well placed to see how this moment has aggravated the gaps in equity and opportunity and access to technology. Maybe you could speak a little bit to what you’re seeing either in a good sense in the terms of the way people are being creative or innovative or the way that it’s actually worsening an existing problem.

Saku Tuominen: I mean what we’ve been doing during the past four months, five months, four weeks, five weeks is that we’ve been studying the solutions that various countries are using. We’ve been having webinars with people over 60-70 countries and one of the key insights has been that no country is alike, no city is alike, no family is alike and some cities, some schools are flourishing. Some schools even in the global north are having massive difficulties in organizing learning. But then when you go to countries in Africa, some in Latin America, Asia the problems are massive. There’s no internet connection. There are no tools in some African countries. They’re trying to take care of education by using SMS matrices which you are sending in an afternoon to parents and they are trying to use them as the base of the education. And so then we all know domestic violence and so forth so I would say that it differs so much and there is no one trick that works in every country. We have to be extremely humble in this situation. We have to be flexible and so on. So what I’ve learned is that the variety of problems and solutions is huge.

Craig Vezina: I wanted to circle back to that last question also maybe at the end but what’s the biggest question on your mind right now in terms of the future of learning and the future of work let’s say maybe on a longer horizon over the next five to ten years?

Saku Tuominen: It’s a really good question. I think that what we thought already before the COVID is more true now than ever meaning that the world is going to be extremely unexpected. No one knows what will happen. Something massive fundamental can happen in six months, 12 months and so on. So I think that we need to be creating a generation of people who are willing to learn and relearn resilience about growth mindset. I think that pretty much every country agrees on the skills that we should be teaching and kids should be learning. But for me I’d say that it’s a massive implementation challenge meaning that how do you make the change happen so that each and every child flourishes. How do you make the change happen at scale? How do you make the change happen even in certain circumstances in countries where kids are extremely unfortunate and so on. I would say that we should not be concentrating on what should be, we should be concentrating on how. And I think that’s the discussion that is lacking to much in a global education dialogue at the moment. We are not discussing even nearly enough about high quality implementation at scale.

Craig Vezina: What is your optimistic theory of change on how?

Saku Tuominen: Well first of all I’d say that we quite easily oversimplify. We are saying that education is based on an industrial model and it needs to change. That’s not the fact anymore. There’s so many great examples of education happening as we speak so first of all I’d say that the change is already here and it’s happening and we should be more open and more curious about the great examples that are happening each and every day. So that’s the one thing. But how I would say that from what is the theory of change we are having at HundrED at the moment is that first of all there’s a need and there’s various needs. Teachers might be thinking or the ministries might be thinking is that what is the best way to assess. What is the best way to teach empathy or creativity or a growth mindset or history or mathematics or whatever. Then another side of this one is solution meaning is that what is there’s the need and then there are various solutions out there. So it’s identifying the need and identifying the solutions. But the most challenging part is happening in between meaning is that how do you think the context, how do you make, how do you select the right solutions. How do you create an agile and ambitious development and co-development process so that it’s not like here’s the solutions, let’s start using it. But instead here’s a solution that might work, but let’s start co-developing that one and commit to improving it for years to come. And I think that kind of agile development processes are not even nearly good enough at the moment in most of the countries.

Craig Vezina: One of the questions that I think trips a lot of people up who actually want to do that is sort of the assessment question. How do they know or how do they objectively try to measure the learning or the growth and I wonder if you can speak to this assessment question in this I’d prefer future.

Saku Tuominen: Well, again a complicated question and I think that we should be talking about this for weeks because I’d say that assessment is the tail that is wagging the dog. Assessment is the key thing because we get what we measure and I’m not anti-assessment meaning I’m not anti having tests and so on, but I’d say that the key thing for me on the assessment is what does it lead into. And for me a great assessment is something that is increasing the excitement. After that assessment kids love learning even more. So I’d say that it’s a combination of various tricks that should be used on various occasions. But for me the key challenge at the moment is not what is happening in school, but what is happening at the primary education and universities. Even if the schools could be more liberal and they would be finding new ways to encourage kids to facilitate and empower them and so on. If the end game is that the universities are still using traditional based assess and so I think that the change will never happen. So that’s the key threshold we should be discussing about a lot more.

Craig Vezina: I agree with you one hundred percent and wonder if you have any instincts on the best way to move that part of the equation in terms of university admissions and the measures they used to admit?

Saku Tuominen: There’s no simple fix and every country is different but I’m quite excited, for example, at a German model where you are letting everyone who are motivated, pretty much everyone who is motivated to get to the university for the first year and then based on their passion, based on their improvement at the university you start eliminating some of the people and so on. So it’s more about how motivated you will be when you are actually in the university rather than getting into the university and so on.

Also, if you are thinking about the pros and cons about technology I think that technology is limitless and I am also quite fascinated about the world that anybody who would love to get to the university would because that’s the world we are living in. And some of the reasons for the exams and assessment has been limited in physical buildings, for example, at that kind of limits don’t exist anymore. And also for us at HundrED it’s been quite, almost I’d say mind blowingly exciting when we have been organizing webinars where we are discussing, for example, how to organize, reorganize education in remote areas where there is a massive lack of tools.

[00:14:17] And we’ve been having 600 people from 60 countries discussing these details passionately for two hours and so on. And it should have been obvious for us because we’ve been doing it for many years, but this has proven the massive potential that these online tools can have if used well on doing it. So I am fascinated about a big idea, for example, not having any exams but anybody can entrance the university of motivation is right. It might be an odd idea and so on but I think that’s possible already today.

Craig Vezina: Yes, just to build on that I’m on calls regularly with heads of school at very selective schools or I should say prestigious schools and one of the bigger barriers to change is always this university question and especially in the United States. It’s refreshing to talk to Lene Jensby in Denmark because I posed this question and she said it’s not a problem in Denmark. I said why and she said because you can go to any university you want. It’s just based on where you live. That kind of reinforces what you just said. So, I want to talk about technology because I think people know abstractly that technology is moving incredibly quickly and powerfully but they may not actually know what it looks like. And so I want to dig down into what is the technology that you think offers particular promise for the future of learning?

Saku Tuominen: I think already years in technology is so vast because you can be talking about millions of things starting from cameras to editing to AI to games and so on. I think that depends first of all what you are talking about. And I would say that pretty much every technology can be used and misused. I think that every technology can be extremely valuable if used well and it can be extremely harmful if it’s misused. I’d say that maybe the biggest challenge even before COVID-19 has been that we’ve been trying to replicate the existing so to speak industrial model and use that and turn that one into a form and for example we’ve been concentrating a bit too much on consumption of information rather than creating and examples that I’ve been really excited about are examples where schools are using technology to create something new. They can be creating, they can be doing websites, newspapers and they can be doing it across borders. They can be creating new kinds of movements. They can be doing their own versions of Wikipedia and so on. So I’m fascinated about examples where kids are creating something new that they can be **** in the real world rather than trying to take a book and then use that one in an electronic form. And I think that’s exactly what you should not be doing.

Another possibility is also the personalized learning aspect because I think that in best possible forms the technology should be creating possibilities for kids to follow their own passions and their own natural rhythm of learning and so on. So I’d say it should be flexibility from location and from rhythm. That should be one. The possibility to create something new and sort of like the limitless approach to learning material. And one area which I’m fascinated also about is trying to connect the learning to the world that is happening outside of the schools as we speak daily. I think that schools, for example are not good enough in turning yesterday’s news, for example, into an education material overnight. I think that it would be really fascinating to find a way that you can be using the real events as an education material so much more than we do at the moment. But at the same time I’m quite, I have a lot of sympathy towards teachers because it has been extremely fast and we are only learning to understand what works and doesn’t work. And in that sense I’d say that even if we’ve been having massive difficulties during the COVID in organizing education in some of the countries I say that most of the results would be actually quite positive and quite exciting. We have a better understanding where the potential is and I think that this has been a massive need to broach a better use of online tools in the future once we settle down after six months or so.

Craig Vezina: Yes, breaking down these artificial barriers between the world of school and the real world I think is a great example of where a lot of schools would like to go and maybe struggle with the how. And I wonder if you have a good story or two from schools or educators you see doing this well.

Saku Tuominen: First of all I’d say that what has been interesting for me during the COVID is that what we’ve been saying at HundrED from day one is that the world of education is a bit like Las Vegas meaning is like that saying whatever happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas and classrooms are a bit like that meaning is that whatever happens in a classroom stays in classroom. There’s an extremely small amount of cooperation between countries. And in crises like this we haven’t found practically not even one great example of governments doing cooperation in reorganizing education. For example, investing in some of the platforms or tools together. For example, in Scandinavia we could have been doing so much in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark we could have made the decision to say okay, let’s put our resources together and let’s cooperate. Now each and every one is doing things in isolation and so on. That’s massive and if we are seeing the cooperation it’s happening on a teacher level or even in a student level, but it’s not happening in a country level. I think that’s something that should change in years to come.

Going back to the good examples that at least this is never ending. There are so many beautiful types of things happening even in the most remote areas. And what we already said in HundrED we’ve been studying more than 5,000 education innovations during the past five years and I’ve said even before the COVID is that I have yet to find a country which is not full of beautiful things. And quite often the fact that you are having a country that is having massive problems on the education system in general doesn't mean that the country’s not full of teachers and schools doing beautiful things. And even I’d say in the Finnish case one could say that the Finnish education ecosystem is working quite well. One might say that it’s one of the best ones in the world. But does it mean that we have the best education in the very sense in the world. I wouldn’t be saying that. So I’d say that there’s beautiful spots of innovation and innovativeness and so on happening in each and every part of the world.

Craig Vezina: If you could go back in time and give some advice to your 18 year old self knowing what you know now through your experiences what advice would you give?

Saku Tuominen: I wouldn’t because I think that for me there’s too many adults giving advice to kids and I think that the essence of learning and so on is that when the time is right you’ll learn and if you make mistakes you learn even more. So if I would now give advice to the 18 year old version of myself I know that the 18 year old he wouldn’t listen to me. I’m 53 and so on. He would say shut up, I know what to do and he would make the mistakes as he should. I think that we are a bit too worried about making mistakes in general in education. Quite often when we are talking about improving education people say how do we know it works. Well the honest answer is we don’t. Whenever we are doing something new we don’t know if it works and it’s not a bad thing if it doesn’t work because that’s the way you learn. So I’m encouraging schools and teachers to make mistakes. The kids don’t so to speak break if you do things that didn’t work as expected. They might even learn something valuable because that’s the essence of uncertainty and so on. You try things. If it didn’t work, you improve, you modify, you adapt and I think that’s the beauty of human improvement.

Craig Vezina: I love that answer. Beautifully expressed. I don’t have any more formal questions. I did want to just have a conversation about some of the things that you said but was there a question I didn’t ask that you’d like to answer?

Saku Tuominen: Well, maybe we could be discussing some of the examples as well.

Craig Vezina: Yes. From the teacher’s point of view or parents or kids or all the above.

[00:25:49] Saku Tuominen: I can give you a few examples. So one thing, for example, which I find really interesting – I don’t know whether it works and so on but in Netherlands Agora School, it’s run by Rob Houben. What they are trying to do at the moment is that when schools are coming back to the so to speak normal but most of the city is staying in lockdown meaning that sports teams, theaters, restaurants, most of them are closed. What they are trying to do is how could you use the community around schools as teachers and create new connections between local schools and local operators. And one of the goals of this program is that you could even create connections that could last once the COVID is over so that schools could be an active part of the local community. And I’m talking also about the future of education and I’m quite excited about using the city as a learning environment, creating barriers between schools and the city or the community and so on. That’s why I’m really excited, for example about the policy that my hometown Helsinki is having which means that the public transportation is free for each and every teacher, each and every student during the school day.

And that’s the say the city is encouraging teachers and students to lead the school during the school day. So this is another area which I find at the moment really exciting that school is not seen as a building but you sort of break the walls and you are using the world as a school building. That’s a great example. But also I’ve been really excited about the countries that have been reacting to this unexpected situation in a creative way and one area which I have been really excited about is using broadcast technology in reaching kids, especially the kids who have no internet connection and so on. And there’s countries like Spain or New Zealand that have been creating really innovative ways of combining TV, radio and education and so forth. I see a lot of potential in here as well so that you are approaching education from fresh angles. And if I’m thinking about education globally before COVID I’d say that there was not much cooperation between us and our broadcasting channels, radio channels, broadcasting technologies, YouTube channels, master class and so on then between the education. I think that kind of connection also has a massive, massive potential.

But also I love small everyday ideas. I was just hearing from one teacher in Finland who gave a task to the kids and the task was really simple in theory. What he said is that open your fridge and analyze what ingredient in your fridge is the least sustainable. And I think that it’s simple, it’s motivating, it’s exciting and then the kids say we’re studying the catsup and mustard and bananas and so on and trying to identify and analyze them from a sustainability point of view. And that’s one version of the education that gets me really excited.