Autumn falls on Helsinki already in late-August like a leaded fishing line: with an initial plop and then an almost unperceivable sinking. I walk Ante, our eldest, to school. He’s recently started first grade in a Finnish-language class despite knowing only a few words, and his spirits are high. Over and over again he intones: “School is greeeeat!”

After school, when I pick him up, I ask about lunch.

 “I almost puked,” he says.

“That bad, eh?”

“No, I almost puked because I ate so much! We had mashed potatoes and fish fingers, cucumber, tomato, hard bread, butter, milk, salad, a white sauce to put over the potatoes and fish…” and he goes on to list 20 food items that, I figure, have veered off into the imagination, but the point is clear: if you want Ante to be happy at school, keep him well fed and he’ll contentedly sit through 45-minute lessons in a language he doesn’t understand.

“I’ve learned how to be patient, like Finnish people,” he tells me, and he imitates my friends’ stony faces when they visit for dinner, sitting at the table barely moving a hand and certainly not their facial muscles.

Ante, who is observant and an imitator, picks up on the somber and almost hidden humor with which Finns view the world.

These posts will be about how Ante learns Finnish, his school experiences as a first grader in the Finnish school system, as well as my experiences working as a ‘school attendance assistant’ (koulunkäynninavustaja) at the same school, a job I’ve just started a few days ago. On the side, I am also working my way towards a teaching certificate at the University of Helsinki, a process that makes my ongoing PhD work seem like a hobby, a lark, a pleasant pastime that I don’t have time for.

Finnish schools are wonderful places (some of my fondest memories from childhood were of the two separate years my family moved from the USA to Finland for a year) and yes, the food has a lot to do with it (in the USA I ate a dry peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, washed down with an acrid box drink), but the schools are only one part of a wider society that takes care of its citizens. How? Why? That is a topic I will take up, but let me part with one telling example.

My wife and I were happily overworked and bewildered with one boy, age 6, and a newborn baby when she became pregnant again. We were to expect so-called Irish twins. God Almighty, what have you done?!? Without batting an eye, the city authorities (via neuvola, more on that later) organized a city-babysitter, couples’ therapy and psychotherapy for us not because we were nuts, but because we might become so soon, and society is a better place if couples don’t melt down, get divorced and damage their children in the process. The security of knowing that the city of Helsinki is behind us has a direct correlation on how content Ante is while skipping to school on these early-autumn mornings. That and the fish fingers, of course.

Next time I’ll tell you about the school itself: the classrooms, facilities, schedule, books, attitudes and teaching methods. I’ll also tell you more about what I do, which is specializing in the Finnish secret weapon for early-learning success: play.

O autoru:

Eric Bergman je Amerikanac rođen u Finskoj (ili Finac odrastao u Americi). Studirao je i živio u Londonu (BA) i Berlinu (MA), a u međuvremenu je nekoliko godina u Meksiku vodio život glazbenika kao suosnivač polka-punk banda Polka Madre. Trenutačno živi u Helsinkiju sa suprugom Hrvaticom i tri sina. Radi u školi, stječe finsku učiteljsku diplomu na Sveučilištu u Helsinkiju, a u slobodno se vrijeme bavi pisanjem doktorata iz književnosti.