Rebecca Libermann
It is bitterly
cold and dark, the language is incomprehensible, and the city unknown, the
family far away – for some continents away- and some are stunned by the prices.
Finland is for
many exchange students a culture shock. However, not for long. The more than 30
foreign students, which I teach from the Faculty of Culture at the Helsinki
Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, have apparently settled in quickly
and enjoy the "exotic" of their situation.
In my course Finland close-up, which I teach this winter semester, students
from 19 countries and four continents learn from me, what is up with Finland. And
they get to know it first hand through many visits to some of the major Finnish
institutions and in discussions with their members as well as through lectures
on general aspects of Finnish culture, politics and media.
I teach the
course, to which I am looking forward to every year, for almost a decade now. For the first time, I have this year a number
of Chinese students, interesting girls and boys. With them in the great mix,
there are students from Norway, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland,
Lithuania, Namibia, Ghana, Tanzania, the Czech Republic, Austria, Great
Britain, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Poland, a small United
Nations, only that there is more harmony.
For me as a
teacher, it is each year an exiting, slightly frightening wait to see how the
dynamics in the class will work out. Because every time it is different. This
year, the class is outstanding. I have super-nice, lively, intelligent and
positive students who seem to enjoy their stay in Finland and the school. Not a
single troublemaker, grouch, or someone who wants to get his/her credits the
easy or even dishonest way. Most years are like that but not all.
Nevertheless, the
teaching of such a multinational class is a challenge for me, because not only
the students come from so many countries, they also study in the field of
culture very different subjects at different campuses. Although the Film&TV
department of Metropolia organizes the course, there are also students from the
media, music, Pop&Jazz and textile design branches of the school. Some have
academic background as the German students from the University of Hanover, while
others come from colleges and polytechnic high schools.
And there are other
things that I have to deal with as a teacher of such a colorful class like
varying English skills, different learning and knowledge backgrounds, wide-ranging
worldviews and socio-economic backgrounds.
Then there is the time-management, which varies very much according to the world
regions they are coming from. For some, the academic quarter of an hour extends
to an hour, while others come always much too early. But this year’s class had
only slight slip-ups.
Some students are
also somewhat worldly inexperienced and lacking in independence, have not
traveled much or are for the first time away from home. Even if I email them a
map and draw into it how to get from point A to B, tell them with which tram or
bus and to get out at which stop, they run around headless in a complete other
part of town phoning me for help not knowing where they are. However, this
year, that happened so far only few times.
It is also not
easy to grade the essays or projects with which the course ends. Canadian,
British, Australian students, for instance, can easily throw together an
English essay, but the others struggle. In some countries, the cut-and-paste
culture is widely accepted and/or independent thinking frowned upon. But how do
you grade something that is totally stolen from Wikipedia or some other source?
For this reason, I
lately ask my students for more original projects or group projects where they can
cheat less and where speech is less paramount. A year ago, I got inter a.o. a
webpage design, a small Finland experience movie, a Finnish fashion guide, a
musical discourse on two Finnish composers, a pleasure and learning experience for
me and the students.
For me, the course
is a big enrichment too because the students teach me just as much as I do teach
the students. They bring their individuality and youthful curiosity to the
table, let me know about the current state of affairs in their own country or shed
a new, from the outside shining light on a row of aspects in Finland.
Finland is for
some of them, at first, a book with seven seals, completely exotic. African
students, for example, experience snow for the first time. Other students are
amazed at how smoothly the traffic works or how few homeless people hanging
around on the streets and how the system works and social democracy or freedom
of speech or the casual intercourse between teachers or authority figures and
students.
In the first
weeks, the students are bombarded by so many new things that even the most
talkative gets quiet as a mouse and has nothing to ask even the very friendly
director of the cable factory (to his astonishment) with whom we wander through
the big building. But after a few weeks, the fears, the complete ignorance are
overcome and the natural curiosity sets in, so much so, that it gets hard to
get them away, for example, from one of the Member of Parliament whose time is
limited, but they have so many questions.
Of course, there
are also critical voices, mainly from the Central European countries that do
not understand why the Finns constantly praise their achievements, use words
like “national” and “Finnish” so much. They do not know how young the state is
and how big inferiority complex of the Finns was once. It is my job to explain
them what is at the core of it.
Another criticism
is the lack of contact with the country's population and Finnish fellow
students. Often the exchange students keep to themselves, and are left to
themselves even in the classes they share with Finnish students. Finns are maybe
more shy to meet somebody new than others. On the other hand, it was also like
this in my times when I was studying in Lausanne, Switzerland, for a whole
summer. Also, there, the foreign students cliqued together.
With some of my course’s
students of many years ago, I am still in loose contact. Others have come back
for holidaying or even to work here. Most have never regretted coming here for
exchange studies as they have told me, but rather bragged about their adventures
and told stories of "wild" Lapland. I also had students who have
tried to give their own country a shot of Finnish democracy or wanted to learn
the secret from the Finnish Foreign Ministry how Finland navigates its
relations with Russia. Others were exposed here for the first time to a
classical music concert or a contemporary dance rehearsal.
But, of course,
students everywhere usually want one thing: Fun! And that they have found here.
Rebecca Libermann
Journalist,
lecturer
