I SPENT 11 YEARS IN THE SAME SCHOOL. WHAT I LEARNED THERE YOU WON'T FIND IN ANY TEXTBOOK

I don't know what it's like to study in a Romanian state high school.

But I do know what it's like to learn in a place where you are treated as a person, not as a file number. And after 11 years in the same school, I can say with certainty: the difference is not small. It is fundamental.

I am a 10th grade student at the Romanian-Finnish High School. I started in kindergarten. I grew up here. I am about to leave - I hope - for a sports management university in the Netherlands. And precisely because I know I am leaving, I feel the need to say out loud what I have been given and what I believe is missing around us.

I am not going to attack anyone. I am simply going to tell the truth. And the truth is sometimes sharper than any attack.

What the Romanian-Finnish High School actually is

In 2008, a young teacher visited Finland. She saw what a school looks like when the child is truly at the centre - not as a slogan on a brochure, but as a daily reality. She returned to Romania and in 2010, at the age of 23, she founded the Romanian-Finnish High School. That young woman's name is Alina Dumitrache.

We call her Alina. Not because we lack respect - quite the opposite. In the spirit of Finnish education, a teacher is not a distant authority you look up to from below. They are a person who walks alongside you. And Alina walks alongside all of us - over 900 students, from kindergarten through to the baccalaureate - and knows each one of us by name. She always has one or two minutes for each of us, no matter how full her schedule is. Those who know this school understand that the only punishment that truly stings here is no longer being allowed to call her Alina - but Mrs. Alina. That is how much the relationship matters. That is how much the human being matters.

The school did not copy Finland. It learned from it and built something of its own. We follow the full national Romanian curriculum - with all the required subjects, exams, and everything the system demands. But layered on top of that are subjects and programmes inspired directly by the Finnish model: public speaking, entrepreneurship, emotional education, applied interdisciplinary projects. Not as elective activities. As part of who we are.

What 11 years in a school like this builds in you

I learned to speak in public - not once, not in an isolated elective, but consistently, in front of classmates, teachers, and people from outside the school. Public speaking is not an activity here. It is a a competency you practice until it becomes part of you.

I learned to manage my emotions - we have psychologists in school, not as decoration, but as active participants in our daily lives. You don't go to a psychologist only when you're in crisis. You go because that is simply how things work here normally.

I learned entrepreneurship - not from theory, but from real projects, from interactions with people who have actually built something, from questions that have no answer in any textbook.

I completed internships at reputable companies where I understood how the real world functions - how decisions are made, how teams are built, what responsibility looks like outside the classroom. No class ever prepared me for that as well as a single day spent inside an organisation that actually works.

I had the privilege of sitting in the same room as sports champions, entrepreneurs, and people who built remarkable companies and careers - people who come to our school not to deliver speeches, but to have real conversations with us. Those encounters shaped me more than any lesson ever could.

We are encouraged, supported - and held accountable when necessary. Just like in a family. We are not allowed to hide behind excuses. We are expected to grow.

The uncomfortable parallel

In many Romanian high schools, the dominant model is the one we all know: the teacher lectures, the student listens, the student reproduces at the test, the student is graded. Time passes. The cycle repeats. Performance is measured in averages and prizes - and those averages and prizes become the goal in themselves, not the natural consequence of genuine formation.

This is not the fault of teachers. Most of them genuinely want to do well. The problem is the architecture of the system they operate within: overcrowded classrooms, bureaucracy, lack of professional autonomy, virtually no psychological support, classes of 30 students where any form of individualisation is a joke. And on top of all that - salaries that do not sustain the dignity of a professional.

Think about a teacher who cannot afford their own continued professional development, who struggles to pay their bills every month, and who stands in front of a class where students carry the latest smartphones and wear the newest fashion. That teacher does not feel inferior because they are weak. They feel inferior because the system placed them there. And a frustrated, exhausted, undervalued teacher cannot give what they do not have. Not because they don't want to. Because they simply cannot.

In that kind of system, the student is a receiver. Here, the student is a participant.

What we still lack and what I hope we can change

Even in my school, there is a gap I feel. We do not have a high school basketball team to compete against other schools. We have a wonderful sports hall. We have eager students. We have enthusiasm. I myself serve as assistant coach for the primary and middle school teams - and I know we can do more.

I hope that in the two years I have left here, we manage to build this team. Not for trophies. For what sport builds in people - exactly what this school has built in me: discipline, resilience, respect, and identity.

What should be normal in every school

We are not talking about impossible resources. We are talking about choices and the courage to make them.

First and foremost, we need to honestly study the educational systems that perform - Finland, Estonia, Singapore, Canada - and intelligently adapt what works to our own context. Not mechanical copying. Smart translation.

Psychologists genuinely integrated into school life - not a closed office you visit only in crisis. Authentic dialogue between students, parents, and teachers - not formal meetings where nothing real is ever said. Guests from the real world who show students that life exists beyond the textbook. Space for public speaking, for entrepreneurship, for making mistakes and starting over.

Salaries that restore teachers' dignity and give them the energy they need to be truly present. Encouragement and support for young teachers who want to teach differently - and who are currently suffocated by a system that rewards conformity, not courage.

Updated subjects, connected to what is actually happening in the 21st century and to the real demands of society and the job market. A student who finishes high school today and cannot think critically, work in a team, or communicate effectively is not ready for life - regardless of their grade average.

These are not utopian ideas. They are standards that other countries have already made normal. And standards that I have lived every single day for 11 years.

I am Nicholas Carstoiu, competitive athlete, youth activist involved in mental health and children's rights projects, member of the Children's Board of Romania supported by UNICEF, and a 10th grade student at the Romanian-Finnish High School - and I believe the most important thing a school can give you is not a high grade average. It is the courage to enter life knowing who you are, what you want, and why you matter.

That is what I was given here.

And I will never forget it.