by Dr. Timo Toiviainen (1999)
Foreign influences - domestic applications
In the 16th century, Finland, like the other Scandinavian countries, joined the group of nations supporting the Lutheran Reformation, and adopted Lutheran doctrines. One of these doctrines meant that people had to learn to read in order to be able to study for themselves the word of God as revealed in the Bible, and the goal of nationwide literacy proved to be the most significant factor in the creation of a foundation for adult education in the 19th century. This was the period during which modern adult education began to emerge throughout the Nordic countries.
The first residential folk high school on Grundtvig's model began to operate in Denmark in 1844 and in Finland almost half a century later, i.e. in 1889. In keeping with its name, a residential folk high school was both the home and the school of the student, that is, a comprehensive learning environment. It called for long-term commitment to studying, however, which also meant it was expensive. This is why 'lighter' forms of adult education were also needed. For this purpose, Sweden developed the concept of a 'workers' educational centre'; this was an educational institution for study during a worker's leisure hours, meant primarily to meet the educational needs of working people (the residential folk high schools were originally designed for young people in the countryside). Workers' educational centres never developed into a major institution in Sweden, but after the idea was first introduced in Finland in the industrial city of Tampere in 1899, this particular form of adult education in fact developed into Finland's biggest single network of adult education institutes over the following 70 years.
Local government was very active right from the start in establishing workers' educational centres, and this is why the extreme left took the view that they were not sufficiently 'labour-oriented'. A Workers' Educational Association was therefore established in Finland in 1919, on a Swedish model. In Sweden, a similar organization had been functioning since 1906, concentrating primarily on the organization of new-type adult studies; these activities soon began to be known as 'study circles'.
The decades of liberal adult education dominance
Adult education centres
Finland became independent of Russia in 1917. By this point, neither the reactionary old tsarist power nor the new Soviet Socialist Republic could prevent the independent nation of Finland from becoming increasingly active in developing three different forms of liberal adult education. This resulted in the establishment of new workers' educational centres: in the study year 1918-1919 there were only 11 centres, but by the Second World War the number was up to 51. In the post-war years, the number of centres and of the adults studying there rose slowly but steadily. Another rapid upward spurt took place when a new act was passed in 1962-1963, providing those who ran workers' education centres with substantial State subsidies. In 1962-1963 there were 133 centres, but by 1975-1976 the number had reached 270. Since then, the number of centres has only risen by a few, but the number of students keeps growing. By 1975-1976 the figure was 416,000, and peaked in the 1990s at over 620,000.
The most important reason for the growth of the workers' educational centre movement was that it was no longer intended only for workers, but for the entire adult population. An important formal change took place, when the name of the centre established in the city of Kuopio in 1916 was changed from 'workers' educational centre' to 'adult education centre', to show that it was intended for all population categories and not only for the working class. This line of thinking was supported by the fact that a majority of the centres (today, more than 80%) had always been owned by municipalities, and thus could not concentrate on catering solely to the needs of one population group. The entire population had to be taken into account.
Study circles
The historical development of study circles essentially resembles the metamorphosis that took place in the adult education centre movement as a whole. In Finland, as in Sweden, the Workers' Educational Association was the first to include study circles in its programme. Gradually, however, this form of adult education proved so useful that other popular movements and non-governmental organizations adopted it as a tool for educating their membership.
Current legislation calls for a permit for the provision of study circle activities by nationwide educational institutions called study circle centres. The condition for granting a permit is that the centre is backed and supported by various popular movements and non-governmental organizations. Thus, many political parties run a study centre sponsored by women's, youth, sports, trade and other organizations supporting the party in question. On the other hand, many centres wish to underline their independence of party politics. Their background organizations may then include various organizations that have not committed themselves politically, such as the Christian Study Centre run by organizations close to Finland's Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Swedish Study Circle Centre (in Finland), which caters to the needs of the entire Swedish-speaking minority.
Residential folk high schools
Over a period of a hundred years (1889-1989), the number of residential folk high schools rose to 90. At an early stage, a diversification process started among these schools, and eventually three different categories of approximately the same size in terms of numbers emerged: 1) Roughly one third of these schools consider themselves 'Grundtvigian'. These have been the most persistent in trying to preserve the distinctively humanistically weighted features of the original 'Grundtvigian' residential folk high school in Denmark in their teaching. 2) Many schools are distinctly denominational in their values. These maintain their own political, religious or other values different from those of other groups, and their curricula are built up on that basis. It is important to note here that in all forms of liberal adult education in Finland, the legislation permits pluralistic values and the principal financing party, the State, is not allowed to interfere in teaching content. 3) Many schools function in parallel with the two groups mentioned above, but do not wish to adhere to Grundtvigian or any other values. Rather, they aim at a neutral line of action supportive of independent individual growth without prioritizing their values. The existence of these schools shows that there is extensive demand for this approach, too.
To some extent, all the above-mentioned forms of liberal adult education have compensated for deficiencies in the rest of the country's educational system. Historically speaking, residential folk high schools have identified most closely with the educational system as a whole. This is why the question of whether educational reforms have rendered residential folk high schools unnecessary as a supplementary system has often been debated. Time after time, however, residential folk high schools have proved themselves to be flexible, adaptable institutions: when other educational institutions have 'taken over' some of their functions, they have found new ones in the acute needs of contemporary society.
The following chart shows the providers of liberal education, the numbers of institutions, and average student numbers for the past few years.
|
Provider |
Number of institutions |
Number of students |
Annual teaching hours |
|
Adult Education Centres |
276 |
620,000 |
2,000,000 |
|
Study Circle Centres |
11 |
650,000 |
650,000 |
|
Residential Folk High Schools |
91
91 |
90,000
(8,000*) |
635,000 |
*) This figure refers to students who have taken part in 'long courses' (7-9 months). The figure 90,000 above refers to the total number of participants in both long and short courses during the year.
Vocational adult education to the fore
The peace treaty made between Finland and the Soviet Union after the Second World War required Finland, as the losing party, to pay extremely heavy reparations to the Soviet Union. One fundamental prerequisite for succeeding here was to raise the professional skills of the working adult population through training. The State, industry and private-sector employers thus began to organize vocational courses for their employees. This special form of training remained in place even after the immediate cause - the reparations - was removed. It took more than a decade, however, from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, before intensified, systematic development of vocational adult education was considered necessary. A significant step forward was taken in 1965, when Parliament passed an act on vocational courses aimed at promoting employment.
1970-1985 the era of the Adult Education Committee and State-run adult education planning
The 1960s and the '70s were characterized by a predominantly optimistic attitude in education. It was widely believed that social progress could be substantially accelerated by continuing to raise the educational level of the population. Along with the reform of the entire educational system, adult education benefited from riding on top of this wave of educational optimism. The concrete manifestations were many:
The legislation on public libraries, supportive of adult education, was revised in 1961, and, as was already mentioned above, the legislation on adult education centres was modernized in 1962-1963. The first act on study circle activities was passed; previously this form of education had received subsidies granted annually; now, public subsidies became the established practice.
The State increased its subsidization of all forms of adult education in the 1970s particularly, allowing for the massive increase in student numbers referred to above in connection with adult education centres. This growth was thus not exceptional, but a natural outcome, and involved all forms of adult education.
In January 1971, the Finnish Government set up an Adult Education Committee, soon to be popularly dubbed the 'Grand' Committee because of its large number of members and because it was understood to be a planning body with unprecedented influence.
The Adult Education Committee worked for several years. Its work ended when a decision-in-principle was issued by the Government in June 1978, based on the Committee's report. This decision marked the beginning of a new planning period that lasted to the mid-1980s. The following issues were of essential importance in this planning process:
1) Adult education was handled as a single entity; the idea was to prepare a development plan for the whole multifaceted sector. To this end, the Ministry of Education set up a number of sub-committees to submit proposals on measures in specific sectors.
2) The basic report by the Adult Education Committee had already shown that the two principal areas in the overall system were extremely unevenly developed. General adult education, where liberal adult education was particularly active, was of a high international standard, and rather little could be done to improve it through government measures. Consequently, the main emphasis of the further work carried out was on the development of vocational adult education.
The recession changes educational thinking and many existing practices
While the various committees working in the early '80s were completing their development proposals, ominous signs began to be seen in the economic skies over Finland, and in the late '80s and early '90s Finland found itself in the middle of a serious economic crisis. In all sectors, ambitious reforms based on the unspoken assumption that economic growth would go on forever had to be given up. This setback called for a new way of thinking, also concerning education and training, which was still largely funded by the State.
The recession in the late 1980s and early '90s caused the following changes in the conditions for and reality of adult education in Finland:
- The State's role as principal financer has been re-examined. As a result, the proportion of State subsidy for various forms of adult education has been reduced, almost without exception. The general trend has been for a 20% reduction on peak levels. The providers of education have naturally had to find other sources of income to counterbalance this fall in subsidy. In some cases, funds allocated for training the unemployed, EU funds for training and education, or other available public funds may have come to the rescue, but these measures have not proved sufficient to bring the situation under control. The fact that Finnish adult education has joined the market economy has also manifested itself in higher student fees and in many cases additional costs to employers. Since citizens can still utilize these services on the same, or even a wider scale as before, the changeover to an educational market economy has taken place in a controlled manner: the supply has not plummeted nor has its quality deteriorated.
- As the State has been forced to give providers more responsibility, it has also had to give them more power. The old extensive monitoring by State authorities has been reduced considerably, and bureaucratic procedures have been dismantled. Adult education institutes require, and have received, a freer hand in (a) obtaining new funding, (b) serving their old clientele on new terms, c) finding new clients and (d) renewing their syllabi to meet current needs.
- Particularly in the 1960s, Finland's primary starting point was that the adult education system was to be developed by raising the quantity, and improving the quality, of supply. The next decade proved that the ideas of the '60s did not apply to anywhere near all those requiring education and training; some of those with the least formal education would actually avoid adult education altogether. This is why the demand began to be stimulated, i.e. new forms of financial support were created for adult students, and they were recruited using new motivational methods. The current philosophy on such issues considers these two approaches important, but alongside them, continues to increasingly underline the learner's own responsibility, with the emphasis on learning instead of teaching and training. Adult students are now the key figures in the educational market, and must recognize their own responsibility for both maintaining their professional skills and developing themselves in other ways. They may also increasingly have to bear the responsibility for financing their own studies, or at least will have to work harder to obtain funding.
- At the beginning of 1996, Finland joined the EU, but even before accession, Finnish adult education institutions had been active in many Union programmes. For almost a decade now, adult education has been in the vanguard of the internationalization process in Finnish training and education.
Education is still the best competition factor for a small nation
Quite a few aspects of Finland's adult education are now very different from what they were a decade ago. We would not be justified in saying that only small and insignificant changes have taken place. Rather, the changes have been profound and radical. Why then, am I able to claim that the quantity of supply continues to be nearly the same as before, that is, at the highest international level, and that the new competitive situation has raised the quality, instead of lowering it? The answer is that all education is still considered the most important competition factor for a small nation. If there are no other alternative resources, such as minerals or significant capital assets, investments must be in human resources. We must believe that the Finns can solve the problems of today and tomorrow, and that the better learning opportunities they are offered, the better they can do this.
References
National Board of Education (1996). Adult Education and Training in Finland. Nykypaino Oy.
National Board of Education (1996). The Development of Education 1994-1996. National Report of Finland. Nykypaino Oy.
Ministry of Education. FINLAND (1996). Education and Research. Development Plan for Education and University Research for 1995-2000. Government Resolution 21 December 1995. Helsinki.
Toiviainen, Timo (ed., 1997). By the People, For the People: The Tradition, the States of the Art and the Future Prospects of Finnish Liberal Adult Education. Hakapaino, Helsinki.
Tuomisto, J. (1992). "Finland," Perspectives on Adult Education and Training in Europe. Edited by Peter Jarvis. Assisted by Annette Stannett. Worcester, G.B.: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (England and Wales), pp. 287-304
