Literary History in the Schools: From Nationalism to Cultural Varieties

According to the literary sociologist Erkki Sevänen, one of the most important roles of school education in literature in Finland, from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s, was the formation, maintenance, and dissemination of a nationalist-patriotic system of values (Sevänen, 1995, 21). Four-year primary schools were established during the last decades of the nineteenth century all over the country, first in towns and then in rural areas, although it was only in 1921 that compulsory primary school was implemented. The goal of the primary school was to raise children as competent and loyal citizens of the state. An important means of achieving this goal was the teaching of the mother tongue (whether Finnish or Swedish), with literature as part of the subject. As early as 1856, a decree directed that the mother tongue was to be a subject in all eight-year secondary schools in Finland (divided into five-year lower and three-year upper secondary school).