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Education, what does it means to you? For me it basically means the opportunity to get information and learn new things. We should be proud that we have a chance to get such great education. Even though the world has developed, we still know that millions of children don’t have a chance to go to school and get education.

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The Finnish education system is known almost all over the world, but it hasn’t always been like that. As we are celebrating the 100th year of independence in Finland, we should stop and look back. What is the story behind one of world’s greatest education systems.

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When Finland announced its independence in 1917, school wasn’t mandatory. Even though every town has had to have at least one school since 1898, many people didn’t go to school. Most of the children living in the countryside didn’t, because their parents needed them to work at home. Especially young girls didn’t go to school because many people thought that school was only for boys.

After the civil war in Finland in 1918 the school became quite a right-wing politics supporter. The job of the school was to grow nationalistic and anti-communist citizens. The right-wing government supported nationalistic ideology. This kind of education stopped when the Winter War ended in 1940.

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One noticeable change happened when school became mandatory for everyone in 1921. Most of the people went to school, including people from the countryside. This accelerated the development of Finnish education.

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In 1950 the duration of the mandatory education changed from four to six years. And finally, in 1960 it changed to eight years. Around the same time, the system started to shift from parallel to comprehensive school system. The process was executed between 1972 and 1978. All in all, the development of the system to its current stage has been a long process.

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The Finnish school system is excellent, but it isn’t enough. The world is changing so the education must also change along with it. We are the ones who can change it. Not only in Finland, but all over the world.

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EYP is a good example of how we can broaden the scope of education. During sessions we learn about the topic and the topics of others. But we are here also to learn to communicate and to work together as a team. These are all important parts of education.

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Maybe, in the end, we can also learn something about ourselves.

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Laura Heikura

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