Paper Short Abstract:

The paper discusses the cultural models of education in correspondent letters of late 19th and early 20th century Finnish working-class press. It demonstrates how (unwritten) agrarian models were used in categorizations of an ideal member of working-class and critique of education models.

Paper Abstract:

Since the early 2000s, scholars of ethnology, folklore, religion and literary studies have offered new perspectives for the history of Finnish education. Using various archive and literary materials, researchers have brought voices of resistance from below, which were largely ignored from previous (education) history. These studies show that rural people and industrial workers were not merely passive recipients of late 19th civilization and education models but were able to discuss and criticise them in the public sphere through correspondent letters.

In my presentation I will discuss the reception and creation of education models in the late 19th and early 20th century working-class Finnish press. Using cognitive cultural studies as theoretical framework, I analyse how correspondents received, criticized and reshaped cultural models of education for the needs of working-class. On the ideological surface, writings advocate socialist worldview, class struggle and class consciousness, which included critique of ‘bourgeois’ values and models of education. However, careful ethnological gaze can also reveal hidden (unwritten) agrarian mental models beneath the surface, which were crucial in the construction of new models for the working-class. Categorizations of a ‘good’ member of working-class included attributes, values and norms, which were inherited from estate society. Cultural models of rural people and peasants were adapted and transformed into new values of an ideal member of a working class, which also included labour movement´s models for a civilized and educated worker.