Untitled

Ekaterina Protassova
University of Helsinki, Finland
saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi:
problemebi da gamowvevebi
Issues of State Language Teaching;
Problems and Challenges
Multilingual Education in Finland
(with a special focus on the Russian language)
ABSTRACT
The present article tries to connect the language education policy in Finland with its historical development.
Finland has always been a multilingual country, and the combination of languages in the
school curriculum followed the necessities of power and economics. The numerous successes in the international
PISA competitions are explained through teaching of languages and mathematics at school.
The current state of foreign and second language acquisition is demonstrated in depth through example
of Russian in education.
The historical perspective
The first settlers came to Finland approximately 8.000 B.C., supposedly, following the melting snow of
the ice age. The Finno-Ugric people arrived from the Ural area between Europe and Asia, and there were Baltic
and Germanic speakers arriving from the shores of the Baltic Sea. The Swedes lived on the modern territory
of Finland for more than eight centuries, and vice versa, Finnish-speaking peoples moved to Sweden.
Finland was part of Sweden until 1809, for 600 years. Ordinary people spoke various Finnish and Swedish
dialects, and the upper classes could use several languages. For the official purposes, Latin (mostly for documents)
and afterwards Swedish were employed.
Under many rulers, Russia and Sweden fought over Finland, dividing the country and expanding the own
religious influence. As a result of Napoleonic wars, Finland became part of Russia and remained so until
1917. Enjoying the rights of an autonomous Grand Duchy, Finland was administered by the Senate, an own
government, while the Emperor of Russia was proclaimed the Grand Duke of Finland. Under the Russian rule,
the Finnish language, currency, army, culture and economy strengthened. Swedish and partly Russian became
the official languages until 1863, when the Finnish language received the status of an official language (equality
was achieved in 1982) in the autonomous Finnish part of the Russian Empire. The practically dominant
language systematically and rapidly developed into a language of administration, journalism, fine literature
and science. Many members of the Swedish-speaking Fennoman movement were prepared to learn and use
Finnish at home and in public, ready to work for the interests of the majority (Lindgren et al. 2011). The Russian
language as the third official language in the country played only a small role, although the Finns remember
how they struggled against the attempts to the forced Russification at the beginning of the 20th century.
A general strike in 1905, the revolution of 1917 and the civil war in 1918 supported the independence of
Finland from Russia (declared on December 6, 1917) and the development of an own Finnish culture, and so
was in the recent times the challenge with the European Union. Since 1841, the Finnish language was taught
as a subject in schools, but now, a tendency to education and schooling in this dominant language of the population
occupied a key position in the nation’s progress.
For the Swedish-speaking élite, the Finnish language was not cultural enough if compared to other European
languages, but it was politically important. For the Finnish-speaking majority, the Swedish language was
the language of the old upper classes, making them feel the inferiority of their own identification. The recent
fight for the abolition of the obligatory examination in the forced Swedish language and the possibility to in-
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