Sata vuotta katsomuskamppailua: Yhteinen etiikan opetus suomalaisessa koulukeskustelussa

A Century of Cultural and Political Struggle
– Ethics Education in the Finnish School Debate

In this study of history and politics of education, I examine the discussions on ethics education in Finland over the course of a hundred years. Ethics was proposed as a common subject during the enactment of school laws in the 1920s, in connection with the comprehensive school reform in the 1960s, during the high school curriculum reform in the 1990s, and in connection with the comprehensive school curriculum reform in the 2010s. Every time the proposals were turned down with widespread opposition.

Drawing on research data consisting of historical sources on educational and religious policies, such as minutes, reports, statements, resolutions, memoranda, parliamentary documents, as well as newspaper articles, speeches, and contemporary literature, I investigate the backgrounds, stages, participants, and consequences of these four reform proposals and the public debates they generated.

I complement the historical foundational research with critical educational theory and genealogical approach, examining the arguments for and against common ethics education. Starting from the premise that conceptions of subjects and curricula are neither neutral nor given, but instead historically shaped in particular societal contexts, I consider the stages and discourses through which the prevailing political and moral order regarding ethics education has been constructed. Doing so, I expose and interpret the hegemonic struggle at the heart of the debates revolving around ethics as a subject. Finally, I analyze the interpretations of ethics as a subject matter produced by the participants in the debates and the meta-ethical assumptions underlying the arguments for or against the possibility of a common ethics education.

The arguments in favor of a common ethics education have remained relatively similar throughout the century. The discourse advocating for a common ethics education has been characterized by a striving to secure communal life in a democracy. Pedagogues, philosophers, and politicians supporting common ethics have also supported comprehensive schooling and emphasized the importance of a common curriculum in general education, arguing against segregating students based on religious affiliation in ethical education.

The defense of a common ethics education is linked to an interpretation that emphasizes form and moral thinking skills in ethics. In a meta-ethical sense, a universal communal constructivism has been outlined as the foundation for common ethics, normatively implying commitment to documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On the other hand, the possibility of a common ethics has been seen simply as a practical assumption of public schooling. Thus, proposals for ethics education have been made more within the framework of citizenship education rather than a religious one. The aim has been to find, in the spirit of Rawls and Habermas, the smallest common denominator for a pluralistic society to which everyone can be expected to adhere in public schools. However, the autonomy and empowerment of the student can be seen as substantive, not just minimal or “thin” values of citizenship in common ethics.

Arguments in favor of ethics tied to religion varied both within and between periods. The proposition of a common ethics education has been portrayed as threatening the position of religious instruction, revealing the pivotal role of ethics in legitimizing religious education. Ethics tied to religion has been presented as pedagogically superior, beneficial for individual growth, respectful of parental rights in education, and as serving the Finnish national unity while also facilitating acceptance of multicultural society and minorities. The essential connection between ethics and religion, presented as natural, has been continually reproduced and actualized by its advocates through the mobilization of varied arguments over time, intimately embedded within the spirit and dominant values of each period.

In arguments in favor of ethics tied to religion, one can recognize a focus on values and character education. For opponents of a common ethics, the teaching of ethics has been specifically a matter of worldview commitment, and a discourse of impossibility characterizes the arguments related to the foundation of morality. Human rights have not been considered a sufficient normative basis for ethics education, and a common ethics has been presented as impossible, inevitably relativistic, utopian, ideological, tendentious, and anti-religious proposal.

Debates have also revolved around whether ethics is a propaedeutic, neutral discipline or a normative, value-laden subject matter. Both sides have politicized and depoliticized the issue of ethics education. I argue that recognizing the normative nature of ethics does not, however, mean the impossibility of common education. After all, general education is inherently, albeit loosely, committed to certain values and the curriculum is the product of political democratic negotiation.

In the light of the analysis, I argue that due to the entrenched power struggle formed in the early independence period, substantive discussion on the common teaching of ethics has not truly begun. Instead, what has ensued is a kind of meta-discussion characterized by an awareness of participation in a long-standing struggle, suspicion of the motives of the opposing side, and doubts about the nature of common ethics. I label the alleged impossibility of common ethics as a societal impossibility. The struggle has been characterized and contextualized by the breakdown of the Christian-national unified culture and secularization, moral concern about citizens reaching moral autonomy, and the expansion of public education and the question of its purpose and limits in relation to parental educational rights. Ultimately, the question of ethics education in public schools is primarily about deliberating on how communal life and individual rights are best organized in a pluralistic and multicultural society. Thus, debates on ethics education can be seen as negotiations about the relationship between the public and private spheres and their transformation, as well as a defining struggle about the role of religion in the public sphere, a kind of growing pains of liberal democracy.