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Issues of State Language Teaching; Problems and Challenges saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi: problemebi da gamowvevebi Issues of State Language Teaching; Problems and Challenges 225 saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi: problemebi da gamowvevebi Issues of State Language Teaching; Problems and Challenges SHOTA RUSTAVELI NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION Issues of State Language Teaching; Problems and Challenges International Conference IVANE JAVAKHISHVILI TBILISI STATE UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR CIVIL INTEGRATION AND INTER-ETHNIC RELATIONS Tbilisi / Batumi 14-15 July, 2011 225 saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi: problemebi da gamowvevebi Issues of State Language Teaching; Problems and Challenges Ekaterina Protassova University of Helsinki, Finland 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 devel- opment. 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 in- ternational 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 Bal- tic and Germanic speakers arriving from the shores of the Baltic Sea. The Swedes lived on the modern terri- tory 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 docu- ments) 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 (equal- ity 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 Rus- sian language as the third official language in the country played only a small role, although the Finns remem- ber 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 popu- lation 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 Euro- pean 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- 226 saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi: problemebi da gamowvevebi Issues of State Language Teaching; Problems and Challenges troduce another language into its place (for example, a neighbour language) has its roots in the past (Buchber- ger 2002). The Winter War (1939-1940) against the Soviet Union and its Continuation (1941-1944) were followed by joining the anti-Hitler coalition. Finland had to concede Karelia and a few other territories, receiving the 430.000 evacuated persons (mostly Finnish- and Russian-speaking) in the main territory. The after-war eco- nomic flourishing was due to a balanced policy towards socialist and western countries that led to blossoming of the public education, healthcare and social security systems. In the late 1980s, Finland revised its foreign policy; it became a member of the European Union in 1995. The structure of the population and the language policy The linguistic homogeneity of Finland is caused by the fact that the native language of 92 % of its population is Finnish, which is part of the Finnic subgroup of the Uralic languages, one of the official EU languages not of Indo-European origin. Russian has no status in the EU, although about 6 millions of its citizens speak this language as their mother tongue, and about 7% might be competent in it to some extent. Before World War II, as in most countries, the German language was usually the first foreign language in the school. Nowadays, in Finland, about 63% of the population can speak English as a foreign language, 18% German, 3% French, 2% Spanish, 1% Italian, 2% Russian (Eurobarometer 2006). Multilingual Finnish citi- zens competent in at least three, often four, languages has been a reality in the Finnish education system since the early seventies, with English taking sequentially the role of the most important foreign language. The younger generation in the northern European Countries is able to communicate in English because English has the position of a first or second foreign language in the curricula of all primary or secondary schools in these countries. In this role, English has increasingly substituted the unofficial so-called Scandinavian language. Learning of the two domestic and many foreign languages is a very important part of the Finnish educa- tional system, providing, to my opinion, its most important key to success in the PISA-evaluations. Usually, it is not mentioned in the reports as a crucial factor of effective cognitive development (cf. PISA; Levine 2011). Yet, the experience of the best Russian schools specializing in mathematics, foreign language learning and trying to introduce sports were the principles leading to very high results of the pupils (cf. the school programs by Andrei Kolmogorov). The two national languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. The language policy has been always to give equal rights for both the Finnish-speaking and the Swedish-speaking population. The percentage of the Swedish speaking population (Swedish-speaking Finns) was in the first decades of the 20th century around 10%, and has reduced to around 6%. They live predominantly in the costal west-southern areas and partly in the big cities. Swedish remains the only official language in the autonomous Åland (Åland in figures 2011). Finnish constitution guarantees the same cultural and economic rights to both language groups. In the northern Lapland, the indigenous Sámi people number around 1.800. Actually, three Sámi languages are spoken in Finland: Northern Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi; they are familiar to only a quarter of the Sámi population (0,03% of the whole population of the country). Efforts are undertaken to revitalize and modernize these languages; the language nest method has been efficiently adapted (Anarâš; Lehtola 2002; Pasanen 2010; Sámi in Finland). Additionally, the recognized regional and minority languages are Romani (Finnish Romani is spoken by 5.000-6.000 people), Tatar (Finnish Tatar minority of about 800 people who moved to Finland in the times of autonomy), Yiddish (as the supposed language of some hundred Jews who settled down in Finland during the Russian rule) – all of them are actually bilingual – and the Finnish Sign language. The degree of bilinguality was never measured on the all-nation scale. It is worth to mention that the life of minorities and their language use become often a topic of popular articles (e.g., Lindgren 2011). 227 saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi: problemebi da gamowvevebi Issues of State Language Teaching; Problems and Challenges The Finland’s Romani are provided with the same education as the majority population, their language enjoying the status of a non-territorial minority should be safe within the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Nevertheless, this group has difficulties both with access to the higher educational level and with maintenance of the own language (Finitiko romaseele 2004). Table 1. Country of birth, citizenship and mother tongue of the population (OSF1) About 140 immigrant languages are spoken in Finland today; they include, among others, Russian (1.0%), Estonian (0.3%), English, Somali, Arabic, Kurdish, Albanian and Chinese. Altogether, about 2,7% speak immigrant languages. The right of minority groups to maintain their culture and language is protected by the
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