Developments in the status and content of geography teaching in the secondary schools of Finland in 1888-1977

Abstract

Geography occupied largely the position of a subsidiary subject to history in the Finnish secondary schools towards the end of the 19th century, but later spread to cover all the forms in the school, first those of the middle school and later the high school as well. For most of the present century it has been linked with natural history (biology), the two subjects being the responsibility of the same specialist teacher. The principal emphasis in the teaching was upon regional geography throughout the period studied, with general geography concentrated in the last year of the middle school and the high school years. The content was heavily weighted towards physical geography at first, but the proportion of teaching in human geography began to increase after the Second World War. Accent has also been placed in more recent years upon the interaction between man and nature and the applications of geographical studies in society. School geography possessed close relations both with the academic geographical community and with biology in the early part of the period, but the middle years were a time of separation and disparity in which school geography was cut off both from the content of university geography studies and from school biology. Some reversal of this trend is seen in the most recent period, however, with the focusing of attention on matters of common interest, such as environmental questions.