Education and sivistys
In June 2026, the Ministry of Education and Culture unveiled their new vision of the direction Finnish higher education and research should be developed towards. The most surprising detail of this vision is its title: “Sivistyksestä suunta Suomelle” – or, as the English abstract calls it, “Bildung as a Way Forward for Finland”.*
english translation marko saajanaho
Sivistys has recently been considered an antiquated topic in an (ostensibly) equal society. Even in the early 20th century, we referred to cultural words loaned from other languages as “sivistyssanat” (lit. “sivistys words”), but now they are “vierassanat” (lit. “foreign words”). They can only be identified by their non-traditional phonetic structure, and the term in no way refers to the level of mental maturation.
The vision does not define what sivistys – or in this case, Bildung – is. It can mean many things, not all of which are related to education. It does often mean the development of mental abilities through formal education, but can also refer to an individual’s mental maturity as a contrast to scholarly education. A civilised (sivistynyt) individual is known for polite and considerate behaviour. Where do they teach that these days? The academic career path rather requires the ability and skill to plough through any competition when applying for jobs and grants.
To ensure inter-university movement, a shared credit transfer system has been created for the entire European Union. Equal credit would require equal content and a credible process of equal review. Now, the quality of teaching is left on the shoulders of teachers to the best of their ability, with the quality monitored by students on various grounds.
EDUFI, the Finnish National Agency for Education, has devised detailed criteria for summative exam assessments in primary and lower secondary education. Despite this, Minister of Education Anders Adlercreutz has been forced to express his deep concern over the fact the same level of knowledge results in quite different grades in different schools. Now, the goal is guaranteed competence – the student genuinely knows what the criteria describe.
The university level has its own basics that must be taught in such a way that they are learned. However, that is not enough. New information is not produced by repeating what already exists. If existing knowledge can be built upon to create new ways forward, that is the real proof.
*Translator’s note: Bildung, the German word for self-cultivation, is one of the many ways “sivistys” can be translated depending on context
