Living in a Learning Society: Life-Histories, Identities and Education [1 ed.] 0750704977, 9780750704977

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
Preface
1 How to Study Peoples’ Lives?
2 The Meaning of Education
3 Biographical Method
4 Education in the Life-course of Three Generations
5 Cultural Construction of Educational Identity
6 Significant Experiences and Empowerment
7 Conclusion: Modernization and Education
8 Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society?
9 Summary
Notes
Appendix 1: The Interviews
References
Index

Citation preview

Living in a Learning Society

Knowledge, Identity and School life Series Editors:

Professor Philip Wexler, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester, New York, NY 14627, USA and Professor Ivor Goodson, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

1

Becoming Somebody: Toward a Social Psychology of School Philip Wexler with the assistance of Wa1Ten Crichlow, June Kern and Rebecca Martusewicz

2

Knowledge in Motion: Space, Time and Curriculum in Undergraduate Physics and Management Jan Nespor

3 After Postmodernism: Education, Politics and Identity Edited by Richard Smith and Philip Wexler 4

Living in a Learning Society: Life-Histories, Identities and Education Ari Antikainen, Jarmo Houtsonen, Hannu Huotelin and Juha Kauppila

Knowledge, Identity and School Life Series: 4

Living in a Learning Society: Life-Histories, Identities and Education

Ari Antikainen Jarmo Houtsonen Hannu Huotelin Juha Kauppila

~ ~~o~!~~n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

© A. Antikainen,

J. Houtsonen, H. Huotelin and J. Kauppila, 1996

All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise, withoutpermission in writing from the Publisher.

First published in 1996 By Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British

library

library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available on request ISBN 0 7507 0497 7 cased ISBN 0 7507 0498 5 paper

Jacket design by Caroline Archer

Typeset in 11/13pt Garamond by Graphicraft Typesetters Ltd., Hong Kong.

Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

Contents

Acknowledgments Preface 1

2

3

How to. Study Peoples' Lives? Ethical Ideals Methodological Restrictions The Meaning of Education What is the Meaning of Education? Finland as a Learning Society Biographical Method Da~

Life-stories from Different Perspectives A Constructionist Approach as a Research Framework Identity and Autobiographical Consciousness Memory and the Retrospective Nature of Stories Meaningful Experiences Life as a Linguistic Construction Life-story as an Expression about Experienced Reality The Symbiosis of Fact and Fiction A Perspective to the Mosaic of Reality

4 Education in the Life-course of Three Generations The Typology of Life-stories From the Typology of Life-stories to Educational Generations The Generation of War and Scant Education The Generation of Structural Change and Increasing Educational Opportunities The Generation of Social Welfare and Many Educational Chokes Towards Generational Experiences of Education

ix

1

3 3 4 8

8 9

16 16 17 18 20 22 24

26 27 30 31

34 34

36 37 41

46 49

v

Contents 5

Cultural Construction of Educational Identity Education and Identity The Case of Manta - an 80-year-old Sami Woman in Lapland Education and Social Identity Education and Personal Identity Education and Self-identity Education and Cultural Identity Culture as a Resource

53 53 54 59 61 63 64 66

Significant Experiences and Empowerment Significance of General and Vocational Education Significant Learning Experiences Some Concluding Remarks on Generation and Learning Experiences Unemployment and Widowhood Creativity and Participation - Are They There? Stories Beyond

80 80 82 84

7

Conclusion: Modernization and Education Meanings Educational Policy Implications

86 86 87

8

Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society? Learning Theories Learning Organizations Learning Society

90 90 94 98

9

Summary

6

68 68 70

102

Notes

104

Appendix 1: The Interviews

108

References

110

Index

121

vi

List of Figures

Figure 2.1: Figure 2.2: Figure 3.1: Figure 3.2: Figure 4.1:

Key concepts: life-course, identity and significant learning experience The Finnish educational system from the 1920s to the 1990s A model of a constructionist approach to research Approaches to life-stories Towards generational experiences of education

8 12 20 28 51

vii

Thank you very much for writing of 'story of my life'. I have read it several times, sometimes with the help of an (English) dictionary, but for the most part using those skills that I have from night school and my own private study.... I find the account to be a real cross-section of the span of my life, the war, the moving we did during the war, studies, work in different places, family etc.... I don't think a person has to be young to learn new things, you can acquire knowledge when you are older. Unfortunately illnesses starts limiting the range of your activities. - Anna, born 1924, An excerpt from our first informant's letter -

viii

Acknowledgments

The research underlying this book was made possible by grants from the Council of Social Sciences, Academy of Finland and the University of Joensuu. Ari Antikainen finished the manuscript as a visiting scholar at the Department of Policy Studies, Institute of Education in London and at the Department of Sociology in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. Ari Antikainen is grateful for the people in both departments for their supportive colleagueship. The book is based on papers presented at various conferences and workshops in 1992-1994. We would like to mention especially the Workshop of Vocational Education and Culture in Tampere (Heikkinen, 1994). We want to thank all the students and temporary office workers who participated in the collection and transcription of the interview data. We would like to thank all the translators in Joensuu and colleagues in Toronto who helped us to struggle with the English language. However, we take full responsibility for the outcome. Special thanks to Marjut Aikio for helping us contact the Sami people in Lapland. Ari Jolkkonen, Leena Koski, Liisa Puumalainen, Vesa Puuronen Tuula Ranne and M'hammed Sabour have helped us to reflect on our work. Further, we want to thank Tapio Aittola, Basil Bernstein, Dale Dannefer, Werner Fuchs-Heinritz, Tony Green, Brian Groombridge, Anja Heikkinen, Klaus Hurrelmann, Sverker Lindblad, David Livingstone, Ron Silvers, Philip Wexler and Michael Young for their valuable comments on some parts of earlier versions of our work. The broad-minded views of Ivor Goodson, Philip Wexler, Malcolm Clarkson and David Gillborn helped to produce the final form of the book. Special thanks go to Jackie Day for her outstanding editorial help. However, we must assume full responsibility for the result. Last but not least we want to thank all the people who gave us their interviews - you are great! Chapters 1-2 and 6-9 were written mainly by Ari Antikainen, but the five cases analysed in chapter 6 were written together with all the authors, chapter 3 by Hannu Huotelin, chapter 4 by Juha Kauppila and Hannu Huotelin and chapter 5 by Jarmo Houtsonen. The Authors 1995 ix

Preface

The developed countries in the Western world are learning societies. They are based on the principle of lifelong learning, on extension of formal education to all members in each age group, and on the idea of continuing education. In the study of the birth of learning societies and of how people form their life in such societies Finland provides a fascinating case. As a learning society Finland is a remarkable mixture of old and new, of highly developed modern formal education and of a long tradition of grass-root interest in education!. The latter was during centuries enforced by the literacy demanded and taught by the Lutheran church. Ari Antikainen and his co-authors tell in the their Living in a Learning Society: Life-Histories, Identities and Education a wonderful and highly informative story about how Finland developed as a learning society during the last hundred years and how people constructed and conceived their lives out of their educational experiences, both successes and failures. Their basic method has been collecting and analyzing life-histories, an approach that they apply with creative imagination. The story is about Finland but the authors are keen to see the country in a comparative perspective thereby adding to the basic knowledge about the development and the problems of modern, developed societies. The book is not only a telling description about what it means to live in a learning society. It also contains a theoretical analysis of three basic theoretical and methodological approaches used both in this and many other current studies. In the description of the development of how education has been conceived during the differences phases of Finnish society the authors apply the concept of 'generation' in a very stimulating and novel manner. They also fruitfully discuss the theoretical position of the generational concept. The same kind of emphasis on both empirical problems of description and theoretical dilemmas occurs in the treatment of life histories as a methodological tool and of social constructivism as a theoretical approach in the social sciences. In the discussions about how people construct and conceive their lives through their educational experiences Ari Antikainen and his coauthors give a very important - both theoretical and societally important - contribution. All in all, Living in a Learning Society is a rich and 1

Living in a Learning Society

very stimulating source of understanding of both the 'postmodern' society, of the role education plays in the life of people in today's societies, and how Finland came to be and to exist as a learning society. Erik Allardt

October 1995

2

1

How to Study Peoples' Lives?

Ethical Ideals Anna's letter to our research group, quoted on the cover page, tells of the mutual relationship between the researcher and the person supplying the data in interview situations. It is seen by Martin Hammersley and Paul Atkinson (1979, p. 116) as a 'research bargain', and by Ivor Goodson (1991, p. 148; 1992) as 'trading' between the researcher and the participant or between the life history 'taker' and the life history 'giver'. As Lynda Measor and Patricia Sikes put it: The research bargain is a social construction, the result of assessments by each side of what the other has to give and what they are prepared to offer in return for these things (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1979, p. 120).... Respondents are not fearful victims who open their lives and souls because they are told or asked to. People have boundaries and strategies to protect themselves in research situations. (1992, p. 230) Norman Denzin makes his stance on the ethical code of the life history researcher very clear: ... we must remember that our primary obligation is always to the people we study, not to our project or to a larger discipline. The lives and stories that we hear and study are given to us under a promise, that promise being that we protect those who have shared with us. And, in return, this sharing will allow us to write life documents that speak to the human dignity, the suffering, the hopes, the dreams, the lives gained, and the lives lost by the people we study. These documents will become testimonies to the ability of the human being to endure, to prevail, and to triumph over the structural forces that threaten at any moment to annihilate all of us. (1989, p. 83) The study in this book deals with the place and meaning of education and learning in people's lives. The data was collected at a time

3

Living in a Learning Society

when governments, corporations and bureaucrats were planning new systems of lifetime learning for people without listening to and hearing people's own voices. More recent programmes of critical pedagogy seem to describe the research bargain beyond our study very well. For example, five of six specific features of critical pedagogy presented by David Livingstone are: First, critical scholars must thoroughly appreciate that the prime task of educational scholarship is not merely to convey naturalistic understanding of educational practices but, as Walter Feinberg (1983, p. 153) puts it: '... to reflectively understand these relationships as social constructions with historical antecedents and thereby to initiate an awareness that these patterns are objects of choice and possible candidates for change. Thus educational scholarship adds a consciously critical dimension to the social activity of education.' Secondly, such research can only be adequately accomplished through identifying discrepancies between dominant versions of reality promulgated in formal institutions and the lived experience of subordinate groups in relation to such institutions. Thirdly, such identification requires scholars to attempt to take the vantage point of the subordinated, and this vantage point can only be sustained in contemporary critical inquiry if scholars remain engaged in collective dialogue with people more fully immersed in oppressive social relationships. Fourthly, the dialogue of critical pedagogy should not be restricted to narrow educational concerns focused only on the schools alone or including mass media and family spheres, but should facilitate popular efforts to make sense of the entirety of everyday life in relation to practice. Fifthly, it is through subordinated peoples' own discussion, growing self-consciousness and informed action in relation to their social reality - their appropriation of cultural power - that more no-elitist democratic forms of education and other societal institutions are most likely to be generated and sustained. (1987, p. 10) Methodological Restrictions

Life-history studies is an emerging field in education now. It is vital, therefore, to remember that 'major shifts (in methodology) are more likely to arise from changes in political and theoretical preoccupation induced by contemporary social events than from discovery of new sources or methods' (Popular Memory Group quoted in Goodson, 4

How to Study Peoples' Lives? 1992, p. 248). In the 1970s, interactionist and ethnomethodological methods emerged in the shadow of predominantly quantitative functionalist and structuralist studies both in the mainstream and in Marxism. The situation most commonly focused on in interactionist and ethnomethodological studies was school lessons; biography was still neglected (Goodson, 1981, p. 67). After the destruction of such meta-stories as Enlightenment and Marxism (Lyotard, 1984), the field of life history has expanded. Lives and their experiences are represented in stories. They are like pictures that have been painted over, and, when paint is scraped off an old picture, something new becomes visible. What is new is what was previously covered up. A life and the stories about it have the qualities of pentimento. Something new is always coming into sight, displacing what was previously certain and seen. There is no truth in the painting of a life, only multiple images and traces of what has been, what could have been, and what now is. (Denzin, 1989, p. 81) From his structural position, Pierre Bourdieu (1987) sees the biographical project as an illusion (Roos, 1987a), for any coherence that a life has is imposed by the larger culture, by the researcher, and by the subject's belief that his or her life should have a coherence (Denzin, 1989, p. 61). In his response to Bourdieu's critique, Denzin states: The point to make is not whether biographical coherence is an illusion or a reality. Rather, what must be established is how individuals give coherence to their lives when they write or talk self-autobiographies. The sources of this coherence, the narratives that lie behind them, and the larger ideologies that structure them must be uncovered. (1989, p. 62) From a postmodern perspective, the narrator's notion of a 'life' can be seen as just a textual product. But, could the 'life' be rescued from the text by any means? Maggie McLure and Ian Stronach conclude: A qualifying point needs to be registered. We have argued that

authenticity, validity, and recognition are textual accomplishments - that they are not 'really' methodological - stressing the 'tyranny of the text'. This raises the question of whether methodological questions are reducible to textual ones. There are two answers. For the reader, texts can only be authenticated in themselves: the reader has no other resource than the

5

Living in a Learning Society persuasiveness of the text. But for the researcher, the problem of the interrelationship of methodology and the text remains important . . . We do not seek to dismiss methodology but rather to bring its textual properties to light - to ask, what sorts of stories are implicated in a particular methodology and what sorts of stories are suppressed or made un-tellable? (1993, p. 378) Reflecting on our own data, we wondered if the stories of life and learning were biased toward positive and coherent outcomes. Therefore at the end of the thematic interview we asked the interviewee to describe his or her tTIost negative educational and learning experience. Thus, we try to get at least two kinds of stories. There are, however, researchers who acknowledge poststructuralism and the power of the text but believe that autobiography is a referential genre where truth and reality are seen from the unique and concrete point of the narrator who is simultaneously a narrator and sees her- or himself as a narrator (Eakin, 1992; Roos, 1994). One could argue that we more or less share this view but, in fact, we have tried to include intertextuality in all our analysis, as is clearly presented in chapter 3. Ivor Goodson makes a clear distinction between life-story and life-history. . . . life studies should, where possible, provide not only a 'a nan-ative of action', but also a history or genealogy of context. I say this in full knowledge that this opens up substantial dangers of changing the relationship between 'life story giver' and 'research taker' and of tilting the balance of the relationship further towards the academy. (1992, p. 240) The next step is a collaborative intertextual approach where participant and researcher can collaborate in investigating not only the stories of lives but also the contexts of lives (Goodson, ibid., p. 244).1 Ivor Goodson (1995) argues, however, that in the context of the cultural logic of postmodernity and redundancy of stories a specific empowerment can go hand in hand with overall social control. In this study, a context-sensitive social constructionist approach is applied. Studying the rapidly modernized Finnish society as a specific example of Nordic societies, educational generations form the first context of the life histories. The contexts of significant learning experiences are negotiated with the interviewees, but the study is still far from 'collaborative intertextual research'. The data consists of narrative and

6

How to Study Peoples' Lives? thematic interviews, that both cross and are complementary to each other. In chapter 2 the concepts of learning society and lifelong learning are presented in the context of a swiftly changing Finnish society with expanding education opportunities. In chapter 3, Hannu Huotelin continues the methodological enquiry started in this introduction. He argues that biographical method or life history offers 'a perspective to the mosaic of reality'. In chapter 4, Juha Kauppila and Hannu Huotelin present their interpretation of three contemporary educational generations in Finland. The analysis is close to a grounded theory approach but is conceptualized and contextualized by the Mannheimian concept of generation. These three generations are common to all Western societies that participated in the Second World War, and constructed the welfare state and consumer society. In chapter 5, Jarmo Houtsonen asks what kind of identities education produces, both in mainstream and in minority culture. The case of Manta, an 80-year-old Sami woman in Lapland who lives at the crossroad of two cultures, is analysed thoroughly. The approach applied has certain Meadian and phenomenological influences, but the concept of identity is drawn from Erving Goffman. In chapter 6, Ari Antikainen searches for the significant learning experiences in life stories. The ideas of transformation, and transformation by significant events, have been deeply entrenched in Western thought at least since Augustine (Denzin, 1989, p. 22). These ideas lead the analysis to subjectivization and empowerment. In the two concluding discussion chapters the cultural patterns of modernization, produced or co-produced by education and the emerging new, brave, but still class, gender and 'race' biased learning society, are under scrutinity. Thus we attempt to situate peoples' learning experiences in the context of long-term societal learning processes. Social learning processes occur typically in the condition of problem accumulation. In the middle of a global problem accumulation we could hear a young scholar's voice: We ascribe existential value to human experience - it is experience that produces the coding of reality. Man's [human] consciousness and her or his sociability are based on experience and establish a time-resistant continuity of meaning, which originates from processes of suffering. The social transformations of human actions, which are based on social learning processes, are a function of the reduction of suffering. It is only with the experience of increased suffering that man's [human] willingness for social cooperation grows, a willingness which is usually suppressed for fear of contact. (Ternyik, 1987, p. 17)2 7

2

The Meaning of Education

What is the Meaning of Education? In the research project 'In Search of the Meaning of Education', we are studying the meaning of education and learning in the lives of people who live in a swiftly changing society with expanding education and learning opportunities - in our case in Finland (Antikainen, 1991). In addition to formal education, we are interested in adult education and other less formal ways of acquiring knowledge and skills. Our conception of meaning refers both to our method and to our theory. We are investigating intersubjective social reality by means of a qualitative logic, not of statistical representativeness. We are using a life-history approach with a life-story interview and a thematic interview as our methods (Huotelin, 1992; Thomas and Znaniecki, 19181920; Denzin, 1989). According to our theory, the meaning of education can be analysed at three levels, as indicated by the following three questions and illustrated in Figure 2.1: Figure 2. 1:

Key concepts: life course, identity and significant learning experiences Life-course

Identity

Significant learning experience

8

The Meaning of Education 1 How do people use education in constructing their life-courses? 2 What do educational and learning experiences mean in the production and formation of individual and group identity? 3 Our project's very first life-story was that of a 66-year-old woman, Anna. We noted that her life organized itself as a series of key learning experiences (Antikainen, 1993). These experienceswhich in the light of superficial examination seem to have organized the narrator's life-course or to have changed or strengthened her identity - we have called significant learning experiences. We can thus ask what sort of significant learning experiences people have in the different stages of their lives? Do those experiences originate in school, work, adult study or leisure-time pursuits? What is the substance, form and social context of significant learning experiences? We are applying the grounded theory approach here in the sense that we started from rather heuristic theoretical ideas on life-course, identity and education. According to these tentative ideas, individualization has become a major form of socialization in contemporary society and the life-course as a cultural product of the modern system has mainly tended to become institutionalized (Kohli, 1985; Meyer, 1986). The self and identity are essentially the outcomes of this kind of social reality production (Dannefer & Perlmutter, 1990). Educational institutions have had a central role both in the individualization of socialization, or enculturation, and in the institutionalization oflife-course. In the context of social stratification, therefore, education is contributing to the production and reproduction of social and cultural inequality: as schools are places for making the core meaning of self and identity among young people, they are producing stratified or class identities (Wexler, 1992). In our study, we did not question the institutionalizing influence of education on life-course and inequality but we did make a hypothesis that the situation on the biographical level is more complex, and that education has several, also emancipatory, meanings. Revealing these meanings, we hope, will contribute to the realization of alternative futures and opportunities for change.

Finland as a Learning Society In his Learning Society (1974) Torsten Husen gives a number of criteria for a learning society. In his view in a learning society:

9

Living in a Learning Society • • • •

people have an opportunity for lifelong learning, formal education extends to the whole age group, informal education - such as adult studies - is in a central position and self-study is widely accepted, other institutions and organizations support education which in its turn depends on them. 3

In the last chapter of this book two more recent projects of learning society presented in an Anglo-American context are investigated. There is not, however, any essential contradiction between Husen's learning society and these two more recent cases. Can Finland be characterized as a learning society? This question is central for this study. In order to consider it in context it might be best to start with an overview of the development of the Finnish society and the educational system of our country. The expansion of the education system has mainly followed the pattern established in other industrial societies, although with a certain time-lag. This lag is a result of our peripheral location in relation to the industrialized centres of Europe, even though Finland was an interface periphery between the nations of east and west. Finland remained more agrarian and less industrialized than other western European countries even as late as the 1960s. Literacy became widespread in the nineteenth century, prior to the establishment of the formal school system. Compulsory education, i.e., elementary school, was established in the 1860s, and the Compulsory Education Act was issued in 1921. Academic education, however, dates to a much earlier period. The predecessors of the grammar school, run by the Church, existed already in feudal time in the fourteenth century, and the University of Helsinki was founded (as the Royal Academy of Turku) in 1640. Secondary education spread through the population in the decades after the Second World War. Whereas the idea of founding new secondary schools originated at the grassroot level - from ordinary people in towns and villages - the expansion of higher education in the 1960s and 1970s was as a result of central government action. Nevertheless, regional initiatives had some influence on the organization of the higher education system. Alongside the upper secondary school, vocational education is both school-like, as the case tends to be in Scandinavia, and extensive, since approximately one half of each age group chooses to start it after having finished comprehensive school. In adult education the tradition of liberal education is long and distinguished: vocational adult education is a relative newcomer in the formal education system. 10

The Meaning of Education

The principle of lifelong learning and continuing education has had an essential influence on educational policy. Figure 2.2 shows the phases of the development of the educational system. In 1950 and 1960 10 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, of the adult population had a secondary school education or higher education degree. The corresponding figures in 1970, 1980, and 1991 were 24,39, and 51 per cent. In 1970, 46 per cent of 20-24-year-olds had completed secondary or higher education. This figure had risen to 70 per cent in 1980 and to 80 per cent in 1990. This growth of schooling society coincided with major structural changes in the economy and the effects of migration. In 1950 41 per cent and in 1960 32 per cent of the population was employed in agriculture and forestry, and the proportion continued to decline: 18 per cent in 1970, 12 per cent in 1972, 9 per cent in 1980 and 8 per cent in 1990. Eric Hobsbawm draws a parallel between Japan and Finland: These are spectacular figures. In Japan, for instance, farmers were reduced from 52.4 per cent of the people in 1947 to 9 per cent in 1985, i.e., between the time that a young soldier returned from the battles of the Second World War and the time he retired from his subsequent civilian career. In Finland - to take an actual life-history known to the writer - a girl born as a farmer's daughter and who became a farmer's working wife in her first marriage, could, before she had got far into middle age, have transformed herself into a cosmopolitan intellectual and political figure. But then, in 1940 when her father died in the winter war against Russia, leaving mother and infant on the family holding, 57 per cent of Finns were farmers and foresters. By the time she was forty-five less than 10 per cent were. What is more natural than that, under such circumstances, Finns should begin on farms and end in very different circumstances? (1994, p. 290) Between 1960 and 1975, Finnish society underwent one of the fastest structural transformations in Europe to become an industrial, capitalist welfare state. At the same time a society ofeducation has been built up, and the process is still going on. The recession of the early 1990s with budget cuts has now restrained this growth - even though the inhabitants of a country with an unemployment rate exceeding 20 per cent have rushed into education in increased numbers. During the wealthy 1980s the number of adults in education doubled so that in 1990 more than 40 per cent of adults were studying. Culturally, Finland is a very homogeneous society. So in the future our society may have to go through a long march toward becoming a 11

Living in a Learning Society Figure 2.2:

The Finnish educational system from the 1920s to the 1990s

4

3

5

2

The structure of the Finnish educational system from 1921 to 1957. 1 Reduced folkschool 2 Fol kschool 3 Continuation grades 4 Junior secondary school 5 Continuation grades 6 Upper secondary school 7 Vocational schools and colleges 8 Universities

The structure of the Finnish educational system from the 1970s to the mid 1980s. 1 Comprehensive school 2 Upper secondary school 3 Vocational schools and colleges 4 Universities

2

The structure of the Finnish educational system from 1958 to 1972-1977. 1 Folkschool, junior and primary school 2 Junior secondary school 3 Upper secondary school 4 Vocational schools and colleges 5 Universities

12

The school system at an experimental phase: the youth school and the polytechnic experiment. 1 Comprehensive school 2 Upper secondary school 3 Vocational school 4 Universities 5 Polytechnics

The Meaning of Education multicultural society. The largest minority - approximately 300,000 persons out of 5 million - is made up of the Swedish-speaking Finns. Swedish, along with Finnish, are official languages and the Swedishspeakers have their own schools and a university of their own. In general the Swedish-speaking population is clearly more highly educated than the Finnish speaking one. The cultural position of the original Finns - the approximately 4,000 Samis (Lapps) living in Finland - has been under much discussion in recent years. According to the Samis that we interviewed, education is the best arranged public service. Municipalities in the Sami settlement areas have only had to provide education in Sami since 1983, but the Samis have long had their own institute of adult education and a vocational training centre was founded in 1978. About 6,000 Romanies (Gypsies) comprise the second largest ethnic minority in Finland. The majority of Romanies have not completed primary education because attendance at Finnish schools - or any western school - does not meet the educational goals nor cultural traditions of the Romanies, and illiteracy is common among them. According to our interviews, they do not trust in our educational institutions. Other ethnic minorities living in Finland, e.g., Jews, Russians and Tatarians, used to be even fewer than the Romanies and Samis. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians and Estonians have, however, increased to be the largest immigrant groups in Finland. Educational equality has been the principal goal of education reform from the 1960s on. Nevertheless, social selection, based on social class, for upper secondary education and higher education has not decreased significantly. One of the main reasons can be, on the one hand, the supporting and pushing effect of the cultural and educational capital of the upper-class family, and, on the other hand, the one-sided concept of talent and school culture represented by Finnish educational institutions. Isoaho, Kivinen and Rinne (1991) are arguing that even in the 1980s, the middle class industrial workers, and agrarian population each had their own clearly different educational tradition. Gender has historically been a more powerful determinant of selection than social class, and it still has a strong influence on the choice of both the field and level of education. All fields of vocational education are still those that are male- and those that are female-dominated. Girls comprise the majority in the upper secondary school- as is the case in other industrial countries - and half of the university students are women, although women are in the minority among postgraduate students. Onefifth of the PhDs are women and less than 10 per cent of university professors are women, but their proportion is clearly growing. Finland is one of the largest countries in Europe but it is sparsely

13

Living in a Learning Society

populated. Consequently, regional policy and the creation of a working infrastructure have played an exceptionally significant role in Finland. To create an educational network and to achieve equal educational opportunities by establishing universities in different parts of the country has been central in the process of creating the Finnish welfare state. At the same time regional policy has meant social integration in the climate of economic growth. In times of scarcity - during the recession at the beginning of the 1990s, for example - this policy has also generated conflicts. The comprehensive school reform in the early 1970s marked both individualization and internationalization in curricula (cl Rinne, 1987). The pedagogy it represented was a modification of western progressive education, historically known in Finland as 'new school' or 'reform pedagogy' or 'child-centred education'. In the 1980s a vision of information society contributed to the expansion of education and was adopted as a formal basis for the technology policy. There did not emerge a 'back to the basics' movement, which happened in many other countries in the 1970s and 1980s. The Ministry of Education used the vision of the infonnation society in its arguments for integrating general and vocational education into 'youth school' and for establishing polytechnics. It is tempting to interpret the entire initiative as an attempt to speed up the integration of Finnish society into the core countries of Western Europe (ED).

]. P. Roos (1985; 1987) divides the Finns into five generations based on their major life experiences:

• • • • •

'the generation of wars and economic depression' (those born in the 1910s and 20s) 'the generation of post-war reconstruction and economic growth' (those born between the mid-1920s and the late 1930s) 'the generation of the great transition' (those born in the 1940s and the early 1950s) 'the suburban generation' (those born between 1955 and 1965) 'the rock generation' (those born in 1965 or later).

The great majority of the first and second generations received only primary education, yet their enthusiasm for education is great. The generation of the great transition is the first of the age groups in which people with secondary and higher education form the majority. The main life experiences of this generation consists of: migration from country to town; long education with its implications for occupational choice; saving to buy a house or an apartment; unemployment; and, problems with children's

14

The Meaning of Education day care. The representatives of both the great transition and the suburban generation may look back on school as a rather oppressive and vague experience, but they stress its importance as an external determinant of their subsequent lives. Education is a crucial question for the expanding the new middle class, who constitute the major consumers of education on which their vocational careers are based. According to some studies, in the youngest generations there are signs of questioning economic and career goals (Rauste-von Wright, 1983). However, as they get older and better educated, they place more emphasis on education. Emile Durkheim's successor Georges Gurvitch's (1972, p. 221) account on the cognitive system of Finnish society, or of Nordic society in general, is an example of a 'decentralized, pluralist and collective' cognitive system, which is characterized by control of technological knowledge by both the state and by independent/private economic organizations: the victory of humanism over technology, might be exaggerated in the recent decades, particularly nowadays.

15

3

Biographical Method

Data

We collected our data by means of biographical and thematic interviews. In the initial interviews the interviewees related their life-stories orally. As needed, each interviewee was also posed more specific questions about education, self-definition, and areas of knowledge important in his· life. An interview typically lasted three to four hours, although the duration ranged from one to six hours. We then picked out a list of significant learning experiences from each life-story and presented it to the interviewee to be accepted or changed. In the second interview we considered each significant learning experience and its social and biographical context in greater detail. Assuming that education can also destroy identity, we asked, finally, for the interviewee's most negative education-related experience. The second interview usually lasted about as long as the first. In accordance with our purpose, we interviewed many kinds of people: women and men; representatives of different social classes and ethnic groups; and persons of various ages. Most of the 44 interviewees were Finnish speakers (n=28), but the group also included Swedish-speakers, Samis (Lapps), Romanies (Gypsies), and members of immigrant and refugee groups. The interviews with members of ethnic minorities were on average less complete than those conducted with Finnish speakers. Beforehand, we classified those to be interviewed into four age groups, or cohorts, whose representation we thus wished to guarantee. In accordance with our grounded theory approach, we stopped collecting the data when we reached the saturation criterion. We are pleased with our data in that most of the life-stories seemed complete and openly presented. Two so-called public figures - not genuine celebrities, however - represented an exception. Each of them gave us a very official-sounding, formal life-story, resembling a curriculum vitae. Since both of them were already retired, and had not to our knowledge 'lost face' in that context, we can interpret their public selves * Please note that although all interviewers are referred to in the masculine, this is for ease of reading and fluidity of text: both males and females were interviewed.

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Biographical Method as having prevented - if not stigmatized (cf. Goffman, 1963) - the presentation of a personal, openly expressed life story.

Life-stories from Different Perspectives Biographies as research material can be applied in many ways. Subjective life-stories which have been obtained by interview are one way of approaching the mosaic-like reality and the phenomenon being researched from a certain perspective. In sociology, life-stories have been applied in two main ways. Firstly, studies adopting a hermeneuticphenomenological basis have examined the symbolism of social life and the meaning of individual experiences through life-stories. Secondly, with the aid of life-stories, studies have tried to discover the social structures that form and determine individual destinies. The interviewees then give information regarding their individual histories and particularly their own living conditions (Bertaux and Kohli, 1984). The aim is to reach a balance between the subject and the object, the world and'!', as well as between intentional activity and social structures. In the field of sociology the interest in a biographical approach was first initiated in the study of the Polish peasant by Thomas and Znaniecki. They write: '... personal life-records, as complete as possible, constitute the perfect type of sociological data ...' (1958, p. 1832). For Dollard (1949, p. 3), a biography is an attempt to define and give a theoretical meaning for the development of personality in a certain cultural setting. The case is that in a biography different parts of culture unite with the life of an individual. When considering the classic definitions of life-stories and their character as scientific research data, we can detect at least three commonly articulated elements (see Shaw, 1980, p. 229): 1 2 3

biographies portray the narrator's socio-cultural environment; biographies portray an individual's perspective; biographies include a time dimension concerning both the individual and the society.

The starting point in a biography is the individual and his views, closely connected both with the history of his own life and the larger context of his society. The subjective life-story, however, holds the key position through which, and also in which, the social finds its expression. It has been argued from time to time that life-stories obtained by

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Living in a Learning ,50ciety interviews are not authentic in any sense, but they are influenced by a number of different factors. Naturally, a story of one's own life is always formed under certain conditions of production and it takes its form depending on the narrator's choices. The informant often faces the problem of transforming his knowing into narrating and giving his experiences a verbal form (White, 1981, pp. 1-2; Mishler, 1986, p. 145). We express our experiences as representations and are able to experience only through our own consciousness. For the researcher, the ultimate aim of the study of life-stories is to achieve the individual's personal experience. The personal experiences are of primary importance when studying the individual's life world. The life-story is connected to the individual and what has happened to him, what he has experienced and interpreted, and what he is able to convey to other people by the means of narration. The lifestory is at the same time connected to both the reality or the structural framework of life in which the individual has lived and those narrative or expressional possibilities he is able to utilize. Although we are primarily interested in the individual meanings of education, we attempt to analyse these meanings in the framework of specific contextual factors and narrative structures.

A Constructionist Approach as a Research Framework Life-stories are examined mainly in relation to a constructionist framework which largely questions the fundamental rules oftraditional research and information production. The telling of a life-story is one way of identifying one's self, and researching life-stories is one way of studying identity. Closely related to the production of life-stories and their scientific application are also the concepts of memory, meaning and language. Through these concepts we aim to highlight the constructionist nature of life-stories and through this to emphasize the special nature of life-stories as an aid to research. Social science research is characterized by its versatile nature both in content and form. The research can, within reason, be made in different ways and reality can be approached from different perspectives. Different approaches, however, have their own area of qualification and validity and different methods have their own conditions of application. The versatile nature of social science research is based upon the nature of the world being studied, the researcher's mental perception of this world and that practical relationship througll which the researcher's intellectual perception of the world is determined (Malmberg, 1984, p. 363). 18

Biographical Method The logic in research and the way in which the object is approached in each case originates from the connections between the ontological, epistemological and methodological levels. In brief, the ontological level involves the nature of reality and the basic nature of the object being researched; the epistemological level involves the relationship between the researcher and the object; and, the methodological level involves the way in which the researcher chooses to look for information in practice (see Guba, 1990, p. 18; Morgan, 1983, p. 21). In studies adopting a hermeneutic-phenomenological basis the primary consideration is human experience, the meanings in the subject's consciousness, and the subjective life-world. We do not obtain direct information about reality: the world must first be experienced and after this we can use constructions created through experience (see Smith and Heshusius, 1986; Rauhala, 1989). The main interests are the conceptual constructions through which the consciousness organizes experience into a meaningful entity. Therefore, in the phenomenological theory of meaning, the individual's inner and mental world of consciousness is emphasized; he or she retrospectively attaches meanings to his former experiences by using different symbols and gives meaning to different events with the aid of language. However, in addition to strongly emphasizing individual subjectivity and uniqueness, we should also pay attention to the forms of human consciousness that have become objectified and the common systems of meaning that are general and not immediately dependent on individual subjects. Apart from purely individual psychological meanings there are 'objective' structures of meaning and necessary primary requirements such as the common language. Human existence is both socially determined and determined by the self. From a constructionist point of view, the individual is observed both as one created by the situation and the cultural context, and as their creator. A human is considered as an active, individual, holistic and intentional creature who, in addition to adjusting to eXistence, continually recreates the social world. The constructionist approach is illustrated in Figure 3.1 (Guba, 1990, p. 27). Construction (from the Latin constru're) means building, attaching to an organized entity, and creating in the mind. Construction, then, is a kind of plan or a thought construction. Originally constructionism meant a movement in architecture, sculpture and fine art, it has now also been applied to social sciences. The concept of construction refers to its consequential nature. Constructionism questions the traditional, realistic view of language as a neutral tool that adjusts to reflect and convey the constructions of the social reality without gaps (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Saarenheimo,

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Living in a Learning Society Figure 3. 1: A model of a constructionist approach to research

ONTOLOGY There are many truths and they exist as mental constructions in the human consciousness. By nature these truths are social, specific and dependent on the person in question. There are always many conclusions that can be drawn on the basis of research and there is no criteria with which the ultimate truth or falseness could be stated. EPISTEMOLOGY Because the reality being studied is in the individual's consciousness the only way to approach it seems to be subjective interaction. Epistemology is, therefore, subjective. METHODOLOGY The aim is to recognize the existence of the prevailing constructions and to create consensus between them as much as possible. The processes are hermeneutic and dialectic, that is, the individual constructions are defined hermeneutically as strictly as possible after which these individual constructions are dialectically compared with other constructions. The possibility of constant communication is also essential in the constructionist approach, which may influence the constructions by changing them.

1991). The constructionist approach has questioned the relationship between language and reality as well as the fundamental rules of traditional information production. The descriptions presented by people both about their experiences and feelings, and about the social and material world are not unambiguous reflections. It is typical of this kind of discussion to understand linguistic representations as factors which produce subjects and objects.

Identity and Autobiographical Consciousness Constructing a life-story in the form of narrative is, according to Bruner (1987), a universal human tendency. Giddens (1991, pp. 53-4) uses the concept of 'self-identity' when referring to the individual's own understanding of himself within the framework of his own life-story. A stable awareness of one's own self-identity requires an idea of biographical continuity that the individual can, to some extent, be conscious of himself and that he can, for the most part, also communicate to other people. It is a person's ability to keep a certain story alive that provides that person with his self-identity: in order for me to have an understanding as to who I really am I have to have an idea about how I became what I am, but also where I am going. Autobiographical awareness means a person's idea of his identity, where he has been, where he is now, and where he is going. 20

Biographical Method When a person dresses up his ideas about his life in the form of a story he brings out an image of his self-identity in which he outlines a selective image of himself. When expressing one's life in the form of a story we continually create a theory as to 'who I am' (Potter and Wetherell, 1987). It can be said that those significant parts of a life-story that rise above other parts and crystallize the feeling of identity actually form the identity. According to McAdams' (1985) interpretation, a life-story not only reflects and contains elements that are included in identity, but a life-story is, in fact, the individual's identity. A life-story, then, can be considered as a kind of narrative idea about the self and the identity. A person analyses himself within the framework of his personal life-history and a certain socio-historical context. Identity refers expressly to how he perceives himself in the network of social relationships and how he feels that he integrates into the social structure, whereas individual uniqueness is emphasized in the personal self. The individual, then, speaks of his life both within the framework of his personal experience and as a person that belongs to, for instance, a certain age group, sex, socio-economic status, and culture. Goffmann (1963) uses the following concepts: social identity refers to social and cultural contents in the individual's consciousness, whereas personal identity is the unique combination of the individual's, experiences and events in his life-history. Ego-identity is the subjective feeling about one's own identity. A person always speaks of himself either consciously, or unconsciously, with respect to the social structures of his life. The individual and the social are one within the other, the different sides of the same coin: the world is in the self and the self is in the world (Bruner, 1990). A human is both deeply social and in many ways individual at the same time. Socialization does not happen merely through role-taking but also through role-making (Mead, 1962; see also Antikainen, 1991; Antikainen et al., 1992; Hurrelmann, 1988). The self reflects a social structure but at the same time it is more than this. A person both receives something from culture and also provides culture, that is, the individual is both a product and a producer. Where a persorl is regarded as an active and productive creature we can use a more dynamic alternative to the static role concept (Davies and Harre, 1990; Harre and Langenhove, 1991). In roles the readymade, static, and ritual aspects of a given cultural playground are emphasized. A more dynamic concept is that of a position that can be used especially in the analysis of language. Position refers to the discursive construction of a personal story, where the individual can form several images about his identity and direct himself towards his life from 21

Living in a Learning Society several stations. The stream of past events during a lifetime are placed into a narrative form and recollected from a chosen position in each case. Life-history and biographical experience from a personal and cultural resource for the narrator to construct a story about the past, interpret a surrounding world, to strengthen his identity and to give a meaning to his experiences. In addition to describing and organizing, a person also constructs and produces his identity.

Memory and the Retrospective Nature of Stories Memory is the key requirement for the production of a life-story. In studies examining autobiographical memory, one of the most central questions is the equivalence between memories and actual past life. In particular those who have used people as informants have been interested in the accuracy of the information obtained when mapping past events and living conditions. Autobiographical memory can be approached from several theoretical viewpoints; the following examines some of these viewpoints briefly (see Saarenheimo, 1991). In copy-theOries of memory, memories are regarded as copies of past events. The personal memories that are chosen for life-stories represent the informant's world as it was at the time of the event. When telling a life-story a person re-lives the past unchanged and undistorted. Autobiographical experiences and memories have been, at least in principle, interpreted as having remained unchanged over the years. Different testing situations have been organized to try to clarify the remembrance of details in a certain situation. For example, Freeman, Romney and Freeman (1987) have tested how people remember other people's presence in some social situations. The answers included many mistakes: the informants either forgot or remembered wrongly. When the informants were asked 'Who was there?' they instead answered the question 'Who do you think was there?' The conclusion was that people remember details of certain situations poorly and that about half of what the informants said was in some way faulty. Hence, the question is not about accurate and unchangeable data but about the fact that somewhere between the actual experience and its later reconstruction the information about the original situation changed. This type of naive study of memory wanted to clarify how people remember the specific features of a given situation as they exist. A person, however, is not a passive recorder of events, like for example a camera, but the memory paints rather than photographs (see Runyan, 1984, p. 36). On the basis of recurring experiences a person forms mental

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Biographical Method constructions, schemes, which reflect the regularities of experiences and on the basis of these new experiences are classified and organized (Freeman, Romney and Freeman, 1987, p. 322). These mental constructions, for their part, enable remembering but at the same time we form suppositions and concepts according to existing information constructions, which also distort the search from memory. Most often we do not remember all the details of familiar experiences and events. In this case we compensate for the gaps in our memory with ready-made information constructions. Memory is, then, largely reconstructive: the individual actively organizes and interprets the information about the world and new experiences. The reconstruction theories of memory do not consider memory as the accurate recorder of past events. Instead, memory interprets, organizes, adapts, and selects past events. Remembering is reconstructive by nature: the events that can be found in the memory have not occurred in real life as remembered. This, however, does not mean that memories do not contain elements of previous experiences. In the parlial-reconstruction theory personal memories are viewed as referring to experienced meaning of external events (Barclay, 1988; Brewer, 1986). According to this view memories contain information about the original experience, but in the course of time other elements not present in the original experience have also merged. Memories, then, would not correspond with past experiences as such, but they would rather be phenomenally in harmony with the self-concept they represent. From this perspective, life-stories could be characterized as inaccurate with respect to details, but honest and truthful in the sense that they refer to the personal meanings attached to experiences (Barclay, 1988). Collective or social memory suggests that those images of past events that the person believes he experienced himself were not personal but were second-hand impressions (Schuman and Scott, 1989, pp. 362,379). For instance, in some life-stories informants may present some early events of his life-history as his own when in reality he has been too young to remember them personally. When memories are regarded as interactional events one considers that those memories are created interactively with other people. Experience acquires its meaning as a part of the cultural value and meaning context where collective impressions and interpretations also become a part of individual memories. We can talk about a 'store' of subjective and social information (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973; Berger and Luckmann, 1966). The social information storage is objectified and categorizes information which includes, among other things, language: the social information storage consists of

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Living in a Learning Society socially and biographically defined elements. Subjective information storage includes the unique elements dependent on a life-story's individuality. Remembering, therefore, is always a social event where memories, to some extent, reflect the prevailing values and attitudes of the society. When memory is regarded as a constructor of the social reality it is considered from a socio-historical perspective, where the main interest is how the memory produces versions of the past (Middleton and Edwards, 1990; Shotter, 1990; Saarenheimo, 1991). Here the main attention is paid to linguistic descriptions and to people's speech styles. How is the past spoken of, what type of constructions are created with memory, and what consequences do the spoken versions of the past have? It is possible to reach life's past events and experiences as memories, which are filtered through the present, interpreted and reconstructed. Memories are not permanent, fixed, or clearly defined. Instead, they are in a constant state of change and prone to be reinterpreted.

Meaningful Experiences In life-stories, individuals speak of themselves and give meaning to their experiences. It is important that each phenomenon being researched is looked at from the viewpoint of an individual's range of awareness and as one experienced by the individual. For example, when studying some phenomenon in society we need to clarify how this phenomenon appears to people, how they experience it and what kind of interpretations they give to it. From this perspective, peoples' life-stories refer to personal, individual interpretations about different collective and personal events of the past. According to Labov and Waletzky (1967) the stories include both a referential and an evaluative function. The referential function involves the spectrum of events and the evaluative function includes those contents that have become significant. The cultural context of life and the concrete events during the life-history are made subjectively significant in a life-story. The formation of meanings occurs in relation to a multi-dimensional cultural background and it is based on life's past experiences. The fundamental assumption in the study of oral life-stories is that a person can verbalize matters and that the agent himself best knows the purpose of each action. Some meanings can be directly expressed through language but there are also unconscious elements in life that we cannot express with words. Giddens' (1984, pp. 4, 7, 374-6) discus-

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Biographical Method sion on discursive consciousness, practical consciousness, and the unconscious suggests the fact that part of the conditions of activity and the factors affecting them in a given time cannot be realized or verbally expressed. Alongside subjectivity, stories always portray the prevailing historical, even universal, elements in society, such as norms, moral nuances, cultural ideals, and society's myths and rule systems, which are more difficult to express verbally. These challenge the researcher's analytic abilities to recognize fine nuances and culturally specific meanings. When the researcher adapts what has once been interpreted into abstractions he must constantly consider whether they are justified and whether the gap between the informant's reality and the researcher's interpretations remains reasonable. The meanings that appear in life-stories can be outlined on the basis of the informant's cultural environment and factors affecting the interview situation. The informant chooses a certain way to speak according to the situation, his own aims, and cultural background, the social aesthetic acceptability of the informant's speech and linguistic ability, and the possible limitations of the narration. According to Mannheim (1959, pp. 43-63), documentary meaning analysis should be aimed at, alongside subjective and objective meanings. In documentary meaning analysis interpretations are set in larger contexts and attached to larger socio-cultural factors. Hence, the object of research is contextualized with past cultural changes and the theoretical descriptions presented regarding them. In a way these interpretations are reflexively directed towards the imaginable reality. The meanings that a person gives to matters are greatly affected by the nature of the interview and. this is influenced in turn by different contextual factors, such as the historical, cultural and organizational contexts and the relationship between the participants. A person's verbal and non-verbal communication is, to a great extent, 'indexical' where terms, expressions, gestures, and utterances gain special contextbound meanings (e.g., Mishler, 1986, p. 64). The interview offers a kind of framework within which the participants try to exchange meanings that are negotiated and that can be understood by both participants. For instance, Vilkko (1991) states that from this perspective life-stories should be considered more as social constructions than personal constructions of the self. Mutual understanding is made possible on the basis of the available shared cultural interpretations. This, however, does not mean that conventional stories do not contain life. Therefore, life-stories should be examined as stories adapted by social activity and situation-bound activities where informants actively construct meanings from different positions.

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Life as a Linguistic Construction Life-story interviews are speech events that are based on concepts and language. We act automatically through language and language offers a channel when concentrating on the informant's life: with language we describe objects, explain actions and events, express feelings and beliefs and narrate our experiences. In life-stories, language provides an entrance into the life-worlds of individuals and verbal expressions form the raw material on the basis of which interpretations are made. Human reality is, to a great extent, linguistic by nature and past life can be realized through verbal stories. Language is the most central phenomenon in human existence and interaction. The discursive approach pays attention to language in all its diversity and controversy. The term discourse, in its largest meaning, covers all the forms of both spoken and written language, which means that any social text can be the object of research (e.g., Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Nikander, 1991). Discourse analysis studies different versions of reality that are produced through language. This is based on the idea that apart from describing reality verbal expressions also produce circumstances: language is a product of social reality at the same time that it creates this reality. When language is emphasized and the discursive approach is applied in the analysis of life-stories, we observe how flexibly people use language when constructing a story about their own life. Linguistic expressions make possible the construction of several different versions about our reality and life. It is clear that even during short speeches a person may flexibly construct ideas about his life and himself that spread in many directions. Language gives a person an opportunity to express himself in a versatile manner and the telling of a life-story forms a type of discourse through which a person, by actively using language, constructs a version about his past life, its events and their meanings in each interview. The interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee is an important factor which affects the formation and the content of the narration in the life-stories obtained by interview. The content is also affected by, for instance, other imaginary receivers, culturally conditioned rules of expression, by what can be realized through memory, one's own unique life experiences, and by what is considered as significant and worth telling within the discursive framework of life history. The stories, therefore, are sensitive of context and they are always told to someone else for some purpose. Life-stories portray a selected image of life's events, presented according to the conditions

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Biographical Method of life-story discourse and adopted for it. In a way the participants in an interview negotiate the conditions of understanding, how interesting the narration's contents are, and the possibility of reaching interaction. As a consequence the informant chooses to narrate certain matters presented in a certain way in his life-story (Vilkko, 1991). Most often life-stories construct a fairly logical, analysed, and whole image of life. According to Bourdieu (1987), life, however, 'is not such a coherent entity; on the contrary, life consists of loosely organized pieces and of fairly sporadic situations. In a life-story a citizen of a modern state constructs a fairly whole picture of his life that parallels the form of life presented to the public. The creation of a good, whole, and coherent story increases the gap with respect to the actual past life. The reality of life and the conceptual expressions formed would be, according to this interpretation, fairly far apart and both the different sectors of the narrator's life and their relationship to the prevailing reality would be presented insufficiently. Life-as-told and life-as-lived would, according to this view, be different matters. 4

Life-story as an Expression about Experienced Reality When considering the classic definitions of life-stories and their character as scientific research material we can detect at least three common and pronounced elements: biographies portray the narrator's sociocultural environment, they portray an individual's perspective, and they include a time dimension concerning both the individual and the society (see Dollard, 1949, p. 3; Shaw, 1980, p. 229). The starting point in a biography is the individual and his views that are closely connected both with the history of his own life and with the larger context of the society. The subjective life-story, however, holds the key position through which and in which the social finds its expression. Analytically, lifestories can be approached in many ways. These different approaches vary with respect to their techniques, concepts, and methods of analysis; the problems are formed in different ways and attention is directed towards different matters. Life-stories as aids in research can be approached from several directions depending on the researcher's interests and the aims of the research. The focus of the study can be directed towards the social reality, individual meanings and narrative questions. Edward Bruner (1986, p. 6) has, basing his arguments on Dilthey, analytically distinguished between reality, experience, and expression

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Living in a Learning Society Figure 3.2: Approaches to life-stories

Life-story as an expression about experienced reality Life-as-lived (reality) The life-eourse in socio-eultural contexts and past life with its events. This includes what has really happened, what reality consists of and what belongs to reality. Life-as-experienced (experience) Reality in the consciousness from the individual's perspective. Experience includes, for instance, mental pictures, feelings, thoughts and impressions. Life-as-told (expression) Life expression includes portraying past reality through words and symbols. Biographical research from different perspectives Objective life-story The entity of real stages and events of life are described: what has really happened. The comprehensive account of this requires several interviews and the use of other documentary material. Subjective life-story The informant speaks of himself, that is, of his self-image and identity image. The thoughts of the individual, that is, the subjective image of oneself is studied. Life-story as a narrative The form of the individual's narrated life analysis is studied. This is how biographies have been approached, above all, in literary research. Analytically distinguishable functions of narration Contextual function a) How does the story convey the socio-historical context of an individual's life? b) How is the story influenced by the environment, those production conditions and the context of the narration in which the story is produced? How do the interview situation and the participants interaction affect the story? Ideational function What is the significance of the situation, activity, event or experience? A relevant factor is that telling a story is an important means for individuals to give meanings to their experiences and to express their understanding of them. Similar events may have different meanings for different people. Textual function How do the parts of a story or a text relate to each other and how do the units of linguistic expression relate to each other? Is there a typical and perhaps a universal structure of narration, where parts of a story are organized in a specific way?

- there are inevitable gaps between these but in any case they always correspond with one another to some extent (see Figure 3.2). These components are intertwined; reality, experience and expression together form some type of an entity. Understanding becomes possible when all these components and the relationships between them have been brought into the discussion and when the content themes that are relevant to the problem are analysed both as themes formed by specific contextual factors and as themes appearing in certain narrative structures (Huotelin, 1992; Mishler, 1986). When producing his life-story the narrator may notice than he cannot find an expression for everything

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Biographical Method that he has experienced in reality. Similarly, a researcher often finds, when working in the field, that the subsequent publication may not reveal the versatility and richness of the nuances of the reality being researched as experienced in real life. One of the most burning questions in life-history studies is the relation of the narrated life analysis to reality. To what extent are the experiences and events appearing in the story merely expressions with no connections to past reality? Is it perhaps so that narrated experiences have the overall possibility to become a part of our identity and at the same time a part of our social reality (see Giddens, 1991)? The answer to these questions will be influenced by the understanding of the gaps between reality, experience and expressions. In a way lifestories have a dual nature: they force their way to the past reality and reflect the past events in the stream of life; and at the same time they are something that are created, adapted and interpreted. In life-stories it is possible to realize life, its event and parts of reality filtered through the individual's consciousness. However, the question is not about full arbitrariness but that there is the experienced reality and the components of the past life behind the expression. It is wrong to say that lifestories have nothing to do with reality just as it is wrong to say that it would be possible to reach some absolute conception about the past reality. When approaching life-stories from a constructionist point of view the individual is emphasized as a creature using language and constructing his reality. The most radical interpretations have resorted to ideas where the stories are seen as mere illusions and the individual's selfconception is only seen as a construction between different texts. The poststructuralist way of framing a question has begun to overemphasize textual and narrative dimensions, and does not consider whether they refer to reality at all. In this case, with the material as a narrative, cultural product is only looked at as texts with no connections with the real world, or the world being studied is considered as consisting only of these texts. The situation, then, is rather paradoxical: reality can only be realized as linguistic constructions and symbolic signs, when at the same time there seems to be insurmountable gaps between them. The symbolic world with its meanings then is both tightly attached to and completely free of the phenomena of the real world. The 'dealer' is the narrator who conjures up a utopian and a fictional dimension and at the same time hides reality behind his words, like a researcher who may lose reality within theoretical abstractions. Even though an individual's life is approached through a story it

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does not diminish a person's life into a mere story: stories are lived before they are told - except in complete fiction (e.g., White, 1981). When a person adapts symbolic meanings and factual details into a verbal form they are imaginary, in the sense that they are something that have been designed. However, this does not mean that the content of the narration would be false or untrue. They do, all the same, portray the unreachability of the past and the future and the gaps between the actual deed and the expression. A person has experienced things in life that can later be placed behind the mask of meaning and that can later only be imagined rather than returned again.

The Symbiosis of Fact and Fiction The relationship of a life-story and a documentary film based on reality is similar. The relationship of fact and fiction has been considered in both cases but 'this boundary is like a line drawn on water' (Rustanius, 1993, p. 11). Both can include fictional facts and truthful fiction. Fact and fiction are symbiotically intertwined: the facts included in reality merge into a part of an individual through fictional mechanisms. Traditionally, research phenomena have been approached primarily through facts but life-stories, in addition to this, also contain the imaginary, fictional dimension of possibilities. The stream of life, past events and experiences are described both as they really were in a certain situation and as they could have been. It was previously mentioned that life-stories have a dual character. Rustanius describes the ambivalence of a documentary film in the following way: An image is a copy of reality. A reproduction, however, does have a dynamic touch with reality. In a film a person's relationship with the world becomes magical. A documentary film is a creative interpretation of reality. Every documentary contains the seeds of fictional elements. Correspondingly, each fiction includes documentary material. A documentary film includes pieces of the reality, but not the whole stream of reality. The problem is how to make a stream of meaning out of those pieces. The pieces of reality ... include the possibility of both the truth and the lie. The relationship between facts and documentaries and the original reality, and the relationship between the pieces determine the reality of the produced reality, its credibility and its probative force. (1993, pp. 11, 13-14)

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Biographical Method Something has objectively happened in a person's life and those events have become a part of ourselves, the experiences have linked up in the chain of the self. The self merges the spectrum of experiences into itself and it is possible to return to these experiences through imagination. A human psyche produces documentary-like narration where the real events of past life provide the background. Narration combines the experience of reality with illusion and the objective event with fiction. A life-story includes the 'added element', the creative perspective through which the individual can reach his inner freedom and change the surrounding world. In science we have tried to deny, maybe too thoroughly, the illusory dimension inseparably linked to human life. At the same time we have greatly overemphasized static facts at the expense of a more dynamic dimension. The objective facts have often been considered as more valuable for science than the subjective social imagination. According to Weckroth (1992, p. 47) 'it is paradoxical that concentrating on potential research may, at times, give a more functional picture of present reality than research directly attached to the present reality'. Imagination enables one to capture the core of the phenomenon, its 'soul', and its specific nature that so often escapes from the researcher. Science also requires imagination, creativity, free intellectual play, the dynamic interaction between different truths and a new kind of anchoring into reality (see Bohm and Peat, 1992). Science which only codes facts is doomed to lag behind. However, we could have possibly prepared ourselves for Finland's economic depression through fictions portraying the right standard. Fictions are not necessarily completely realistic but they are, all the same, bitingly true.

A Perspective to the Mosaic of Reality Research made from different philosophical perspectives in science examines the object of research in different ways. The basic hypothesis and general starting points make a phenomenon approachable for research and offer grounds of orientation in research, where the object can be approached from several perspectives. When hypotheses make research possible they, at the same time, restrict the perception of the world to a certain point of view. The choice between alternatives is not completely straightforward, because each of them have their own rational grounds. We can highlight what is possible and critique the nature of different approaches,

31

Living in a Learning Society

their merits and restrictions, as well as develop them into directions where they are at their best. With respect to the understanding of a phenomenon - that is how easily that phenomenon may be understood - it may be fruitful to have different points of view that complement each other; even the clash between controversial versions of truth may be useful. Even a sculpture gives us a more accurate and multi-dimensional impression when we look at it from different sides. Therefore, scientific research can be outlined as a type of chart of the mosaic-like reality where every piece can add to our understanding of the entity (see McCall and Wittner, 1990, p. 65). People's subjective life-stories are one way of approaching the mosaic of reality through the perspective of the individual's personal experiences and subjective meanings. They lead us into the middle of the public and private world, where the subjective and objective meet. According to a viewpoint adopted through this there is also a constructionist dimension to reality which does not try to attain a single absolute truth, but which allows different kinds of anchoring into reality and takes the constructive nature of the social world into account as a fruitful possibility. In the study of life-stories this constructionist element is very important and it is in this that the important strength of this approach lies. The narrative starting point includes the aspect of possibility, the dimensions of interpretation and the imaginative and creative human life. Life-stories portray what it is like to be, for instance, of a certain age or of some ethnic minority, how individuals give significance to their experiences, use their resources, and how they are in touch with the surrounding reality and construct the elements of the past life into a story. Even though the interpretations are subjective they may still contain cultural similarities. Choosing different kinds of people as informants enables both detailed descriptions about the uniqueness of each case and the perception of the importance of the possible shared elements in the middle of great diversity. Apart from the fact that life's imaginative analyses exist as sounds on tapes and as 'stains on paper', they have a tendency to become true. According to Thomas (1928), 'If men define situations as real they are real in their consequences.' Stories have a possibility to merge as a part of our identity, as a part of our social reality and through this also as rule systems regulating our activities, especially when told. Naturally not all conceptual constructions take the form of activities nor are they all realized as actions creating states of affairs. What constructions are classified as worth realizing and by whom is a different matter. In science, when reporting versions about the reality being researched we, apart from describing and explaining, maintain and create the limits of

32

Biographical Method our conceptual reality. In addition, it is always easy to connect the political dimension to this way of forming a question. Even though phenomena are social constructions, it is, on the other hand, a mistake to overemphasize the adaptability and the possibility of complete reconstruction of social reality. Similarly, it is a mistake to presume that phenomena have no such constructionist dimensions.

33

4

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations

We can attempt to create a long-term line of development concerning the experiences and meanings of education from the perspectives of cohort and life-course. First, life-stories are grouped into types from the point of view of life-course. Then, on the basis of these types, we form educational generations based on the experiences of people: these generations are exemplified as case studies in the framework of social development. Finally, on the basis of the development lines in our data, we attempt to create some preliminary theoretical interpretations.

The Typology of Life-stories The two most central factors in biographies are the phase of life and generation (Roos, 1987, p. 48). The former can be used when the data include both people from different age groups and people at different phases of life. The latter for its part is determined by the common factors of their experiences in life. More generally, the concept of generation and generational analysis have seldom been used in sociological research in Finland, and the study of education is no exception in this respect (Allardt, 1981; Pontinen, 1982). The particular benefit of generational analysis is that it makes possible for us to include an historical dimension in the analysis: 'The concept of generation elaborates, at least to some extent, on the characteristics of the processes in which historical and social time shape the life-course of an individual' (Mannheim, 1959). A generation consists of a group of people born during the same time period and who are united by similar life experiences and a temporarily coherent cultural background. People belonging to the same generation have the same location in the historical dimension of the social process. They share a group of events that have influenced, first, the ways in which they experience and think and, second, historically relevant ways of action (Mannheim, 1959, pp. 191 and 292; Puuronen,

34

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations 1988, p. 4). From the perspective of the generation it is easier to understand why people of the same age tend to give situations and events almost similar meanings and why people of different ages direct their action differently. In the case of rapid social change generational analysis seems to function very well. s We formed different cohorts in order to direct the gathering of the data. These include shared factors connected with reality such as possibilities for education and social mobility. With the aid of cohorts we attempted to analyse possibilities for education and socio-historical events connected to the construction of the meaning of education. Basing the cohorts on mainly statistical studies, we construed the following educational cohorts (Kauppila, 1991; cf. Pontinen, 1982; Roos, 1987): 1 2 3 4

Cohort Cohort Cohort Young

with little education (-1935) of educational growth and inequality (1936-1945) of educational growth and welfare (1946-1965) people (1966-)

By interpreting the data grouped into generations from the point of view of life-course, we attempted to clarify the experiential base of education and the action connected to it at different phases of life. From this perspective we attempted to pay attention to the life of an individual under certain historical and social conditions. The central categories (educational types) that arose from the data are the following: 1 2

3 4

Education Education Education Education of life

as as as as

an ideal, life as a struggle a means, work as the substance of life a commodity, the self as a problem self-evident, interests and hobbies as the essence

We understand the life-course of an individ.ual as a whole consisting of vertical and horizontal actions he has committed during his life. When the meaning and experiences of education are examined from the point of view of the life-course, the focus is on the phases of life in the past and their retrospective reproduction in the present situation of the narrator. We are also aware of the future and possible age-related changes connected to the meaning of education. From the horizontal perspective we pay attention to different areas of life including work, family, spare time, and education and their role in narration.

35

Living in a Learning Society From the Typology of Life-stories to Educational Generations By connecting the perspectives of cohort and life-course we formulated

a long-term trend giving us information about the experiencing of education, action, and the giving of meanings. The meaning of education has been construed in the context of the great changes in the Finnish society, in which the war years (1939-1944) and the period of reconstruction in the 1950s and 1960s, the period of structural change (the 1960s and 1970s) and the welfare state form the context giving rise to shared experiences. On the basis of this grouping we formulated the educational generations of the Finnish society, paying special attention to experiences and context: 1 Generation of war and scant education (-1935) 2 Generation of structural change and increasing educational opportunities (1936-1955) 3 Generation of social welfare and many educational choices (1956-) (See Figure 4.1., p. 51) It is our tentative idea to believe that the shared experiences from education also reveal something about the educational motivations of the generations, a development from the ideal to the self-evident. Concerning educational generations, the experiences in youth and early adulthood have given each generation its own generational location (education as an ideal, a means, a commodity, or self-eVident). It can be assumed that this location determines the way in which certain ways of experiencing and thinking exist in relation to generational variation. As we have pointed out above, people belonging to the same generation share a location in the historical dimension of the social process. They have shared the central structural and historical events connected to the formation of the meaning of education. Mannheim (1959, pp. 291-2) points out that the ways of making same events meaningful are directly connected to the ways in which the individuals experience and think and to historically relevant models of action. The case seems to be that the generational location is a result of educational experiences and meanings given to them. These have been construed in the context of great social changes from experiences connected to youth and early adulthood. It is natural to think that the educational motivation, a part of each generational location, is a passive state; it consists only of possibilities that can either come true, become repressed, melt into social forces, or reappear as a new kind

36

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations of construction. However, even a passive way of reaction has a meaning: it becomes manifest as a facility to react and relate to education in a certain manner. For example, the motivational orientation of the oldest generation, based on their experiences in youth, can be seen as the impact that education has had on them. Even courses as short as two or three weeks have been of extreme importance ill their life histories. When we leave shared factors and move towards more individual ones, the concept of actualized generation should receive some attention. Even though all representatives of the same generation share a similar generational location, they do not necessarily belong to the same actualized generation. Social change from agricultural to industrial and post-industrial society is 'not simultaneous in the country and towns, without speaking of the different parts of the country. A collective identity can be seen to take place at the level of the generational location only, since the identity includes a number of different dimensions such as body image, sexuality, age group, social group, religion, and ideology. Identity is construed mainly as the combination of individual life history and the opportunities offered by society; the ways of construing identity are psychological, functional, and social processes (Huotelin, 1992, p. 23). However, a different generational location functions as a border between generations: they do not orientate themselves towards the future in a similar manner. In a case such as this it is possible to speak of a difference between generations or even of a generational gap (Mead, 1970). Our data gives clear indications of the different ways in "Thich people of different generations relate to education; they also give different meanings to education. Next we will provide a closer look at the shared experiences of different generations and their context of origin by following an increase in the structure of opportunities in its context of change, a change from an agricultural society to a post-industrial one. It is not just society that has changed but basic education, too. Historically it has been connected to the parallel school system and theIl the comprehensive school system (Kivinen, 1988, pp. 9-10). Finally, each educational generation is exemplified as case studies based on individual life-stories.

The Generation of War and Scant Education The generation of war and scant education received its basic education in parallel schools. Although the 1920s was a period of lively educational legislation, basic education faced problems almost all through its time of existence. From the late 1920s onwards the development of the

37

Living in a Learning Society elementary school system mirrored crisis-related phenomena, which was seen as the promotion of reduced primary school. Another example of this is that opportunities for further education were arrested (Kivinen, 1988, p. 177). As a result of this, people learnt to live in an agrarian society of scant education according to the requirements of their local community and nature, based on traditions and mediated through personal contacts. There were numerous independent and self-sustaining social organizations in a traditional agrarian society. Typically learning was provided by closely related people at home or within the local community (Allardt, 1989). The importance of personal contacts and local communities is clearly seen in the earliest meaningful learning experiences of this generation. Unto's (born 1924) earliest meaningful learning experience is connected to the stories told by the members of a small local community, the log floaters. As his own home was strictly religious, it did not provide him with a clear and organized understanding of his society. Consequently the stories and jokes, even the dirty ones, opened a new window into the realities of life for Unto. Ismo's (born 1929) learning experiences were connected to his hobbies (game hunting, fishing) and were based on personal contacts mediated through traditions. A worker employed in Ismo's home taught him hunting skills, and so hunting became an important hobby in Ismo's life history. There was little formal education available and because of the war it was not easy to attend school. The problems connected with war-time schooling are very central in the lifehistories of this generation.

Education as an Ideal, Life as a Struggle Helvi (born 1927) Helvi's life-story is one of the most tragic in our data, a real struggle from the beginning to the end. Education remained an ideal for Helvi since she did not have the opportunity to continue her studies after her basic education in spite of her wishes. Her external life has been chaotic and she has had to adapt her inner life to that. Her story becomes organized in the framework of her own life-history which consisted of an unhappy family life and illness. Short references to education reveal the non-existence of educational possibilities in an agricultural community during the war and the period of reconstruction. However, the main theme of the story is not that of despair, depression, or bitterness, but, quite the contrary: it shows stamina and determination to carry one's own burden until the very end. Helvi says herself that despite her

38

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations many diseases she has a 'terrible will to live'. In her education Helvi is a good representative of the generation. Her primary school remained partly unfinished because of the war; nor did a possibility of participating in further education in the form of a handicrafts course in Helsinki ever become true because of lack of money. Helvi was born in a one room shack by a lake in Korpimaki in 1927. Her lively and very detailed life-story includes many unfortunate experiences: the death of her father, life with a drinking husband and sons, the loss of health in a wool factory. The death of her father is described almost mythically, and perhaps memories have changed in the course of time. When Helvi was under the school age her father had a dream in which he was supposed to travel to a logging camp far away. Her father told the others to bake and roast meat in the oven, and to summon the brothers and sisters. 'Well, then they came and were there talking for many hours and then they went home for their evening duties. Dad stayed there with us and talked just like we do here now. And then he died there.' After the death of the father the rest of the family moved to Siikajarvi where she went to primary school for one month in the autumn and another in the spring. For Helvi the highlight of her childhood was a trip to Vyborg where she also had a tonsillectomy. The war continued in the autumn of 1941 and when the soldiers took over the school, no education was offered there. In the next spring the school continued in a big house near the school: 'so that in a roundabout way we went to the school. Maths and writing were the main thing so that in the end all of us passed the grade.' After this, Helvi started the continuation grades of the primary school. Classes met in the evenings twice a week, three hours every time. As the war continued the school was prolonged: Helvi was 14 years old at the last grade. Her stepfather gave the school the name of 'courting school' in an amused manner. After having finished the primary school Helvi was accepted to take confirmation classes: 'I then passed that, too.' After the confirmation she stayed home working on handiwork: 'Ever since I was three years old I had to have a wooden needle in hand when my mother was knitting.' By practical training Helvi became a very skilful handicraft worker: 'Well, so my handicrafts have become very good even though I have never been to any school besides what I have seen other people do at the open college here.' At the age of seventeen Helvi had an opportunity to participate on a six-week course in Helsinki, but as she did not manage to obtain the course fee and as the guardianship board did not grant a loan, her wish never came true: 'Listen, the guardianship board did not give a loan and, listen, when

39

Living in a Learning Society

I left the meeting, I cried all the way home. That was the end of my studies.' Aatu (born 1909)

Aatu is the oldest representative of our data and his idealistic attitude towards education derives from the fact that he never finished his education. Aatu's story runs through his memories in three wars and it is organized by a burning, never fulfilled wish to study and do research. When reading Aatu's story one cannot but wonder and admire how will, determination, and hard work have been able to feed an insatiable hunger for civilization, regardless of his difficult background. Aatu's education covers a relatively long period and ends in his graduation from the Institute of Social Sciences in adulthood. Aatu differs from the other representatives' of his generation. More than any other person in our study he emphasizes the meaning of education - education that he in vain strove for in his childhood. In fact, he says that the lack of educational possibilities in childhood has given him even more reason to struggle for education. Aatu describes himself: 'Well, I don't have anything to complain about, I have made myself. I know that I am a boy from a small and remote village who has struggled forward and nobody has ever helped- me but our Lord in heaven.' Aatu's idealistic attitude towards education can also be seerl in his admiration towards those who have had the possibility to obtain education in childhood and youth. Aatu was born in Ostrobotnia, Lansikyla in Narejarvi in 1909. His home was a normal Ostrobotnian small farm. There were six children in the family, the oldest was born in 1884 and Aatu was the youngest. His childhood memories are scant and cursory: 'My childhood was a normal one in a remote village ... the western part was called Narepera. I don't remember anything particular. The boys played around, we played whatever we played. There were civil guard people in every village.' He mentions that he had a strong desire for learning, since he did have troubles concerning the school: 'I was able to take only three classes of primary school because I was very ill as a child and so that was my primary school. 1 was thinking about high school, the one closest to us was in Kauhava, but my brother's death hindered it.' The part of Aatu's story dealing with his youth includes many difficult experiences and sad events. However, his habit of seeing the most negative events of his life-history in positive light is very impressive. 'There are many strange things in my life which, looking backwards now, have turned out well, but then in those days ... in those days they were very harmful many times, 1 wondered why it happens 40

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations this way again.' When Aatu tells about his childhood even the researcher wishes for a short period that all of the sad events in Aatu's story would not be true. Aatu tells that most of the children in the family died under the age of 20, which, in turn, caused the tragic death of Aatu's mother. 'Most of the children died under 20 years of age, only my brother lived until he turned 25. Once we buried two of them on the same Sunday and the two sisters died only five weeks from each other and after them my brother died. It was too hard a heartache for my mother and she died because of her heart. It was not a heart attack but her heart simply couldn't take it anymore.' Aatu was 14 years old then and soon his 53year-old father married the 19-year-old housemaid of the family. Aatu had to leave home and he stayed with his uncle until the age of 26. Aatu's adulthood is organized around a desire for study and research. In February 1937 he moved to Karelia in order to attend the border guard school. After school he was ordered to take a post at the Karelian board guard in Koivujoki where he, as he was able to use a typewriter, managed to get a post as a border officer. The border officer was allowed to have an interpreter but as it was always difficult to get hold of one, Aatu was obliged to study and learn the Russian language. The next year he resigned from the border guard and married his present wife. Before the war Aatu worked as a newspaper correspondent, and, as he had always been interested in social and communal issues, he also worked at the municipal office of Kangasjarvi in addition to his duties as a correspondent. In 1939, at the break of the Winter War, Aatu served in Karelia and was wounded by an explosive rifle bullet. Later he functioned as a clerk and sergeant-major of his column. During the Continuation War his duties were similar. It was during the Continuation War that Aatu happened to see a newspaper advertisement concerning the Institute of Social Sciences. He applied and was accepted. Studies took place usually after working hours. As Aatu had some experience in communal work, he was accepted in the social line to study for his Master's degree, which he obtained in his adulthood.

The Generation of Structural Change and Increasing Educational Opportunities Nucleus category - 'education as a means, work as the substance of life' - found in the life-stories of the generation of structural change and increasing educational opportunities describes the collective identity of the generation. Compared to the expressive stories of the previous generation these stories are much more colourless and one-sided. 41

Living in a Learning Society They mainly focus on themes dealing with education and work as the lengthening of education and the relationship between education and the working life are most obvious in the stories. The life-stories of this generation reflect that what we already know at the structural level: the great changes in education and work form the context of the experiences in the youth and early adulthood of this generation. This generation is that of the so-called 'baby boom'. A picture of the size of the age group and the migration it experienced can be achieved by examining the number of 7-15-year-olds involved in basic education. Their number was 606,000 in 1950, but ten years later the number had grown by 250,000. The peak achieved in 1960 (850,000) was reduced in 10 years by 150,000. Because of migration and urbanization the number of children of school-age was reduced only in the countryside where the numbers came down by 309,000 in 20 years (1960-80) (Kivinen, 1988, pp. 186-7). The geographical and quantitative expansion of the university network in the 1960s opened new paths for the social pursuits of different social groups. Compared to the previous generation, education has functioned much better as a resource for an individual for the generation of structural change and increasing educational opportunities as it has allowed social mobility from the point of view of the equality of possibilities. The degrees based on education have provided this generation with access to the labour market and more mobility between different sectors of the labour market (Ahola, 1988). This generation has experienced internationally unique historical and social events which came into existence as tIle system of educational, economic life, and class structure went through a simultaneous period of crisis. From a cultural point of view, it has been argued that this has created an exceptional cultural understanding exceeding class boundaries. According to Makela (1985), homogeneity reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s when simultaneous changes in the fields of educational system and economic structure allowed and forced social and regional mobility. This mobility can very easily be seen in the lifestories. It is probable that education was a means for members of all social groups, but the needs for it were different.

Education as a Means, Work as the Substance of Life TUija (born 1944) As we start to examine the stories characterized as 'education as a means, work as the substance of life', they appear to be more one-sided and

42

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations the experiences less intensive. The role of education is more prominent and the role of work as the substance of life is stressed. Tuija's story is organized through the experiences in a materially poor post-war childhood, education, and work. Her story is reportive and evaluative. The discussion concerning the relationship between school and working life on the one hand, and the analysis of the facilities given by education and the skills required in the working life on the other, shows the reader the experiences of a new generatioIl through which the new mentality of a new industrial society can be seen. In this mentality, tradition and the guidance of the local community have been replaced by the guidance of the law and bureaucracy. The change of the work \duties of the principal of a home economics institute from an independent business to one strictly controlled by administrators, one of the themes in Tuija's story, portrays the direction of social change. Tuija was born as the first child of three in the family of a Leppalahti shop manager. The reconstructiOll period after World War Two was difficult in many respects. Tuija's generation experienced a scarcity to be later followed by economic prosperity through the structural change in the 1960s - which forced people to work hard in childhood. Tuija renlembers that as a child she used to play in the front window of the family shop as they did not have anything to display. However, soon the material conditions improved, her father bought a shop of his own and began his career as an entrepreneur. All of the children used to work in the family business: 'All of us children thought that we were working for our own business, so we all wanted it to prosper.' During the time Tuija started her school her mother was studying at an institute of commercial training in Helsinki and so nobody kept an eye on Tuija's school. However, she learnt to write and read by corresponding with her mother. She barely passed primary school and high school: 'I just wanted to pass the grade, learning was not important, my grades were only five, six, seven, mainly.' (The scale of grades in Finnish schools is from 4-10.) The part dealing with her youth concentrates on her experiences in high school and education receives its meaning through work. Tuija got herself an apartment and, at the age of 16, left for another town in order to go to high school. She repeated the second grade in high school because, 'I had such a bad report card and I thought that I will do so poorly in the matriculation examination unless I take this grade a second time.' After the repeated grade her average was up by two numbers. Both her final high school report card and the results of the matriculation examination show good grades. She really learnt to enjoy studying when she started to study for the matriculation examination on her own. 'I remember pretty well that I

43

Living in a Learning Society was really fond of being allowed to study such bigger wholes and also to be able to clear things on my own and to go the library.' The career counsellor had recommended her to study for a mathematical career after high school, but as Tuija did not believe herself in her talents she applied for a place in a school of domestic science where she continued her studies and graduated as a teacher of home economics. As soon as she graduated she got a job in a school of home economics in another part of Finland, but the travelling to and from home proved difficult. Soon she applied for a job in a recently founded cottage industry school where, despite her relatively weak work experience, she was chosen as the principal of the school. To run a school without administrational experience proved to be a difficult and stressing job: 'I didn't have any life of my own during the first year, I only slept at home. I didn't have any time to take care of my own things, of anything, I didn't really have anything but the job then in the beginning.' Work formed the substance of Tuija's life until her middle-age when she started to study for a Master's degree at the university. This choice also offered her a chance to think of the meaning of her own life in more general terms.

Ville (born 1941) As a typical representative of his own generation, Ville has lived his youth in the Finland of great and fast structural changes. Even though the educational system was in the process of rapid development towards equal opportunities, high school was a dream for Ville mainly because of the 'lack of encouragement' or even of resistance deriving from the values of his countryside background. The story shows a strong admiration for diligence and hard work, full of Protestant work ethic. Ville's childhood dates in the post-war depression period and during his youth the migration from the countryside to the cities was at its busiest. Ville belongs to this stream as he transformed from a countryside farmer-lumberjack to an urban building engineer through events that were at times painful. All in all, the life of this father of four chil~ dren has, in his own words, proceeded by 'working hard and paying off debts'. Ville was the youngest of nine children in a farm family. Even though his home was able to provide enough food, money was always scarce because of heavy farming loans. Ville captures the atmosphere of his childhood home in the following words: 'In those days people thought that if you've got a farm, your life is somewhat secured, in other words, it will give you your daily bread. People counted on that

44

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations in those days.' Children became used to hard work in their childhood - they delivered mail, took care of farm animals - the mother prepared cheese and bread for sale, the father tanned hides into leather, and the older brothers worked in the forest. Work was an organic part of childhood and Ville spent his youth 'working really hard', which has continued ever since. 'We worked at home every day and in the evenings I used to roam from one neighbour to another and cut hay. It was very hard work but it had its own kind of charm and the people in our own village, they liked it.' For years Ville and his brother roamed from one logging site to another in different parts of the province. The importance of work as the substance of life is very obvious even in his present job as a building engineer, too. 'All in all, three summers I spent at work and one of them I spent totally at my work - all evenings, all Saturdays, all Sundays - that I think it must be only three Saturdays 1 was at home during the whole summer. Then my wife finally said that I seem to have another home there at work.' Ville received his first educational experiences as a 6-year-old guest student, but he started the first grade of the primary school at the age of seven. After his seven years at school were complete, he had already formed a dream of studying further. Ville did not want to stay in the family farm, but it was difficult to make decisions. 'It was that kind of inner feeling that 1 should do something, go to more school, but high school was that kind of dream, that only the kids of richer people go to high school, and that was the general attitude.' As long as Ville stayed at home he was not able to decide whether he should leave home and study: 'I had, well that kind' of inner struggle between two difficult things. I couldn't leave my parents, but on the other hand I felt that some day I would.' However, when Ville badly hurt a disk in his back in the mid-1960s, he had to make his decision: he was no longer able to take care of the heavy duties of agriculture and forestry. As his home community did not offer proper treatment for his back, Ville sought his way to another part of the country in order to be operated on. There he also met his present wife and this can be considered the time when he left his childhood home. In his new place of living Ville found a job in a soil research laboratory because he needed to have practical training in order to be able to begin studies at an institute of technology. A degree in building engineering would guarantee him success in the labour market. In adulthood he has mainly taken complementary courses dealing with his work duties, but since the mid-1980s he has attempted to utilize expanded educational possibilities provided by the summer university

45

Living in a Learning Society

and the institute of technology, for instance. As he says, without education he would have 'given it up' with his bad back a long time ago. In addition to the strong meanings connected with economic issues and external coping with life, studying has been mentally rewarding for Ville. It has offered him not only external security but mental recreation and a communicatively open atmosphere, too.

The Generation of Social Welfare and Many Educational Choices The collective identity of the generation of social welfare and many educational choices is outlined in two ways: for one part of the generation 'education as a commodity, the self as a problem', and the other one 'education as self-evident, interests and hobbies as the essence of life'. The stories of the former kind show traces of travels abroad and reveal a more expanded picture of the world: the realization of the importance of foreign language skills and the search for one's own place through education. In practice this has meant studies in a number of different educational institutes not necessarily connected to each other at all. In the stories of the second part of the generation we see that there are lots of negative experiences connected to the school. Also, the problems of the school are easily seen in the stories. The rationalization process of the educational system has prolonged the time this generation has had to spend at school. Also, the media and education have made cultural individualization possible. Thus the basic requirements for the formation of the identity have changed essentially. According to Hurrelman (1988), individualization requires a reassessment of the family, the peer group, leisure time, and work. The period of youth has at the same time become both more privatized and social. In its turn this has led to the fact that an adolescent no longer sees the world through the school but the school and education from the world (Hoikkala, 1993). The second part of the generation belongs to a post-industrial society in which we can notice a development contrasted to that of the industrial society. As nation-states lose their importance, systems of codes and meanings, extending well beyond national borders, come into existence (Allardt, 1989, p. 187). As young. people search for identity the conflict between the national systems of codes and meanings and the general European requirements and systems of meaning have created a new kind of reality.

46

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations Education as a Commodity, the Self as a Problem Katri (born 1960) As one of its kind, Katri's story is organized by problems in human relations from childhood to adulthood. It can be easily seen that this story shows signs of increasing critique toward the school and education. Katri has had contacts beyond the Finnish borders from her childhood. When her father studied, the family lived for a year in Helsinki and then for two years in Stockholm. She has memories from each of these periods. For example, in Stockholm Katri played with the children of neighbours and she also remembers 'the trouble that it was when they did not know Finnish, I mean real language'. They moved back to southern Finland from Sweden and, after Katri's father took his degree in medicine, to central Finland. At school Katri did not have to work hard at the first two grades. She became bored because of childish teaching methods and spent lots of time in detention. 'Then always, every day, we had such a task to do at home that we had a letter and we had to cut a picture from the magazine that started with this letter. So for me it was such a silly and childish task that I didn't ever do that and they always kept me after hours for that reason.' She also remen1bers the amount of responsibility that her parents gave their children. For example, while under school age Katri rode alone on a bicycle to her grandparents. Similarly, the children often rowed a boat on the lake by themselves without life jackets for a long time. Katri often organized many of these trips. Regarding events in her youth, she remembers, for example, that despite the high social status of the family she did not get any new clothes in high school but her mother often repaired old ones. All of the time in primary school and high school was a period of loneliness for Katri and only Matti, a classmate, provided some company. Katri was good in languages in high school, but mathematics proved to be difficult for her. This was partly due to bad relations with the teachers. In languages Katri set out to collect sure 'laudaturs' (Laudatur being the best grade in the Matriculation Examination) but the dream never came true by only a couple of points. Generally speaking Katri was a quite good student: 'That you know the high school report card was a kind of beautiful line, all other grades were nines, and a five in maths and PE.' A career in the field of natural sciences appealed to Katri as early as in the high school where the origins of the green thinking on which she bases her world view can be found. A year's stay in Switzerland started a new phase in her life. But many of her friends,

47

Living in a Learning Society numerous at the time, were lost. Katri worked in a ward for old people in a psychiatric hospital. In Switzerland she also met a man with whom she lived. He asked her to stay, but Katri wanted a profession for herself and was accepted in a Finnish university in order to study biology. The first four years at the university were difficult. 'No, I didn't lose my hope in that way in any sense, and I didn't need any mental health services either, but in a way it was, perhaps, one of the darkest times in my life.' At the beginning of Katri's studies her father had a severe road accident and was unconscious for four months. Also, her mother died of lung cancer in the late 1980s. So the external circumstances for studying have been unhappy, too. Katri's problems of the self ate seen in her relation to her body and external appearance. 'It's not too easy to be even with your external appearance, and this, well, your head policy or let's say that things like that when you start growing old and put on some weight, things like that, sometimes, and you know when you smoke.' Nowadays Katri is married and a mother of three children. Her studies are almost finished except for the final Master's thesis and four exams. She feels guilty for not having finished her studies in time. Also, the fact that 'I haven't had the opportunity to become a normal tax-paying citizen' functions as a source of guilt.

Education as Self-eVident, Interests and Hobbies as the Essence of Life jani (born 1971) ]ani's story is organized on the basis of school and hobbies to a great extent. It is more descriptive than evaluative. The events at school as told by him are described in a negative or even threatening light: school does not have any sense for him and the story gives a primitive portrayal of going to school. Classes are 'monkey business' and outside the classes problems connected to bullying are quite common. ]ani tells that he has started weightlifting and combat sports in order to cope with life after classes. In general, his experiences at school are rather lifeless and feeble. However, his story is coloured by a pleasant sense of humour. ]ani has lived all his life in a small town in eastern Finland. His family consists of his parents, a younger brother, a grandmother, and a mentally retarded adult stepchild who, in ]ani's words, was taken into the family to provide some company for the grandmother after the death of the grandfather. ]ani does not remember much of his early

48

Education in the Life-course of Three Generations childhood, but he tells about a couple of friends at the playground and a trip to Loviisa where they had a car crash. He felt a bit lonely at the beginning of primary school because he did not have any friends, but things soon become better. There were thirty-one children in his class. 'Well, we had such a teacher that there was absolutely no discipline in the class, none at all, she taught us for six years and it didn't make any sense, I barely learnt to read.' He has always found PE, history, and civics easy but foreign languages and maths have always been difficult. ]ani participated in a couple of skiing competitions and played icehockey in the evenings because that was what all of his friends did. In the secondary school]ani found other interests - 'booze, smoking, and women' - but he kept in touch with his studies, too. There was less bullying now, which made studying easier. It was at the secondary school that he started weightlifting: 'It just happened that I felt that now I must get some strength so that nobody can bully me and so it happened.' Generally speaking, ]ani talks much about his hobbies, especially the combat sports he is interested in. During grade eight he went out with a girl for two weeks, which made him 'feel more confident'. Although, he says that he has never been a real ladies' man. At the time of the interview he had been going out regularly for two years and studying in a vocational school in order to become an electrician. ]ani feels disappointed with the level of teaching in his school and remarks that 'you don't learn anything in the electricians line'. He also thinks that his education does not have any meaning: it does not give him a better chance to get a summer job in his field nor does it have any value in the mastering of his work.

Towards Generational Experiences of Education When a person dresses up her ideas about her life in the form of a story, she brings out an image of her self-identity, where she outlines a selective image of herself. A person analyses herself within the framework of her personal life-history and socio-historical context. Identity refers explicitly to the ways of one's feelings of integration into the social structure, whereas the uniqueness of the individual is emphasized in the personal self. The individual, then, speaks of her life both within the framework of her personal experience and as a person who belongs to, for instance, a certain age group, sex, group with a certain socio-economic status, and culture. In other words, a human is both deeply social and in many ways individual at the same time.

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Living in a Learning Society In this kind of examination it is difficult to depict the shared, the common, without effacing the unique in an individual. We should at the same time be able to form a clear picture of the object under study without making it seem too simple. From the perspective of the lifecourse the experiences of an individual are examined in relation to her own time and the structure of her social context. In a generational examination the context and the past are seen as factors framing the lifecourse of an individual and as the basis of her identity. Nevertheless, the human life is a unique sum of experiences and possibilities in its own time. Therefore, the focus is on the individual in the social structure and the ways in which socially created conditions for life transform into a true life, actions, and experiences. As a result of this, we speak of a collective identity in this context only at the level of the generational location, whereas the concept of actualized generation has been used in order to pay attention to both structural factors connected to each generation and the aspects experiential and active from the perspective of the life-course (see Figure 4.1.). The choice of different kinds of people as informants has enabled us to provide both detailed descriptions about the uniqueness of each case and to perceive the importance of the possibly shared elements in the middle of great diversity. The development from the ideal to the self-evident observed in the life-stories expresses the generational development of Finnish society. Shared experiences tell us about the motivational orientation, value orientation, a particular attitude, and a certain way of apprehending education. Many explanations or interpretations might be found for this change in the subjective meaning. The simple prolongation of education does not explain the matter, since education was an ideal even for members of the oldest generation who had received the most extended education. Second, a partial explanation for the change may be found in the change in education's status in distribution of knowledge - the loss of monopoly- and in the inflation of degrees - the educational inflation - which developed as the increase in the number of educated persons outstripped the expansion of the job market. The subjective meaning of education began to crumble first among members of the middle generation, even although their professional careers were by no means being obstructed. A third explanation is associated with the institutionalization of life-course and with the role of education in that process (Kohli, 1985; Meyer, 1986; Buchmann, 1989; Dannefer and Duncan, 1991; Lindroos, 1993).6 Modernity has meant the standardization of products, culture, social organization and human life itself. Increasingly, one's life-course proceeds in accordance with formal rules. At the same time, life has become

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Education in the Life-course of Three Generations Figure 4. 1:

Towards generational experiences of education

EXPRESSION

The life-story of an individual attained through interview Approaches to life-stories

I

I

REALITY

The structure of opportunities Historical events (e.g., war, structural, change, school system, economic depression)

EXPERIENCE

-

The· meaning of life event phenomena related to reality

I

I L1FE-eOURSE

Shared and personal factors from the point of view of individual For example the individual stages of life and divisions of life

COHORT

What is shared, the structure Shared factors as the foundation of cohorts

I

I CORE CATEGORIES OF EXPERIENCES ARISING

COHORTS OF EDUCATION

FROM THE DATA

Educational opportunities and social mobility 1 Cohort with little education 2 Cohort of educational growth and unequality 3 Cohort of educational growth and welfare 4 Young people

1 Education as an ideal life as a struggle 2 Education as a means work as the substance of life 3 Education as a commodity the self as a problem 4 Education as self-evident interests and hobbies as the essence of life

I

I GENERATIONAL EXPERIENCES OF EDUCATION

1 Generation of war and scant education 2 Generation of structural change and increasing educational opportunities 3 Generation of social welfare and many educational choices

I THEORIES, PREVIOUS RESEARCH, EXPLANATION

The growth of the. 'objective' (social) meaning of education is not followed by an increase in growth of 'subjective' meaning. Historical generational theory. The analysis of experiences. How the meaning-giving process occurs? Inflation of education. The institutionalization of life-course.

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more individualized - we function by making our own individual choices. The dynamic of these two seemingly opposite developments has institutionalized life-course: the 'self' - the individual's life-course - has become an institution. We all make our own choices, but in a very similar way or within specified boundaries. Education and the student's or pupil's role are assigned to a certain age group. Schooling which proceeds normally produces no significant experiences. Agerelated norms and roles have in recent years weakened in modern society, but this weakening has not affected schooling. Maybe this contrast between school and society has contributed to the young people's feeling that school is insignificant. It is obvious that the meaning of education and the ways of experiencing it vary from one generation to another. In today's society, questions requiring urgent answers concern the decreasing educational motivation of young people and the culmination of the problems concerning the experiencing of education as meaningful. For our part we have attempted to clarify the historical and life-historical origins of these questions. Hypothetically we have thought that deep economic slump and recession might be able to provide young people with a shared experience comparable to the experiences of the generations of war and structural change. The future will show whether we can speak of 'the generation of economic slump and recession' in the case of these young people?

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5

Cultural Construction of Educational Identity

Education and Identity In telling their life stories, people express and explain themselves. Indeed, within the boundaries indicated by an interview situation, the interviewee uses cultural resources to create a theory or picture of himor herself (Antikainen and Houtsonen, 1994). According to our working definition, a person's identity is composed of the meaningful parts of his or her life-story (Antikainen, 1991, p. 6). Identity is the individual's socially constructed definition, formulated by using available cultural meanings. The person's identity can exist only through the system of linguistic and cultural codes which people use in defining their identities as objects (Weinert et al., 1986, pp. 30-6). Culture is a symbolic structure of meaning and a system of distinctions which helps people to classify and interpret themselves and others. The structure of meaning governs the classifications and interpretations tllat we make, but not in detail (Sulkunen, 1992, pp. 184-202). Everyone is forced to formulate a unique identity from the resources offered by the shared cultural structure of meaning. Thus, while completely social in its construction, identity is at the same time uniquely personal. We may define identity as the typified self in each stage of the lifecourse, in the context of social relationships. Through the typification process the identity is termed a meaningful social object. Typification is a conceptual process that helps people to organize their information concerning the world. The organizing takes place on the strength of the typical features - rather than the unique characteristics - of people, things and events (Starr, 1983, p. 162). By shedding light on these typifications of the self we are atternpting to make Finnish culture visible as regards the construction of educational identity.8 We have distinguished among four dimensions or manifestations of identity:

• • • •

social identity ('objective') personal identity ('biographical') self-identity ('feeling of identity') and, cultural identity ('way of life and meaningfulness').

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Of these four, the first three correspond to the definition used by Goffman (1963).

The Case of Manta Lapland

An 80-year-old Sami Woman in

Manta is an 80-year-old Sami woman, the pensioned widow of a freeholder. She lives in Lapland, on the shore of a wilderness lake, in a solitary house a few dozen kilometres from the parish village and its services. She is in good health and is able to live alone in her cottage year around. The central features of Manta's life story are managing in life, making a livelihood (sometimes under difficult conditions), and raising children to manage in the world. The end of her tale is coloured by a satisfaction that everything has ultimately gone well, that now things are peaceful and that life as a pensioner is good. She has her own house, her health, cherished pastimes, relatives - there is yet life and movement around her. 'It went well in the end and now things are peaceful with me and, myself, I'm 80 years old and, so, I'm healthy and split the wood myself and turn over and plant all the potato patches by myself. And everything's going so well and the children are well.' Sami by birth, Manta speaks Lappish as her mother tongue. Only in the last few years has it become possible for Samis to receive education in their own language. Such being the case, Manta, when she was a child, had to go to a Finnish-language school. Her schooling amounted to a year of 'circuit school' (instruction held by an itinerant teacher perhaps one day a week in each of several locations), four years of primary school and a year of domestic-science school. She can read, write and speak Finnish very well. She is exceptionally skilled in handicrafts. Throughout her life she has earned her primary livelihood by work associated with Lappish culture: reindeer-herding, fishing and handicrafts. She has also always grown vegetables and raised cattle for her own needs. Manta's life story is made up of the following fragments of story: at age nine, off to a strange house far from home as a nursemaid; at age ten, off to the circuit school and from there to primary school and domestic-science school; choosing to work and make a living as a craftswoman after domestic-science school; getting married and establishing a family; war and coping with difficult conditions; her own children, her old age. The knowledge and skills imparted in the Finnish school, the choice of the craftswoman's vocation, securing her livelihood, the

54

Cultural Construction of Educational Identity struggle to cope with the difficult conditions of the war and the postwar era - these provide the life-story with its framework of tension. I will examine Manta's life-story (life as told) and life course (life as lived) as an encounter with various problems and as a resolution of those problems by means of cultural recourses. Certain central processes and events in the life-course give the life-story its framework. These processes and events have forced Manta, in her problem solving, to give particularly conscious consideration to certain matters. These significant life-course events and processes have left behind them firm experiential strata which form central parts of her identity. In Manta's case the central life-course and life-story problems were: 1 Going to the Finnish school and managing there 2 Organizing her vocation and livelihood after domestic-science school, and 3 Coping with the difficult conditions of wartime and the postwar period of shortages. We will consider each problem and its solution and give a brief assessment of the possibilities and limitations Manta had in resolving the problems. We will also evaluate where each problem and solution came from and whether, in problem-solving, learning took place which had meaning for her life-course and identity, and perhaps a residual benefit in the resolution of later problem. Manta's first problem arose when she went to the Finnish school, since at that time Samis were unable to study in their own language. The problem involved at least two separate problems: she did not know how to speak Finnish and practices at the school/residence hall were strange to her. The problem was in principle related to an institutional life-course; it was assumed that children went to school at certain age. In the 1920s, however, a Sami child - to say nothing of a Sami girl rarely went to school. Circuit school normally sufficed. Further, Manta, at ten, was older than is normal for beginning primary school. The lifestory does not make it completely clear why she transferred from circuit school to the primary school, perhaps the teacher considered her a good pupil and recommended that she attend the primary school instead of circuit school. When she started primary school, Manta already knew some Finnish, from circuit school. At the primary school she had to learn Finnish quickly if she expected to cope. All the instruction took place in Finnish. The Sami children were forbidden to speak Lappish even during free

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time in the residence hall. Nor did Manta know boarding school and residence hall customs. In order to solve the problem she tried very actively to learn Finnish; she asked a lot of questions, imitated the others and made notes of words. Fortunately the warden of the residence hall knew Swedish, while Manta, through relatives, knew Norwegian. The warden thus guided Manta in practical matters until the latter could manage with Finnish. Manta recalls the situation thus: Well, I didn't know Finnish at all. I could speak Norwegian and Lappish. But that teacher gave me homework and I spelled things out there, syllable by syllable. And I read even if I didn't myself know what I was reading. The warden spoke Swedish, I spoke Norwegian. And that way we always understood each other, she'd tell me what to do and what, when we came to the table, how you had to be. And all sorts of stuff like that. So that's how it started to go forward. I was sure determined about learning Finnish - I took everything down, which you had to do when the word was said. Manta very much liked going to school, even although the school discipline was strict and the Finnish language at first created difficulties. After the first autumn term she was already managing with Finnish. She reacted negatively to the strict discipline even although it was not directed at her. That's the way it was, the discipline in the primary school was so tough. They whipped the pupils there, yes they did. It was so strict a discipline for children. It made some of the children nervous. I always looked at the ones who were being tormented and beaten. It had an awful effect on me, even although I wasn't beaten myself. 9 Of the skills and knowledge she gained in the school, Manta considers mathematics and reading and writing Finnish the most valuable. Without them, she feels, she would not have managed in life. Having done well in primary school, she got the spark to continue her schooling. She still values education a great deal and attended to her own children's schooling. After primary school, Manta attended confirmation classes and then went on to domestic-science school. One of that school's teachers was ready to arrange for Manta to receive further education but Manta's par-

56

Cultural Construction of Educational Identity ents, however, did not want her to continue her schooling. This bothered her a great deal, since she would have liked to continue her education and to have become a domestic-science teacher. She knew that would mean going to the south and, perhaps, a final separation from Sami culture. Although she did well as a craftswoman, her unfinished schooling has continued to bother her. 'Sure, it's been a livelihood, that handicrafts work. It's clear, when you're not going anywhere else, so what. I would have left, gone south, if I studied to become a teacher.' Later, especially when life became an intense struggle in view of economic circumstances, Manta often thought of what her life would have become if she had continued with her schooling. Well, it was difficult for me. [My parents] yeah, they approved of my staying home, it was them who opposed my leaving. But for me it was difficult. Many times, when I was married, I thought how easily I would have gone, if I'd been able to go, to study a profession. I wouldn't have had to tear myself apart all ... but maybe that's why I am so healthy, 'cause I have done hard work. Manta did not long mourn her unfinished schooling. A young woman had to find a vocation somewhere in order to make a living - her life's second major problem. She decided to begin making handicrafts. I didn't start wondering, how am I going to do something. I

started like crazy to make things with my hands. It was right at the stage of my life when I wasn't getting to go to school, I took the responsibility on myself, that I was going to make myself a vocation. And I've struggled with that, even today I do things fast. She got ideas and models for her handicrafts from traditional Sami culture, and from 'fine', Le., Finnish crafts, she had learned about at the domestic-science school. Her mother setved as her instructor in Sami handicrafts. The demand for the crafts was good and Manta earned plenty of money, with which she was able to buy things and prepare for her wedding. Her words betray a certain disappointment and bitterness when she tells about ending her schooling and beginning her career as craftswoman. On the other hand, the crafts work has in her opinion been something wonderful. She says that she remembers all the crafts work she has done, and that she still makes gifts for relatives.

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Manta got married a couple of years before outbreak of the Winter War (1939-40). The third major problem of her life arose when her husband went off to war and was killed in the last days of the Continuation War (1941-44). Manta was forced to take care of her several children alone, to find a new home and to tend to matters with the authorities. She later remarried and had more children. In this difficult situation she resorted to traditional Sami ways of earning a livelihood - handicrafts and selling fish. She fed her children by utiliZing the knowledge she had acquired in the domestic-science school and was able, all in all, to keep her household in order and take care of her life. She managed primarily on her own, but her sister also helped out. In dealing with the authorities Manta was able to take care of almost everything herself, inasmuch as she had learned in school to read and write Finnish. She wrote 'the gentlemen' various applications for income support, and also wrote a letter to California (to a Finnish immigrant), from where she later received a package. She knew that one really does not get help from the national state; one has to make do by oneself, one simply has to try. The situation was never hopeless, however. In solving problems in this context Manta made use of knowledge and skills she had learned earlier - language skills learned in school and vocational skills acquired from Sami culture. From the standpoint of resolving life-course problems Manta's primary knowledge and skills have thus been the means of making learned from Sami culture, and the knowledge and skills she acquired in the primary and domestic-science schools. Managing in school instilled in her a favourable disposition toward education in general. She educated all her own children for good jobs. When they began school, the children went directly into second form: at home, Manta had already taught them to read, write and count. In acquiring a vocation, organizing her livelihood and coping with the hard conditions of wartime and the post-war period of shortages, the knowledge and skills imparted by Sami culture and occupations proved vital to her. Sami ways of making a living gave her a foundation for managing in life, but the knowledge and skills she got in the Finnish school (language, mathematics, Finnish crafts, household skills) constituted an important addition. Manta has thus been able to use available cultural resources variously in resolving lifecourse problems. She has used either potential, latent resources (Sami culture) or the new cultural resources which she has acquired Cher Finnish schooling). The skills and knowledge important from the standpoint of her identity are related integrally to Sami occupations and ways of living, and to the special knowledge and skills gained in the Finnish

58

Cultural Constrnction of Educational Identity school, such as reading, writing, Finnish handicrafts and household skills. In Manta's opinion her education has been very important. She stresses in particular the knowledge and skills she acquired in primary school. It's had an awfully great meaning. Think - me with my own hand ... When there was no telephone, nothing. It's like, if a person, even if she hasn't got a great education, you've got to know how to write. My word, if I hadn't known anything, like most Sami women my age ... Her education has had a great internal and external significance. She has been able to take care of her business independently with the authorities and she has been able to follow and understand events in the society. Her education has also given her the feeling that she is not an entirely normal Sami woman, that she is more cultured, better educated and more highly skilled than others. Her education has also had social meaning inasmuch as she has been able, as a literate person, to attend her neighbours' dealings with the bureaucracy. Her education has had a bearing on her culturedness and personal pursuits in a broader sense as well: at an advanced age she won a writing contest. The mathematics and reading and writing skills she acquired in primary school are in a sense connected to the enhancement of her status locally. They have also helped her in her career and household work. Knowledge and skills acquired in the domestic-science school have likewise been meaningful in her life, giving her further understanding of an artisan's work and of how to take care of a household.

Education and Social Identity In examining what sort of social identity education produces, we are asking, 'What sort of producer of social status is education? What does a diploma mean when one is looking for a job? What skills does education produce?' In all the generations, education produced social status either directly or indirectly via a vocation or profession. The younger the generation, the less a degree or vocational certification tended to create status directly. Vocational or academic education was perceived as an irreplaceable producer of the basic or theoretical skills needed in working life. All the same, representatives of the oldest, little-educated generation 59

Living in a Learning Society acquired their knowledge and skills through self-training, primarily in agriculture. For the young people, summer jobs and personal pastimes were important sources of knowledge and skills. Those members of this generation who were receiving vocational education particularly stressed that 'real skills' are learned in practical working life, while education primarily offers 'theory' (Antikainen and Houtsonen, 1994). In the case of Manta, education has had a bearing not simply on her particular profession but also on her livelihood and way of life in a more comprehensive sense. She has received social respect from the fact that she has been able to use skills and knowledge acquired in different schools to take care of her own and other's matters independently, as during the post-war period in particular. I wrote to Helsinki many times, those same things. And then the neighbour. She lost a son, died of his wounds, and she had applied for a pension, but they answered that no pension would paid because she still had two young boys. I said, 'That doesn't mean anything. Whatever the war law might be, they can't get away with that.' Then there was something in Helsinki, in Taala, that I read about in a magazine, was it Yhteishyva, that some department that handles these pension things. Well, we got an answer from there that they had to pay three thousand, that they would take care of the matter. Poor Maija ran to me, the poor woman said, 'I don't have any money, do I dare begin anything?' Me, I said, 'Don't worry, I'll loan you three thousand, let's go ahead and spend it.' Well, it was many months, we didn't hear anything. The old man thought, how much did that cost, my money's lost too. Me, I said, 'Don't start worrying about it yet. Maybe we'll get a big wad all at once.' Well, that's the way it turned out, a big wad came all at once, after four months. The couple were happy. Now do you know where we have to get things? The skills and knowledge Manta acquired in domestic-science school have served her well in her work as a craftswoman, especially in making 'fine' (Le., Finnish) handicrafts. She learned Sami handicrafts from her own culture and living environment. Her mother in particular passed on that culture. I learned the basics of weaving from primary school. Sewing underpants and suits from domestic-science school. But the Sami clothes are Lapland's clothes, my own inventions. It was

60

Cultural Construction of Educational Identity just, 'She's an artisan, give it to her. Give her your handicrafts work, she'll do it.' That's all, just a craftswoman. The domestic-science school's instruction proved useful to Manta in getting servant's work, as the wife of a freeholder, in caring for a home and children, and in gardening and raising plants.

Education and Personal Identity We examined the relationship between education and personal identity on the basis of three questions: With what stage of the life-course is the education associated? What is the education's meaning in the life-course as a whole? How does the individual react to education and what are the main educational experiences like? For most of the interviewees, the timing of their education followed a cultural script typical to their generation, gender and social class. Vocational courses, vocational school, college or university-level education followed immediately upon completion of either compulsory schooling or academic secondary school. Some other sorts of scripts did, however, come to light. For example, some of the interviewees sought education later in life to get new jobs. Internal or external constraints led these interviewees in that direction. The external constraint may for example have been illness or the death of a close relative, whereas the internal constraint or challenge may have been a desire for social advancement or meaningful work. The meaning of vocational education following basic schooling varied from generation to generation. For the oldest generation vocational education meant a way to cope with life's difficulties; for the middle generation, a vocation, a career, and social advancement; for the youngest generation, often, the realization of a personal dream. The same trend seemed to prevail when we examined the meaning of education in terms of educational level. A vocational course after basic schooling was linked to the need to cope with life's difficulties; an advanced university education with the fulfilment of a personal hope or dream. By the 'personal dreams' of the youngest generation we refer to matters related to personal values or lifestyles, such as creativity, ecological consciousness or sexual marginality. As noted earlier, this generational change in the subjective meaning of education was thus connected to a change in the overall themes of the life stories. By the same token, in our examination of educational generations, we noted how primary educational experiences have changed.

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Representatives of the oldest generation respected education in general, although they did not depict their own time spent in compulsory school attendance as at all pleasant. Representatives of the youngest generation found secondary school and the upper forms of comprehensive school (or the former intermediate school) boring, tiring and oppressive. Regardless of the generation, the most favourable experiences were linked to personal relationships and friendships developed in school. Similarly, the absence of such relationships was viewed very negatively (Antikainen and Houtsonen, 1994). In Manta's case, she has lived on the basis of the natural economy of northern Sami culture, an economy which includes reindeer herding, cattle raising, farming, fishing and handicrafts. In particular, handicrafts and artisanship have been important in her life. She experienced the period of shortages before World War Two and was widowed at the end of the Continuation War. She has since been left a widow on two more occasions and has had to make great efforts in order to secure her and her children's well-being. She has for the most part managed alone and independently, but has also got some help from relatives. For a Sami woman of her age, Manta has had an unusual amount of schooling and is in that sense relatively well educated. Her success in school gave her a belief in the importance of education, and she has striven to educate her own children as well as possible. In the sum, her life has been one of great efforts, but it has also been rich with experience and activity. Now, in the twilight of her years, everything is peaceful. Well-being she has secured. She is especially pleased that she has raised her children to be respectable citizens. Her need to interrupt her schooling, against her will, was a negative event, now slumbering in her memory. Although it was limited to a few years, Manta's formal schooling proved surprisingly important in various events and situations in her life-course. Her education has, in particular, been a tool for attending to her affairs and coping with life in general. Knowledge and skills gained in primary school proved especially useful to her in dealing with the authorities immediately after the war, but later as well. She also taught her own children the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic before they began their schooling. The children immediately transferred into the second form. Look, I had to put the children into school when I came back from the [war-time] evacuation. First I taught them all for two months myself, so that they had to begin to write the letters, then to read by syllables, and only then to read straight through.

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Cultural Construction of Educational Identity Then I taught them reckoning and their multiplication tables. I schooled them so hard that they were amazed - What's this? - when they went to school they go straight into the second form. They don't do anything in the first form. They knew how to read, they knew how to reckon, I mean, adding and subtracting, the multiplication tables, they knew it all. Manta has made use of the knowledge and skills she acquired in domestic-science school in various life situations, particularly in crafts work and in caring for children and her home. After domestic-science school she got responsibility for reorganizing the food chores in her childhood home in a 'healthier' way. Everything was primitive then. The housework, that is. They didn't know how, it was just meat soup, and what food to serve, fish and potatoes - nothing of the sort - and they ate salted salmon and bread and butter and sour milk and whatever. Nothing more regular than that, when we got hungry we just ate. But when I got back from domestic-science school I started to make the food when I was at home. Baking sweet rolls and rye bread and cooking. Not just fish, spuds and meat. It was just that they didn't know how to cook. It was the same food all the time. But you got to think up things yourself. But after I'd gone to domestic-science school - after that the food business fell into place. I cooked the right way, we ate at 11 in the morning and at 5 in the evening.

Education and Self-identity

We investigated the relation of education to self-identity in the light of three questions: What is the interviewee's assessment of his or her educational status? What sort of image of oneself as a pupil or student does education produce? Have the interviewees acquired through their schooling knowledge, skills, attitudes or personality traits which they consider part of a self-concept? Lack of education seemed to bother men of the oldest, limitededucation generation, but it did not bother women of that generation to any great extent. The young people seemed in particular to see themselves as either 'practical' or 'literate' in their orientation. The upper level of comprehensive school - and, sometimes, secondary school - were pictured as boring, confining and old-fashioned, while the

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interviewee's selfwas depicted as 'nice', 'free' or 'creative'. Very seldom did an interview include a self-definition as a pupil, for example as a 'good', 'average' or 'poor' pupil, but an explanation for so few cases could be sensitiveness of these definitions in Finnish society. Certain interviewees said that education had instilled in them such characteristics as 'creativity', 'leadership', 'empathy' and 'self-confidence' (Antikainen and Houtsonen, 1994). When asked to define herself, Manta answers pithily, as people of her age typically do: 'Hmmm, how would I define myself? Well, my name is [gives actual name] and I live in [gives place of residence]. And a small person, and on the go since I was young. Well, that's all I am.' She also depicts herself as a persistent and active person unbroken by hard times and setbacks. She is independent and does not stop to grieve over bad or difficult situations. In her view, mourning helps nothing; one has to be optimistic and active. She remains active in her old age. She takes care of her own affairs and travels extensively in Lapland, visiting relatives for example. Manta's life-story contains few real elements of a portrait or selfdefinition. The skills and knowledge she gained in school have without a doubt had a great impact on her self-image. They have confirmed her notion of herself as someone who manages and copes in life and as someone more cultured and better educated than other Sami women of her age. She is obviously proud of her education. Manta learned Finnish crafts and domestic work in domesticscience school. Her skills with crafts have unquestionably had tremendous importance in her life. 'It was really wonderful. I still do crafts, even today. I remember all the work I did when I was young, even the potato patches and the planting chores.' Learning the Finnish language has also been important. 'That was good, sure, otherwise I wouldn't have managed in this world, if I hadn't known Finnish. I wouldn't have been able to write, reckon, nothing.' As for managing on her own, she says, 'Well, that's the nicest thing of all, when you get to make the effort yourself and do things and see your results. But you always have to think about yourself, your living tactics, from beginning to end.' Attending primary school and domestic-science school left a very positive mark on her sense of self. Because of her success in school she also considers herself intelligent.

Education and Cultural Identity Our observations on cultural identity are very tentative: the analysis is continuing. Nevertheless, it seems that the expansion of education has

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Cultural Construction of Educational Identity meant a standardization of culture and life-course. In our data this trend is most visible with regard to ethnic minorities. Finnish school - or any modern western school - does not encounter Romany culture; in fact, for Romanies, school attendance can mean rejection of their own culture. For Samis, vocational or higher education often represents a comparable threshold; on the other hand, it appears that the mutual accommodation of education and Sami culture has succeeded. For representatives of the mainstream culture, education often seems to be associated with the continuation of the culture, lifestyle and values represented by the family, but the data also reveals some 'defections' between the borders of cultural and social structures. Changes of vocation or profession during adulthood, as mentioned earlier, and the striving of many Samis to master the Finnish language and culture provide examples. Manta is a Sami woman who has lived in a natural economy but has also adapted to the world's changes. In no way does she particularly emphasize her Samishness on a symbolic level, or reflect on it as do the younger Samis we have interviewed. For Manta, Samishness is a matter of course, evident in a person's activity, in work and language, and in the natural environment. She experienced the clash between Sami and Finnish culture in the Finnish-language boarding school where all activity at the school took place in Finnish: no one was allowed to speak Lappish. In her younger days she also spoke Norwegian, since she had relatives in Norway. She has been very active in Finnish society, through legal matters and the officials who appear in her life-story as distant, sometimes even as 'enemies'. In her dealings with these officials she has been forced to struggle and defend herself. Officialdom has not helped her much in life. The organization of her life has changed frequently during her life-course: a child at home, a nursemaid away from home, a servant girl in a parsonage, a wife and mother, three times widow, a pensioner living alone. All the Samis we interviewed reacted very negatively to the clash between Sami and Finnish cultures in the Finnish-language boarding school. All of them had learned the subjects of instruction at least relatively well; some, like Manta, enjoyed studying. The use of the Lappish language was, however, prohibited and punishable. Sami could not even be spoken during free time, with Sami schoolmates. Further, the Finns picked on the Sami children. All the interviewees also took a very negative view of the rigid, authoritarian character of the schooling and tile separation from their families. The persecution of the Samis sometimes continued even after primary school. Manta, for example, recalled domestic-science school thus: 'There was one thing, sort of, that they isolated us in the domestic-science school too. The Finns 65

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isolated us, for example, if you couldn't speak Finnish right. But I could speak it better, because I'd been in primary school.'

Culture as a Resource

In this chapter we have examined culture as a resource: as knowledge, skills, strategies, models, recipes, symbols and products, which the individual can use in resolving his or her life-course problems. In problem solving, the individual either brings a latent resource into active use or must acquire entirely new knowledge and skills. As a rule the individual functions on the strength of practical awareness and routinely reproduces the social and cultural order. Settledness and a practical consciousness characterize the individual's action and thought. Under normal conditions the identity adapts slowly, relying on prior experiences. By contrast, in life-course crisis situations the individual must acquire knowledge or skills, which he or she has not formerly possessed, even in a latent sense. The person must change habits of thought and action and must obtain new resources for his or her 'warehouse of culture'. At the same time the person is also forced to perform identity work and to integrate old and new experiences into the same life-story. Manta's life may have been exceptional, but its analysis nonetheless gives rise to interesting theoretical implications. Her life-story makes it easy to see how she has been able to use previously acquired cultural resources in solving problems, and how she has been forced to acquire entirely new cultural resources. The latter sort of learning took place when she entered the Finnish-language school. Her experiences there were at first painful and it could be said that they destroyed the identity which she then had. In time, however, those experiences and the knowledge and skills she gained in problem solving came to have great meaning in her life: through such knowledge and skills she has strengthened her identity. Although we have treated culture here as a resource, as making action possible, it should be noted that culture may also constrain and limit. If we consider life's crisis and problem situations, a rigid and limiting identity may be destructive. The identity should provide flexibility and openness in new situations, in which external conditions challenge the person to change pre-existing habits of action and thought. In this analysis we have not really examined social structure or the structure of opportunities which were opened up to Manta in different situations. Social structure, too, can be seen as both a resource and a constraining factor. It provides opportunities for certain actions, but it may hinder

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Cultural Construction of Educational Identity some other actions. Perhaps the constraining nature of social structure is easier to discern than the constraining nature of culture. In Manta's case, for example, the social structure and the structure of opportunities presented a clear barrier when she wanted to continue her schooling. For many people of her generation the situation was a typical one. For today's generation of younger Samis the situation is completely different. This being the case, the chronological setting in which agents encounter analogous situations has a bearing on the structural and constraining factors.

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6

Significant Experiences and Empowerment

Significance of General and Vocational Education From the point of view of the educational system and educational practice, the issue of the significance of general or academic knowledge and vocational skills is a substantial one. We can try to find the answer by analysing the responses to two interview questions. At the end of the life-story interview each interviewee was asked to mention one or more domains of knowledge or skills that have had significance in the course of her or his life. The question concerning the most negative experience related to education or learning was presented at the end of the thematic interview on significant learning experiences. Most of the respondents mentioned many significant domains of knowledge or skills. The list corresponds, of course, very much with the person's significant learning experiences. Nearly all the lists contained some vocational or professional field and skill. This could be lacking or peripheral among such groups as Romanies, Samis, farmers, housewives, or students, however. For the Romanies, schooling as such, and for the Samis, occupation, often means a divorce from the old lifeform and culture. Besides vocation and life-form, the significant domains of knowledge and skills were related to hobbies, communicative competencies - especially knowledge of languages - or self-knowledge and self-confidence. I would like to mention that according to our analysis, to learn Finnish was one of the significant learning experiences in every Sami's life. Naturally, for the Samis - as for all people - their own mother tongue is most important. For example, 30-years-old ]uuso describes learning Finnish among the Samis in Lapland as follows: Well, as society is Finnish and all institutions are Finnish you have to know Finnish in order to survive in society. There's no doubt about it, you have to master the Finnish language. That's why many Sami parents have made the mistake that ... you can't blame them but pure Lappish speaking families have taught Finnish to their children, I mean it's quite ... quite natural,

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Significant Experiences and Empowerment well, explanation for the fact that they, themselves, have experienced in childhood, in their own youth, as shameful that they can't speak Finnish, that they have an accent and it's been so shameful and painful for them that they've n1ade up their minds . . . that if they ever get children, they'll teach them Finnish, so the children could succeed in society. Then the poor things have taught bad Finnish to their kids. Only since 1983 has education been provided in Lappish in the Sami settlement areas in Finland. In fact, today two of the three Lappish languages are threatened. The significant knowledge and skills mentioned above were usually learned in more than one contextual environment. If the learning process took place in formal education, the vocational school, college or university was the typical learning environment. The case of the Samis was an exception. For the Samis the beginning of elementary school, from the first school day on, meant an encounter with a foreign language and culture. In some cases schools of fine arts were the places for significant learning experiences and, at the same time, the interviewed persons referred to their elitist nature. Thus their significance was associated with a distinction. The interviews on negative learning experiences were often incomplete. Nevertheless, it is easy to make some remarks. The generational differences are very interesting. The negative experiences of the representatives of the two oldest generations were mostly associated with the lack of education or with dropping-out - and thus with idealization of education - or with some individual events, especially with authoritarian or mean teachers. Not until the experiences of the third generation, the generation of educational growth and welfare, did the feeling of getting tired of the school become a more common negative experience. In all these cases the school was either senior level of comprehensive school (former secondary or intermediate school), or upper secondary school (gymnasium). These cases did not represent working-class students alone but students from various social class backgrounds. Two female students mentioned learning difficulties in mathematics, and one male student in languages, as their negative experiences. For the Sami students being bullied in school and in the dormitory was the most common negative experience. They also used the term of mental violence and the oldest Sami person, Manta, 80 years old, mentioned physical violence as well. The foreign language environment and living in the dormitory away from home were the contexts of these experiences.

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Living in a Learning Society Among the significant, and mostly positive, learning experiences there were cases following the vocational pedagogical model- learning from practice to theory - and cases following the academic pedagogical model - learning from theory to practice - all terms used by Liv Mjelde (1993). In addition, knowledge of language had been learned in both ways. An interesting case representing the academic model was a Sami whose understanding and appreciation of Sami culture emerged during and through university studies. All in all, the issue of the division and relationship between general and vocational education is a complicated matter.

Significant Learning Experiences In the context of a life-story, we defined as significant learning experiences those learning experiences which appeared to guide the interviewee's life-course or to have changed or strengthened his or her identity (Antikainen, 1991). It makes sense, then, to assume that a possible change in identity concerns secondary areas or the person's relationship to his or her identity, rather than the core of identity. In terms of the experience's duration, two types of significant learning experiences came to light in our research: clearly definable events and vaguer, cumulative experiences such as the development of selfawareness as an outgrowth of certain events related by the interviewee. In our pilot study we coded, in a very theoretical and thus largely deductive way, five cases which represented all four educational cohorts (Antikainen et al., 1992 and 1993). John Dewey (1938) stated that the quality and continuity ofexperiences are key factors in learning and human development. Consequently, we will try to evaluate learning experiences and their social context from this point of view. Second, we are interested in the learning interests and domains. Based on Habermas, Mezirow (1981) classifies learning domains into technical, practical, and emancipatory. Third, we are interested in the situation from where experiences originate. Peter Jarvis (1987) classifies situations into individual, informal, non-formal and formal situations. Moreover, we will include the cOlnmunity or institution (school, home and work) where each experience took place in the analysis. Jarvis adds an individual's opportunity to 'create' the situation as the second dimension (proactive/reactive). Fourth, we will try to analyse the degree of reflectivity in the experiences, Le., whether reflection exists and in which form. In the research plan the concept of empowerment is used to refer to an experience that changes an individual's

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Significant Experiences and Empowerment understanding of him/herself and/or of the world (Antikainen, 1991). It seems to be quite close to Mezirow's (1981) concept of critical reflectivity, which is associated with changes in an individual's meaning perspective. Some observations from the pilot study follow, including five life-stories representing the four cohorts and three educational generations.

Anna (born 1924) Our first informant, Anna, is 66 years old and is married with two children. She was born in those parts of Karelia which later became the Karelian Soviet Republic and from where she was evacuated when she was 16. For years she lived in the west of Finland, but after her marriage in the early 1960s she moved to North Karelia (on the Finnish side of the border). She has been working as a housekeeper, caterer and family mother. Anna's life-story is made up of human relations, work and studying, mostly as a hobby. Two evacuations during the war and other removals are manifest markers in her life-course while her parents' divorce and an unintentional end of a love affair during the war serve as invisible markers. Anna's own voice is clearly audible in her story. Anna's formal education consisted of four years of primary school plus one upper grade; the second upper grade was interrupted by the war. So her formal schooling was exceptionally modest but it more or less corresponds to that of her generation, particularly that of the country population. Thus, schooling contributes to Anna's social identity and does not trouble her personally. The seven-month course in home economics that she attended at the age of 17 is very significant in her life. This applies to her vocational career, hobbies, and life experiences. It frequently appears as a source of significant learning experiences. Studying, training at home, a course in home economics, and adult education, have helped Anna to cope with everyday life. Though the meaning of education is instrumental, it is not strictly vocational. Human relations in studies and in hobbies are an integral part of her story. Handicraft and home economics (housekeeping), and later in her life, English language, reading books, and recently, regular reading of health magaZines have provided Anna with knowledge. In Mazirow's (1981) terms, Anna's learning interests and domains are mainly practical and partly technical. Anna's significant skills and learning experiences are: 1 Household work and needlework. These experiences go back to her childhood home, where in particular her aunt taught her

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2

3

4

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a Learning

Society

household work and needlework. She started needlework at the age of 7 and has continued throughout her life (see 3). Plant-growing. During the war the 18-year-old evacuee was assigned by the official local crop manager to grow tomato, turnip and cabbage plants. This was not a well-known skill to the villagers, but it w'as very important in that particular food supply situation. Anna's efforts were very successful, and she was duly proud of her success. She has continued growing plants throughout her life. Independent housekeeping. Anna was 31 when she was hired as a housekeeper by two farmer brothers. Her duties included all household work from baking and vegetable gardening to cattle tending. She was given a free hand in her work, and the farmers treated her as their equal. Anna learned to trust her own knowledge and became aware of her quite versatile skills. In the interview she told us about cases of cattle diseases where her action saved the lives of the animals. With the experience that she gained from housekeeping she could later take on catering jobs, and she continued to tend cattle until the last few years. Sewing and other needlework. All her adult life Anna has been attending study circles at adult education centres, and she still belongs to some sewing circles. She is so highly skilled in so many kinds of needlework that she herself claims she has at least 'completed secondary education in sewing'. Elementary English. Anna had her children at an advanced age. When they began learning English at the comprehensive school, Anna - then over 50 ~ was inspired to join the English circle at the local adult education centre. In Anna's home village, the news about her English studies was first received with astonishment and even laughter. But she went on obviously supported by the self-confidence she had gained from her previous positive learning experiences. Later, several villagers told her that they regretted that they did not follow her example - they could even have shared rides to the adult education centre. After five years of language studies she visited London, which was her first journey abroad. She found she could understand and even speak some English. In the interview she described London as almost 'like a favourite child to her'.

Anna's learning experiences have accumulated through her whole life. They have definitely contributed to the construction of both her social

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Significant Experiences and Empowerment and personal identity. According to her story, the experiences have been very intensive and enhanced her self-confidence. Previous positive learning experiences and the ensuing self-confidence enabled her to start studying English in spite of the fact that even people close to her made fun of her because of that. The first four of the learning experiences above started at home and were informal in nature. The aunt, who taught many things in passing to Anna, served as a significant teacher. The course in home economics, as formal training, added to the existing knowledge and skills. Anna still remembers many of the teachers by name and is informed of their later careers. The ultimate learning took place through reflection and experimentation in a non-formal or informal environment in the work context. Even though the situations were constraining or even corppulsory, Anna, according to the story, had free hands in accomplishing the tasks. She was quite free, responsible, and the employers relied on her. All the above four experiences represent reflective skills learning. Anna has not changed the world or Finnish society a lot and in this sense, we hesitate to refer to critical reflectivity but the story contains a strong sense of cultural and self-empowerment. Anna has not let her social identity stigmatize her. Instead, she has led a colourful and active life. Besides personal identity, self-identity seems to contain pride in vocational skills and hobbies, though this interpretation is partly hindered by insufficient self-definition. All in all, Anna's story includes many of the features associated with the traditional Finnish popular education story.

Ville (born 1941) Ville was born as the youngest of nine children in a country family in Kainuu in northern Finland. At the age of 25 he moved to a town in eastern Finland first to study and then to work as building technician. He is married and has four children. According to his own words, he is an average Finnish citizen. He tells his story naturally and openly. Work and education serve as markers in his life story. Ville's education is made up of six years at elementary school, technical school, and several vocational inservice courses. After elementary school, Ville dreamt of going to secondary school but he felt that it was meant for the children of better-off families. On the other hand, as the youngest child it was difficult for him to make up his mind. Last year he started taking law courses in a summer school: currently he is studying at a technical college to become an engineer (HNC). Technical education has enabled Ville to carry on his trade. Most of his skills and

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learning experiences are related, in one form another, to his work. He takes particular pride in having learnt the trade of land surveyor, which has been significant for his other learning experiences and for his work. Due to backache, Ville had to stop working in agriculture and forestry and start reconstructing his life. He worked in a land-surveying laboratory in order to qualify for technical school. As he could not afford to fail, he had to learn the trade. Although education is largely associated with coping with vocational demands and with earning a living, it is also mentally stimulating, and it provides an open communication environment that enriches social relationships. Ville's learning interest and domain in Mezirow's (1981) terms are technical and partly also practical. Ville's significant skills and learning experiences are: 1 Participation in the building of a barn in youth. 2 Demonstration of physical strength and working capacity in childhood and youth, before the back disease. 3 Learning the land surveyor's trade as a young adult. 4 Graduating from technical school, in spite of his disease, at the age of 28. 5 Studying shooting and blasting, and successful blasting contracts at about the age of 35. 6 Acting as technical designer and expert in constructing a trotting circuit at the age of 35 to 40. 7 Contributing to the establishment of a municipal engineering department at a vocational school and teaching at the age of 40. 8 Studying law, particularly civil law, at the age of 45. 9 Studying in the evening classes of technical college at the age of 50. Ville's skills and learning experiences have continued through his whole life, and they are quite closely connected with each other. The significance of education to occupational activity becomes clear in Ville's lifestory. In addition to formal education, his occupation also requires his own learning activities and continuous inservice training. To keep up with the times, Ville reads vocational magaZines and follows the Statute Book. The two skills experiences in Ville's youth took place in an informal environment, in rural village culture, where the people of the village served as significant others. The other skills and learning experiences are more or less associated with work, and have taken place within formal education. In Ville's case, acquiring new knowledge and

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Significant Experiences and Empowerment skills frequently combines formal education, practical work, and, to some extent, also independent experimentation and application, including even research. Applying for education has mainly taken place 'by force of circumstances' but active desire for knowledge cannot be totally excluded. In Ville's case it is not possible to refer to critical reflectivity but his personal and self-identity have been supported by diverse skills and learning experiences.

Mervi (born 1952) Mervi is a housewife and a teacher who has had numerous love affairs in her youth. Her life-story is made up of human relations, particularly relationships with the opposite sex. It covers the views of the rebellious youth of the 1970s and the present family-centred life that marriage and children have brought about. Changing boyfriends, and now her husband's vocational career are the manifest markers, and a problematic relationship with her father and search for her identity are partly invisible markers in her life. Mervi tells about her life quite openly but her voice does not sound strong but rather dependent. Mervi has completed the Matriculation Examination and a twoyear diploma in tourism. Her present job is partly due to the above studies but, perhaps, the fact that her husband is also a teacher and that there is a current shortage of teachers in the countryside as well as her command of language are more significant factors behind the situation. Consequently, Mervi herself thinks that education has not played any significant role in her life-course. However, she realizes, and also mentions it, that education has had influence on human relations and self-knowledge. Language proficiency and self-knowledge are the domains of the knowledge that she appreciates, Le., the ones that were mentioned above. Language proficiency is related to her present job as a substitute foreign language teacher but it has always been important for human relations and, probably, for the development of her world view The significance of self-knowledge is based on Mervi's long search for identity, and now in the school context, on working with students, which contains threatel1ing elements as well. In Mezirow's (1981) terms the technical interest is accompanied by a strong practical interest. It is not easy to identify and name Mervi's significant learning experiences, mainly because she has lived so dependently with her boyfriends and partners. The following were identified as her significant learning experiences: 1 Acquiring language proficiency early in life at school, at college, and in everyday life.

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2

Development of self-knowledge mainly in adulthood and particularly in teaching.

All in all, Mervi does not have many personally significant learning experiences. This result may be explained by at least two factors. First, Mervi represents the generation of the 1970s, a generation that has characteristically acquired experiences and 'non-experiences' through the mass media (Roos, 1987). Second, she has matured, especially in the sense of settling dOWll, relatively late, and her self-knowledge is still developing. The acquisition of language proficiency, in addition to parents' persuasions, is due to the fact that her sister lived in Germany. Consequently, language learning started in an informal environment but continued later in the formal school situation. Naturally she has searched for identity and self-knowledge for a long time but they did not actualize before she started working as a teacher. As a teacher without teacher education, Mervi feels insecure when facing the students. Experience and work counselling provide help in this situation. (Work counselling includes features of a formal learning situation.) Acquiring language proficiency through several media has obviously required reflective skills learning, though Mervi's story does not directly deal with it. Acquiring self-knowledge as an educator also requires reflective learning and contemplation. Mervi's story, so far, does not include elements of empowerment to any considerable degree. It is living by loving and caring. Petri (born 1968)

Petri is a self-confident student of psychiatric nursing, a field traditionally dominated by women. His life-story is largely organized by human relations and personal development: an insecure young man becomes, in the course of the experiences gained in civil alternative service and nursing studies, a self-confident adult. His story contains a lot of selfdefinition. For him his own self is an important instrument of development. His significant skills and learning experiences are also associated with the self. Human relations, in turn, phase his life-course, and provide the stages of life, childhood and youth, with personal meaning. Petri's general education, nine years of comprehensive school and three years of upper secondary school, is typical of his generation. After school he started studies at a college of nursing to become a psychiatric nurse in December 1991. Comprehensive and upper secondary school

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Significant Experiences and Empowerment have had only instrumental value for Petri, Le., they served as necessary steps for later studies. The actual studies at school are associated with negative and meaningless memories. He describes the contents of instruction as 'trivial, unrelated facts'. Consequently, general education did not directly contribute to the development of his personal and selfidentity. It was the civil alternative service and the accompanying practical training that increased his self-confidence and awakened his interest in nursing. Studies at the nursing college have contributed to the creation of positive self-image, interaction skills, and ability to appear in public. The learning interest in self-development is practical, including also emancipatory features Ccl Mezirow, 1981). The meaning of education is connected to the control of inner life, which is clearly audible when Petri says that even if he did not work a day as psychiatric nurse, he would not regret his decision. Petri's significant learning experience are: 1 Growing self-confidence in youth and early adulthood during civil alternative service and at the college of nursing. 2 Consideration of other people and nursing skills in youth and early adulthood in work and at the college of nursing. The situational framework of Petri's self-confidence is made up of leaving home, choosing civil alternative instead of military service, and studies at nursing college. In Finnish society, civilian service implies adopting a marginal conviction and running the risk of being labelled. One of Petri's cousins, whose self-confidence and style of life he admired, served as an encouraging example. The contents of learning events are made up of defending and justifying one's own views against public opinion in interactive situations. This takes place in a formal environment where the individual has to face a challenging situation that he himself has deliberately chosen. The creation of coping strategies involves features of reflective learning, and the self-made justifications are tested in practice. At the college of nursing, Petri's self-confidence increased steadily through interaction, appearing in public, and group work. The learning of the skills of considering other people and nursing originates from a personal awareness that there is something wrong with the world, which happened at home. Petri's personal observations of the meaning of humanness, 'people need other people', that he gained during the civilian service and in a summer job, and the realization of

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his own capacity to help others, provide the 'philosophical foundation' for acquiring a significant skill. Patients who need help serve as significant others in skills learning. The teachers of nursing only provide an access to deeper insight into things. Petri's story is emancipatory and contains critical tones at the level of an individual. It represents emancipatory learning, if emancipatory learning refers to learning as a process of growing self-awareness (see Varila, 1991, p. 15). The notion that one's own opinions and actions are more justified and better in many respects than those prevailing in the surrounding society - e.g., refusing to enter military service, consideration of others, choosing a female dominated job, humane nursing demonstrate that. Further, he is able to recognize his own limitations and the possibilities to change both at individual and societal levels.

Taru (born 1970)

Tarn was born in a Finnish family in Sweden and moved to Finland as a child. She spent her childhood and youth in a small bilingual seaside town. She dropped out of upper secondary school and moved to Helsinki and got a job as baby sitter. She also started studying make-up skills. Currently she is in a vocational school for the clothing industry. Tarn's story is disconnected, partly directed by the interviewer. Friendly relations, self-actualization, search for pleasure and fun phase her story. Tarn's education comprised of comprehensive school, a couple of months in the upper secondary school, six months in a school for beauticians, and one year in the clothing department of a three-year vocational school. The following characteristics describe her personal identity: a sociable merrymaker who tries to realize her own desires and goals, and who does not stop to worry about life. In terms of selfidentity, Tarn is determined, original, easy-going, natural, open and knows how to be herself. The comprehensive school is only of instrumental value for Tarn's life-course, whereas the school for beauticians carries a trne inner and social meaning. It has given her vocational skills, reinforced all areas of her identity, and clarified her plans for the future. The vocational school serves as an instrument when she tries to realize her plans. Tarn's most significant domains of learning are language proficiency, mathematics, sports, cosmetics, and sewing, which she is currently learning. Her interests in all domains have started as technical and practical but have later acquired emancipatory aspects. Tarn's significant learning experiences are:

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Significant Experiences and Empowerment Sports as a hobby from childhood up to puberty. Acquiring language proficiency in everyday life and at school, ever since she was a child. 3 School for beauticians at the age of 17 to 18, as a source of selfassurance and vocational skills. 1 2

The different learning experiences have common features: independence, self-assurance, and sociability, Le., the experiences have continuity in terms of content. Tarn mentions mathematics studies in the comprehensive school as a negative learning experience. According to Tarn, being together and pleasure are the most important features in sports. Sport has taught sociability and helped her to become independent of her parents. Sports clubs provided the environment of learning social skills and independence. Taru's relationship with other sportsmen/women, her father and the trainer, has been egalitarian and understanding. Taru acquired the Swedish language first. Finnish became her mother tongue when she was four. She learnt Swedish and English at school, in a language club, and later in her home town when speaking with Swedish speakers and tourists. The mass media also helped her to learn languages. She picked up Finnish in the playground and at home. The context of learning has included playground, home, school, clubs and working life. The significant others in language acquisition were friends and family members. As for English, the teacher was a particularly important person. In the school for beauticians Taru learnt vocational skills and selfassurance. It clarified her future plans and her concept of herself as a social human being. In mastering a skill, it is important to get pleasure out of it, to be enthusiastic about it, to show initiative, and to dedicate one's spare time to skills development. According to Tarn, studying at the school for beauticians was quite informal. She learnt social skills from her school mates. She examined her learning from the viewpoints of vocation and identity. At that time she lived in Helsinki, looked after children, took driving lessons and attended evening classes at the cosmetics school. In Mezirow's (1981) terms, Taru's learning experiences do not involve critical reflectivity but her experiences in the school for beauticians represent self-empowerment. She has been highly motivated and learning has continued after school. Now she is designing definite plans for the future. By completing her present vocational studies she wants to qualify for the post of make-up and costume designer in a theatre. She emphasizes that her personality is suitable for that job. Tarn thinks

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Living in a Learning Society that the qualities that helped her get to cosmetics school were enthusiasm and sociability. The school experiences tie the areas of identity closer together. Tarn relates her personal identity and her lifestyle to make-up a designer's job. The school has reinforced her self-identity.

Some Concluding Remarks on Generation and Learning Experiences In many respects the oldest generation's experiences were in general more numerous and intensive than those of the younger generations. We can interpret this difference firstly by the retrospectiveness of the educational setting and secondly by maturation, but a genuine generation gap also exists, and plays a role here. Reference should also be made to the increasing role of the media and to the aforementioned institutionalization of life-course. It was easy to note the supportive human relations - significant others of learning - in every significant learning experience. These relations were described as egalitarian or encouraging. So, it is possible to analyse learning as concrete human and social relations even in a technological society. In our pilot study we also examined the situations which led to significant learning experiences in terms of where and in how formal an environment the learning had taken place (Jarvis, 1987). We first noted the variety of such situations. Nonetheless, not one interviewee had had a single significant learning experience solely in a pupil's role in a school attended on a compulsory basis. On the other hand, school learning may be involved, along with other environments, in longerterm, cumulative experiences of the sort mentioned earlier. Our analysis thus far indicates that, for representatives of the oldest generation, the typical context of the significant learning experience is a situation we refer to as a constraining situation, which demands new ways of action and thought. Taken literally, the term may be an exaggeration; demanding challenge might be more descriptive, since the interviewees reacted to such situations as challenges, and which include possibilities for choice. For young people, the first typical context is pastimes and hobbies; the next is self-definition and the search for identity.

Unemployment and Widowhood Our material includes the life-stories and thematic interviews of two very different widows. Both told of the meaning of education, but in different ways. 80

Significant Experiences and Empowerment Manta is an 80-year-old Sami woman, a war widow, whose lifestory was analysed more detailed earlier (see pp. 54-59). Her resources for coping with a widow's life situation have consisted of skills acquired from Sami culture and occupations on the one hand and, on the other, a Finnish-language education. The former provided a basis for managing in life, but the latter was also important. The skills provided by the Finnish-language schooling helped her to independently handle her affairs with the bureaucracy and understand social issues. The fact that school attendance and the literacy it brought with it were not at that time common among Sami women also gave her self-confidence. Eduction and Sami culture also came together in the learning of 'fine' (Le., Finnish) handicrafts in a domestic-science school. Manta has thus made successful use of the cultural resources which have been available to her (Houtsonen, 1994). Pirjo, 27, got a business education. She worked with her newlywed husband as a fur-farming entrepreneur until he died suddenly. In her story and interview, studying to become a nurse constituted not simply an important resource but also a clearly positive redefinition of herself. Pirjo tells in which stage of life she decided to become a nurse: Well, it was not when I lived at home ... but ... after the Matriculation Exam I had dreamt about becoming a nurse and, in fact, I did apply for entry then but I failed, and later when my husband died, I wanted to have something different, I applied for entry to nursing school, I had the feeling that I've got to become a nurse. She begins her answer to the question 'Who am I?' in the following way: I am I ... myself, I mean, I am, so to say, satisfied with myself. Certainly, you can always grow but I just don't know how. The case struck us as exceptional until we acquainted ourselves with the literature on widowhood. According to Lopata (1979; 1980), education has a crucial meaning in shaping the widow's socio-economic position and lifestyle: 'Once the mourning is over, the best-educated widows experience a positive change in themselves' (Tuominen, 1994, pp. 29-30). In a modern society Pirjo's case is thus typical. In the examination of unemployment we are still only finding our bearings. The unemployed are most often persons with relatively low status and little education. Admittedly, another sort of life-course model 81

Living in a Learning Society is also becoming more general among young people. Study, working life and retirement are no longer the separate, consecutive life-stages they once were; rather, according to Viinamaki (1994), periods of work, study and even unemployment now belong to the normal labour-market life-course, to a sort of 'permanent temporariness'. Education plays a role in the decision whether or not to take a new job, in 'storing' workers, and in prolonging the activeness of the unemployed person. In seeking a job or education, Finns first direct their attention to the local market, and then primarily to the Helsinki region.

Creativity and Participation -

Are They There?

The concept of the significant learning experience was based on observations and interpretations made regarding the first life-story. What then does a significant learning experience represent? It is first a certain sort of life event. This is clearly a question of a change-event, not of institutionalized life-course (cl Schiltze, 1981; per Lindroos, 1993, pp. 61-8). The result of the event may be an output that is classifiable as a creative achievement, most frequently the specific result of work or activity, or a meaning which is new from the agent's standpoint (Hayrynen, 1984). In any case, significant learning experiences represent a future orientation, or at least the reconstruction of a personal future. Of concepts more sociologically attuned than creativity, Antikainen has in this connection sampled that of empowerment. The core of the empowerment concept is a participatory approach (cl Nederveen Pieterse, 1992, pp. 10-11). The concept thus touches on both the individual's self-definition and his or her participation, as a result of which even the social structures of subordination may change. In our research plan we represented three factors which, alone or together, could serve as indicators of empowerment: the expansion of worldview or cultural understanding; the strengthening of one's 'voice' so that he or she is encouraged to participate in dialogue or even break down the dominant discursive forms; and, the broadening of the field of social identities and roles (Antikainen, 1991, p. 5; Livingstone, 1987). As example of experiences whose character should be distinguished in this light, we might select at least the following: •

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In the middle and older generations of men, Unto (66 years old) and Ville (50 years old) both exemplified a clear broadening of the scope of social and cultural identities. Physical sickness or disability obliged both to leave the countryside for the

Significant Experiences and Empowerment city, to give up physical labour for intellectual work. In their own assessments and that of the outside researcher, both men were able to utilize available cultural resources successfully. In Unto's case these resources included an enlightenment and in Ville's a vocational education. Naturally, their life-courses in large measure also manifested their adaptation to structural change. Ville's life-story was represented earlier. Unto told his life's work in a nut shell: ... and I retired about 10 years ago after 32 years (in a same company) ... and I blow my own trumpet at the farewell party saying that I did not know how important man I was before all the speeches [laughing] ... it was a fine event and I said in reply that the Gutzeitcompany arranged my work so well that I was able to go all the way from factory-floor to the third floor ... to the head office. So, I sawall the variety ... good and bad, but mainly good. It's obvious that my attitude towards life in general is positive . . . it has had the best quality I had . . . and now, I got this house my family has had 200 years . . . and we are more than satisfied . . . •

Manta's and Pirjo's triumphs over the difficulties of widowhood have already been discussed.

•

On the basis of our pilot study, for Sami activists of the middle or youngest generation such as 30-year-old ]uuso, the life-course includes getting to know Finnish culture and managing in a Finnish cultural environment before setting out to advocate one's own minority group issues. ]uuso answers to the question on the meaning of education in the following way: It matters, of course, very much. Formally it has an influence on your opportunities to get a job. As you apply an education and then in education ... in a way you are choosing your way of life. Life is full of choices, you know. University education was a very conscious choice for me . . . I was searching for better life ... for an economically secure life and for meaningful work. But, in addition, education may mean a wider world view and perspective ... and tools to analyse the world around you . . . and then it means a certain independence . . .

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Living in a Learning Society and of course it gives self-confidence. All in all, I think that an educated person is strong and independent. •

Especially among women of the middle and youngest generations, a familiarity with a foreign language and culture would appear to signify a clear expansion of world view and cultural identity. Mervi (39) and Taru (20), from our pilot study, serve as examples. In fact, both of them describe knowledge of languages with a rather practical and instrumental way: Well, it has been very important to me ... it helped me to get vocation and this job ... it's really important ... The knowledge of language, you know, it's a significant field, it has had an influence both on my job and on my family matters because my sister is married with a German and her sons speak German only . . . and being friend with foreigners. (Mervi)

Tam:

Interoiewer: Tam:

Interoiewer: Tam:

It has an enormous significance . . . getting a summer job ... in communication ... it's alpha and omega in communication. Does education give self-confidence? Sure, I am just leaving abroad and I have a feeling that I can cope with any situation thanks to my knowledge of language. What about the future? I said already that I might move abroad as my brother did. As a make-up and costume designer in a theatre ... it's a profession you could do in any part of the world ... but it's easier if you know foreign languages.

Stories Beyond A social movement and the story or utopia it represents can be considered sources or nurturers of personal creativity and empowerment (cl Wexler, 1987). It should at the same time be remembered that social movements and their histories also begin with personal action. The interviews included references to certain histories of this sort. With members of the oldest generation, at least the story of popular and

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Significant Experiences and Empowerment adult education came up. The utopia of upward social mobility affected especially the middle-aged. The youngest generation's perspective might be characterized by saying that the world and the self were no longer examined so much from the standpoint of school; rather, school was examined from the standpoint of the world and the self (cl Maljojoki, 1989; Hoikkala, 1993). According to our tentative interpretation, certain young people were thus seeking education which would have something to offer for their participation in such things as the ecology or woman's movement, or for a corresponding personal lifestyle. 10

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7

Conclusion: Modernization and Education

Meanings The exceptionally rapid change from agrarian to postindustrial and from traditional to late-modern or postmodern in Finnish society has made it possible to reveal the change in the meaning of education. So, what is the overall picture? Which are the social and cultural meanings? The answer given varies by the perspective. According to generational analysis the younger generation experiences education as self-evident or taken for granted. The analysis of cultural construction of identity finds a group of young people for whom education means the realization of a personal dream. The analysis of significant learning experiences confirms that at least in transitions and breaks of life-course and identity education may have empowering meanings. The answers are seen as complementary ones in the following conclusions.

Resource The knowledge and skills acquired in education/schooling are a significant resource in people's lives. The surprisingly low level of education that the older generations have reached - e.g., four grades of elementary school or a few weeks' vocational course - may have been proved to be a resource used throughout life. Even today, education may function as a similar decisive resource in such crisis situations as widowhood or unemployment. But here our analysis has not been completed. Anyway, it may be a late-modern or postmodern trend that people use education as a resource in transitions and breaks of life-course and identity. The representatives of the younger generations take basic education for granted. Education may become significant when it adequately relates to an individual's other spheres of life and to other institutions. These interpretations are compatible with the notion that level of educa-

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Conclusion: Modernization and Education tion in Finnish society is quite a valid indicator of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991, pp. 61-2).

Status Degrees prodllce status. However, as the number of educated people has increased, the process of producing status has become increasingly more complicated and indirect. Educational status also divides younger people into 'theoretically' and 'practically' oriented individuals (cl Goodson, 1992; Young, 1993).11

Conformity Industrialization and modernization have resulted in conformity which has affected the whole population. Yet, the effects of conformity have manifested themselves particularly in the treatment of minorities. Education has played the role of a great socialization agency, regardless of victims as the number of those to be saved has been much greater. Now, a change is taking place and an awareness of plurality is growing (cl Siurala, 1993).

Individualization In the modern capitalist welfare state, individualization has resulted in the emergence of clients of educational institutions and consumers of education. Some young people choose from the available educational supply the components that suit their distinct values and life styles. This can be viewed - as so many times before - as a potential for change.

Educational Policy Implications The observations and interpretations we have presented above can be read in many ways. We shall put forward two viewpoints relating to educational policy. The results concerning the functioning of the present education system seem to suggest at least three points. First, a school that does

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not pay attention to students' personal life experiences - no matter how little experiences they may have - cannot capture their interest but remains subjectively meaningless. Second, in secondary education the lack of contacts between school and life experiences is particularly obvious. This point should be taken into account in the reform plans that attempt to bring general and vocational education closer together. It's not easy, however, to find any single solution, because adolescence and thus secondary education is the best time for the learning of analytical and abstract skills, too. Third, the meaning of adult education, particularly free adult education, could be derived from the biographies. However, the increasing institutionalization of education has changed the role of social movements in adult education. Education does not act as a representative of a given social movement but, instead, individuals look for contents that correspond to their movement or way of life even in institutionalized education. Our analysis of individual experiences can be understood to be a criticism directed towards the entire education policy approach. Individualizing instruction has been one of the slogans of education policy. The proponents of the slogan characteristically view individuals as privatized people without any qualities. In reality the individual is, however, a social and cultural being who acts in line with his/her own characteristics. The biographical approach provides an opportunity to characterize or define each individual. The approach also suggests pedagogical and curricular applications. In any case, the experiences of individuals and groups should be taken into account in education policy in quite a different way, as compared with the conditions of industrialized society and cultural homogeneity of the past decades. 12 We are on our way towards multicultural society in the globaliZing world community. In the introductory chapter we asked if Finland could be characterized as a learning society. The answer is both yes and no. Yes, in the respect that education really matters in Finnish society and people learn a lot of things outside the institutional borders of education (el Ziehe and Stubenrauch, 1982). Thomas Ziehe uses the term of 'uncommon learning' referring to this sort of learning but we have seen how common it is. What's required, however, is the existence of significant others of learning. The answer is no, in the respect that school has lost a major part of its subjective meaning and it would be possible that the same loss would emerge in vocational and higher education, if unemployment remains high in the long term. All in all, as far as meaningful learning is concerned we can propose the following agenda for education (Antikainen, 1994, p. 137): 88

Conclusion: Modernization and Education •

•

• •

it does not restrain the formation of the leamer's social identity but makes available a wide range of choices in his/her life plan; it makes it possible for the learner to form an organized and meaningful biography - that is the individual or personal identity; it makes it possible for the learner to form a sound and strong self-identity, and; it is not destructive but appreciative of the learner's cultural identity.

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8

Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society?

Learning Theories In Knowledge in Motion, Jan Nespor (1994) shows how learning and knowledge inevitably have their organization of activity in space and in time and how learners become part of the durable and extensive networks of power. Based on critical readIng of some advanced studies of cognitive anthropology (e.g., Lave and Wenger, 1991), social studies of science (e.g., Latour, 1987) and human geography (e.g., Gregory, 1994), Nespor constructs a concept of learning that crosses the academic division between psychology and sociology. Borrowing the language of CalIon (1986) and Latour (1987), Nespor applies an actor-network theory for the study of the political economy of knowledge in two university degree programs. He begins by referring to the theories of distributed and situated cognition in psychology. In the theories of 'distributed cognition' (e.g., Salomon, 1993) an activity theory based on early Russian culturalhistorical psychology (Leontjev, Luria and Vygotsky) has been created (e.g., Cole and Engestrom, 1993). In this theory the distribution of cognition is studied 'in the social world', but in fact the description of the social world given by Cole and Engestrom (ibid., 17-18) is restricted to the micro level. Maybe Engestrom's concepts of 'activity system' and 'expanding learning' are most openly directed toward social theory. Transition in an activity system resulting from expanding learning can be characterized as an expansive cycle (Engestrom, 1987; Cole and Engestrom, ibid., 40-1): An expansive cycle is a developmental process that involves

both the internalization of a given culture of practice and the creation of novel artifacts and patterns of interaction. The new activity structure does not emerge out of the blue. It requires reflective analysis of the existing activity structure - participants must learn to know and understand what they want to transcend. And the creation of a new activity system requires

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Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society? the reflective appropriation of advanced models and tools that offer ways out of the internal contradictions. However, these forms of internalization are not enough for the emergence of a new structure. As the cycle advances, the actual design and implementation of a new model for the activity gain momentum: Externalization begins to dominate.... The expansive cycle of an activity system begins with almost exclusive emphasis on internalization, on socializing and training novices to become competent members of the activity as it is routinely carried out. Creative externalization occurs first in the form of discrete individual violations and innovations. As the disruptions and contradictions in the activity become more demanding, internalization increasingly takes the form of critical self-reflection - and externalization, the search for novel solutions, increases. Externalization reaches its peak when a new model for the activity is designed and implemented. As the new model stabilizes itself, internalization of its inherent ways and means again becomes the dominant form of learning and development. (Engestrom, 1987 quoted from Cole and Engestrom, 1993) Nespor sees this kind of interactional theory as the first step towards social analysis. Instead of mere carriers of mental 'substances' people - at least at certain points of time - are viewed as components of socio-cognitive configurations.... Their 'knowing' (although it ultimately takes the form of decontextualized, 'internal' essences) is the product of activities contextualized in space and time. (1994, p. 8) Nespor then refers to Lave and Wenger's (1991) conception of learning as legitimate peripheral performance in 'communities of practice' and makes the following assessment: There is much to admire in this work: it rejects the preoccupation with 'internalization' that plagues Vygotskian approaches, and instead focuses on learning as a facet of social practice, as part of a process acquiring an identity in a community of practitioners. The problem is that these (human) communities are treated as bounded, strictly local settings seemingly unconnected and unconnectable to other spaces and times. (ibid., p. 12)

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Living in a Learning Society This problem can be overcome by CalIon's actor-network theory: ... it's ('knowledge' is) the property of a network that produces space and time by mobilizing and accumulating distant settings in central positions ... The actor-network is reducible neither to an actor alone nor to a network. Like networks it is composed of a series of heterogeneous elements, animate and inanimate, that have been linked to one another for a certain period of time . . . for the entities it is composed of, whether natural or social, could at any moment redefine their identity and mutual relationships in some new way and bring new elements into network. An actor-network is simultaneously an actor whose activity is networking heterogeneous elements and a network that is able to redefine and transform what it is made of. (1987, pp. 10, 93) Thus knowledge and learning can be studied as spatial and temporal practices, but not only in the context of face-to-face interaction: Face-to-face interaction is a misnomer: in addition to people and things in the immediate setting people are always interacting with distant entities that have been materially or semiotically transported into the encounter. (ibid., pp. 132-3) Knowledge and learning can be connected to debate in social theory. Definitions of learning and the self of learner can be detached from the discourse of psychology: ... people move through space materially, and simultaneously move and construct space-time through practices of representation, and that what we call 'learning' are segments of motion which follow the shapes of more stable institutional or disciplinary networks.... From this perspective 'learning' is, first, being able to move oneself and, second, other things through those space-time networks. If the phrase 'having knowledge' means anything it means participating in an actor-network that organizes field of practice such as 'discipline' (although that is only one example - unions, community organizations, and so on could also function as actor-networks). Participating means becoming spatially and temporally organized in a form that moves you into the material spaces of the field, and becoming proficient at using the discipline's (or unions, or community organizations) representational organizations of space-time.... Selves' are not

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Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society? simply multiplied or fragmented, they're distributed across spacetime networks, constituted in their material and semiotic connections. Different (disciplinary) constructions of space and time mean different constructions of self. (ibid., pp. 131-2, 134) Nespor (ibid., p. 132) criticizes theories of 'situated learning' along with apprenticeship models and practices as 'a kind of nostalgia for localized, pre-capitalist forms of social organization'. In fact, the simultaneous processes of the centralizing and decentralizing of activities are characteristic of global economies. It is possible to respond to Nespor's criticism of Vygotskian theories of learning by stressing that there is a dialectical relationship between internalization and externalization. In addition to this the degree of internalization is not invariable but varies individually and according to context or situation. It is not clear to what extent Nespor has considered these matters. The first response to Nespor's criticism of situated learning theories as nostalgia or a celebration of localized, pre-capitalist forms of social organization could be that all learning has - besides a distant organization - a local organization and apprenticeship models are applied, e.g., in most advanced industrial organizations and at the most demanding levels of university education. The absence of the knowledge/power relationship is, however, inevitable in both two theories. A problem in Nespor's own theory of network, as he himself points out (ibid., p. 11), is the ambiguity of the network concept. I nonetheless found his approach and ideas extremely interesting and fruitful. The symbolic interactionist language which we use in our study - e.g. the concept of significant others of learning - differs from the language Nespor uses, but it is not overly difficult to apply his approach to our data, remarks and interpretations. It makes sense to conclude, for instance, that the people of the generation of war and scant education are interacting - besides with their immediate environment - i.e., with representations of nationstate and class ideologies within. After the nation-builders comes the generation of structural change and increasing educational opportunities creating liberal or even radical ideas in a more secular, technological, wealthier and urban environment. The generation of social welfare and many educational choices interact - besides with the disintegrating legacy of enlightenment - with mediated representations of individualism and globalization and with restricted vocational opportunities. Possibly it is this course of 'distant significant others of learning' that makes best visible the disenchantment of the institution of education

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Living in a Learning Society indicated as a loss of subjective and symbolic meaning of school in this study. Interestingly it is not a modern Weberian enchantment but a late-modern or postmodern process representing at least a transition from one rationality, an instrumental one, to another (cf Weber, 1978, p. 509). The social context of this transition is widely discussed in theories of, for example, risk society (Beck, 1986), information society (Bell, 1979), semiotic society (Wexler, 1987) or reflexive modernization (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994). Globalization and emerging cultural diversity, called 'globalization as hybridization' by Nederveen Pieterse (1994) - and reactions to it - may be the most obvious trends in the transformation.

Learning Organizations Emile Durkheim's successor, Georges Gurvitch, defines consciousness as 'a dialectical relationship between "I", "Other" and "We", which partially interpenetrate each other and partially converge through opposition' (quoted in Thompson 1971, p. xxvi). 'I' has been discussed throughout this study, but I would like, however, to add a remark. In the life-stories of the the Sami people it was apparent how nature forms a significant marker of identity. A Sami poet, Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa, writes in 'We'-form: the wind the wind we were the sighing wind of life caressing the face of the fell riverdales, canyons deep a fading Sami song the sunset glowing red, the wind the wind we were and we came and went naught of us remained but the song into the sighing wind the dream of being (Nils Aslak Valkeapaa (1992) Beavi AhcazanlAurinko Isiini, (The Sun, My Father), Vaasa.) According Gurvitch, there are three basic types of 'We': mass, community and communion:

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Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society? Partial fusion among minds opening to each other, and among behaviours interpenetrated in a 'we', may appear in different degrees of intensity and depth. When the fusion is very weak and only integrates superficial layers of consciousness which open only at the surface and remain closed with regard to what is more or less profound and personal, sociality is mass. When minds fuse, open out, and interpenetrate on a deeper, more intimate plane, where an essential part of the aspirations and acts of personality is integrated in the 'we', without, however, attaining the maximum of intensity in this integration, sociality is community. When, finally, this most intense degree of union of 'we' is attained, that is, when the minds open out as widely as possible and the least accessible depths of the'!, are integrated in this fusion (which presupposes states of collective ecstacy), sociality is communion. (quoted in Thompson, ibid., p. xxv)

Here is Gurvitch's point of departure for his discussion on solidarity and on sociology of knowledge: Because a community tends to attain a better balance as a form of sociality, it favours regular collective behaviour and the functioning of models, signs and symbols, which are relatively more refined and well-grounded than in masses, and more varied than in communions. Communions depend on collective intuitions, and masses manifest crude symbolic images; communities are wider in their field of vision, and actualize a variety of mental states and mental acts, particularly those based on reflection, such as conceptualizations and judgments. Masses and communions are less stable and more short-lived than communities, and they appear sporadically; for example, large groups frequently display the mass form of sociality, especially when they lack contiguity (as is usually the case with social classes and publics), whilst religious sects, at least in their originating, evidence the sociality of communion. In periods of war and revolution, however, global societies can proliferate communions and masses rather than communities. (quoted in Thompson, ibid., p. xxvi) While learning theoreticians are searching for 'We', business management has already found it. Learning organization is an issue 95

Living in a Learning Society in business management. 13 Handy (1990, p. 199) describes learning organizations as organizations which encourage the wheel of learning, which relish curiosity, questions and ideas, which allow space for experiment and for reflection, which forgive mistakes and promote self-confidence, these are the learning organizations, and theirs is a competitive advantage which no one can steal from them. (Handy, 1990 quoted in Nasta, 1993, p. 25) Leanling organizations seem to be communities with some characteristics of communion. In this time of restructuring of universities, it is comforting - or one can say illusory - to hear that ... Handy (1989) observes that 'learning organizations would be more like the universities than the universities themselves'. The notion of learning organizations complements the concepts of lifelong learners and a learning society.... A learning culture implies flat non-hierarchical institutions based upon the postFordist model. (Nasta, 1993, p. 25) The growth of networking in education has been linked to the general spread of networking in post-Fordist industrial organizations. Besides networking, Nasta (ibid.) uses the concept of conviviality. The term is from Illich (1973) who relates autonomous learning and the development of individuals to the characteristics of institutions or, in fact, society. The concept of 'tool' is used comprehensively (Nasta, ibid., p. 26): I use the term 'tool' broadly enough to include not only simple hardware such as drills, pots, syringes, brooms, building elements and motors. . . I also include among tools productive institutions such as factories that produce tangible commodities like cornflakes or electric current, and productive systems for intangible commodities such as those which produce 'education', 'health', 'knowledge', or 'decisions'. I use this term because it allows me to subsume into one category all rationally designed devices, be they artifacts or rules, codes or operators.... School curricula or marriage laws are no less purposely shaped social devices than road networks. (Illich, 1973, p. 20 quoted by Nasta, 1993)

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Future Prospects: Towards tbe Global Learning Society? Illich distinguishes between manipulative and convivial 'tools'. Convivial tools allow individuals autonomous action without creating a relationship of dependence. Illich gives the telephone as an example of the convivial tools (Nasta, ibid., p. 26): The telephone lets anybody say what he wants to the person of his choice; he can conduct business, express love, or pick a quarrel. (Illich, ibid., p. 22 quoted by Nasta, ibid.) Nowadays, in the age of the modem and fax and with the access to large databanks of information and social networks, it is easy to agree with Illich. His perception of school as a manipulative or anticonvival tool which creates generations of passive consumers incapable of autonomous learning is well known. The picture outlined above is not contradictory to the remarks and interpretations of our study. Our analysis of learning is from two points of view: as a part of the entire life-course and life-history; and as those turning points and significant experiences in life-story and life-course. We are not analysing learning in formal educational settings or routine learning separately (cl Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1993; 1994, who also studied periods of routine in young people's lives as 'conforming' or 'socializing' or 'contradictory'). All or nearly all significant learning experiences came about in community. Further, it is easy to find both local and distant significant otbers of learning in all cases. The relationship between the learner and the local significant others seems in all cases or nearly all cases to be appreciative and supportive, possibly egalitarian. In this sense I have argued that 'if teachers did not exist, they would have to be invented' (but just not any kind of teachers!). A more detailed analysis of distant significant others may be the next step in our project. This nearly romantic harmony of human relationships does not mean that conflicts, contradictions and quarrels might not exist in specific detailed areas. Further, it does not mean that the process of acquiring knowledge includes no contradictions. I hope that it is not an exaggerated concept to compare learning organizations to Giddens' project of a 'democracy of the emotions': He [Giddens] sees the emotional relationship as a 'sub-political area' whose 'democracing tendencies' are bound up with 'active trust' based on 'reflexivity', autonomy and dialogue. (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994, p. 205) Giddens is, however, arguing at the same time for the reassessment of forms of solidarity:

97

Living in a Learning Society We need ... to question today the old dichotomy between 'community' and 'association' - between mechanical and organic solidarity. The study of mechanisms of social solidarity remains as essential to sociology as ever, but the new forms of solidarity are not captured by this distinction. For example, the creation of 'intimacy' in post-traditional emotional relations today is neither the Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft. It involves the generating of 'community' in a more active sense, and community often scretched across indefinite distances of time-space. (ibid., p. 186) Learning Society A dominant theme in current education policy, especially in Europe and North America, has been the creation of access to lifelong learning through the educational system. The current notion of lifelong learning goes beyond the historic pattern of adult education. The conception of a learning society defines the new mission, for example, in the following way:14 A learning society would be one in which everyone participated in education and training throughout their life. It would support them as citizens in their employment and their leisure. A learning society would also make provision to match these enhanced aspirations. (Ball, 1991, p. 6 quoted by Nasta, 1993, p. 23) In the middle of his egalitarian rhetoric Nasta, however, outlines the organizational structures of this new brave society in very different language: Handy (1989) ... suggests that the 'Shamrock Organization' is ideally suited to the current economic and technological context. The Shamrock consists of three groups of workers: the core, which is composed of well-qualified people, professionals, technicians or managers; the contractual fringe, which is made up of individuals and organizations who deliver services on a sub-contracted basis for the core; and third leaf of the shamrock which is the flexible labour force, those seeking part-time or temporary work. The Shamrock is different from 'standard bureaucratic organizations' in that it based on a much smaller core and an explicit network of part-time workers and sub-contractors. (1993, p. 21)

98

Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society? This learning society then is a class society celebrating the professionalmanagerial class. If a learning society is in question, one must ask how 'The Other' will be constructed, and how official and unofficial knowledge in general will be constructed (Apple, 1992; Gundara, 1990). All contemporary societies are diverse and this would then mean a 'massive societal waste' to deny this diversity, for example in the form of racism (Feagin and Vera, 1994). There is another learning society project emerging based on rather different political and moral argllments. Ranson's (1994) point of departure is the following: In periods of social transition, education becomes central to our future well-being. Only if learning is placed at the centre of our experience can individuals continue to develop their capacities, institutions be enabled to respond openly and imaginatively to periods of change, and the difference between communities become a source of reflective understanding. The challenge for policy-makers is to promote the conditions for such a 'learning society': this should enable parents to become as committed to their own continuing development as they are to that of their children; men and women should be able to assert their right to learn as well as to support the family; learning cooperatives should be formed at work and in community centres; and preoccupation with the issues of purpose and organization should then result in extensive public dialogue about reform. (p. ix) The learning society is a new programme of education reform after the social-democratic project of the 1960s and 1970s, as well the new liberal or new right project of the 1980s. Ranson is arguing for the discovering of the public domain: Markets cannot resolve the problems we face: indeed, they ensure that we stand no chance of solving them. Those problems derive from the transformations of time: the restructuring of work; environmental erosion; the fragmentation of society. They raise questions about what it is to be a person, what is the nature of the community, what kind of policy we need to secure the future well-being of all. These present issues of identity, well-being, rights, liberty, opportunity and justice. These predicaments cannot be resolved by individuals acting in isolation or by 'exit', because we cannot stand outside them. Markets can only exacerbate these problems: they ensure that we stand

99

Living in a Learning Society no chance of solving them and are unlikely to be legitimated by the majority of people who will be defeated and excluded by markets. (ibid., p. 99) Ranson would like to create a moral community based on participative democracy. It would be based on the local government. The case for the local government, he says, rests upon three arguments: Learning is inescapably a system: learning is a process that cannot be contained within the boundaries of anyone institution. Discovery and understanding occur at home, in the community, on a scheme of work experience as well as in college or school. 2 Education needs to be a local system: the system of learning is more effective if managed locally, as well as nationally and at the level of institution. 3 Education needs to be a local democratic system: if education is, as it should be, a public service of and for the whole community rather than merely the particular parents, young people and employers who have an immediate and proper interest in the quality of education provided, then education must be responsive and accountable to the community as whole. (ibid., p. 120) 1

Critical reading of Ranson's book rises to doubts that the place of the local governing might be taken as a given in his analysis. It should be noted that the distant dimension of learning is lacking. The future vision Giddens presents is also rather optimistic: The post-traditional society is an ending; but it is also a beginning, a genuinely new social universe of action and experience. What type of social order is it, or might it become? It is, as I have said, a global society, not in the sense of a world society but as one of 'indefinite space'. It is one where social bonds have effectively to be made, rather than inherited from the past - on the personal and more collective levels this is a fraught and difficult enterprise, but one also holds out the promise of great rewards. It is decentred in terms of authorities, but recentred in terms of opportunities and dilemmas, because focused upon new forms of interdependence. To regard narcissism, or even individualism, as the core of post-traditional order is a mistake - certainly in terms of the potentials for the future that it contains. (1994, p. 106) 100

Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society? Finally, I would like to add Shotter's (1993) voice here. He argues for a whole new research programme for postmodern science. It consists of reorientations in thinking, motives, emotion, memory, learning, perception and language Concerning learning he makes the following statement:

Learning ceases to be the sole process for the gaining of knowledge; and knowledge ceases to be solely an epistemological matter: it becomes an ontological one also. For only those who are already constituted as socially competent within a particular setting can go out and gather 'information' about the nature of that setting in a wholly individualistic way; but they cannot gain their social competence in that setting in the same way. That involves a different kind of 'learning' altogether; it involves 'instruction' by another person, an interactive process - indeed, it involves acquiring the knowledge of how to collaborate effectively in institutions of learning. (p. 33) Education is one of the largest industries in late-modern or postmodern society. Its own interest and voice is essential, but does it have a common interest and a single voice? Or will the future of education emerge from the relationship between system and people's life-world in a Habermasian sense as we have been inclined to think in this study? From this perspective, learning has always been part of life and people have always lived in some kind of learning society. A new learning society, to mediate between learners and society, is needed to grease the machines of globalized economies. Certainly, in its stratified way learning society will transform daily life in general and working life in particular. A new class society will emerge if no counterforce to economic power will be found. 15

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9

Summary

The book deals with the remarks and interpretations of education, training and learning in the everyday lives of people in a swiftly changing society with expanding education and learning opportunities. For Eric Hobsbawm (1994), the case of postwar Finland represents a 'spectacular' change comparable with the case of Japan. For Georges Gurvitch (1972), the cognitive systems of Finnish society is an example of a 'decentralized, pluralist and collective' cognitive system emphasizing the balance between humanism and technology. The meaning of education is studied at three levels: life-course, identity and significant learning experiences. The data (n=44, approximately 3,000 pages) was collected by applying the life-history approach in oral life-story and thematic interviews. A comprehensive review of biographical method is presented and methodological problems are discussed. The authors present their interpretation of three contemporary educational generations: 1 Generation of the war and scant education (those born before 1936) 2 Generation of structural change and increasing educational opportunities (those born in 1936-55) 3 Generation of social well-being and many educational choices (those born after 1955). At the level of generational location, the role of education has changed from being an ideal to something that is taken for granted. Alongside the changes in the job market and in the status of the school and school knowledge, the institutionalization of individual's life-course is believed to explain the change - or even loss - in the subjective and symbolic meaning of education. The link between education and cultural construction of identity is examined in the light of self-typifications (classifications) at various stages of the interviewees' life-stories. The typifications differ in regard to generation and educational status, for instance. In all the generations, education produces social status. The younger the generation, the more indirect the process of working through a vocational career 102

Summary

it is. One of the most common typifications in the self-definition of young people is the distinction between 'practical' and 'theoretical' orientation. The definition was parallel with social class and educational career. According to our preliminary observations and remarks on cultural identity the victory of education has meant a standardization of culture and life-course. Finnish school - or any western school does not fully encounter Romany culture or Sami culture, for instance. In the context of life-story, significant learning experiellces are defined as those learning experiences that appeared to guide the interviewee's life-course or to have changed or strengthened his or her identity. Hardly any of these significant learning experiences had occurred with the person being solely in the role of a pupil or student at school. In such life events or transitions, such as widowhood or unemployment, one's education has a particularly important role to play in coping with a new situation. For the older generation, the typical context of the significant learning experience is a constraining situation which demands new ways of action and thought in everyday life. For young people, the first typical contexts. are pastimes and hobbies. Some young people are searching for education that will be significant for their participation in the ecological or women's movement, or for a corresponding personal lifestyle. In the introductory chapter the contemporary Finnish society is viewed within a framework of a learning society. Thanks to the exceptionally rapid social change, the case of Finland is reviewed as an example of the dynamic relationship between modernization and education in the concluding chapter (Chapter 7). It has resulted in a synthesis of the social and cultural Ineanings of education into four categories: resources, status, conformity and individualization. Implications to educational policy in latemodern or postmodern society are discussed. In the final chapter (Chapter 8) the issue of learning society is discussed in global and social theory context. Theories of situated learning and actor-network theory are seen as transition toward social theory. Examples of 'distant or constitutive significant others' of the three generations are outlined. The definition of learning organizations presented by representatives of business management and of vocational or adult education is analysed by the terms of 'we' and solidarity. Two contrary projects of leaning society are under scrutiny in terms of power and identity. A learning society is emerging but not as a world society - yet as a global society or as a 'indefinite space' (Giddens, 1994, p. 106) - and certainly as a class society, however, still under political stnlggle. 103

Notes

1

How to Study People's lives? 1 Goodson and Anstead describe the nature of collaboration in studies of teachers' lives: Studies of the teacher's life and work develop structural insights which locate the teacher's life within the deeply structured and embedded environment of schooling. This provides a prime 'trading point' for teachers as researchers (insiders) and external researchers (outsiders). One of the significant aspects of collaboration between insiders and outsiders is that it is collaboration between two parties that are differentially located in structural terms. As a result, each sees the world through a different prism of practice and thought. Such a valuable difference may provide the external researcher with a possibility to offer back goods in 'the trade'. The insider offers data and insights; the outsider, in pursuing glimpses of structure in different ways, may now also bring data and insights. The terms of trade, in short, look favourable. In such conditions collaboration may at last begin in a genuine spirit of 'give and take'. (1993, p. 209) 2 There are no signs of the influence of postmodernism in Ternyil{'s presentation. Nevertheless, he sees the range of societal learning processes as open. Socialleaming processes: A) occur in specific (historical) conditions: problem accumulation, B) follow certain patterns of organization, action and learning: functional or dysfunctional/reproductive, productive or destructive/formation, transfer or transformation, C) possess an autogenetic dynamism of their own. (1987, p. 86)

2

3

l'he Meaning of Education In 1986 Husen published Learning Society Revised which is a more pessimistic view of education as an agent of societal change. We refer here to his earlier version of learning society because it corresponds better a view of the 1990s. Learning society is not, of

104

Notes course, any historical society but a concept to grasp the mediation between society and learning (el 'media society', 'consumer society', etc.). 3 Biographical Method 4 See Denzin's (1989, p. 61) response to Bourdieu's critique in Chapter 1, p. 6.

4 Education in the Life-course of Three Generations 5 We are aware of the ambiguity of the concept of generation because of the difficulty in distinguishing between the influence of history and age. Especially in the context of social change, however, it is a very useful tool of analysis. We want to emphasize that our analysis here is at the level of generational location and we are looking forward to continuing our work with generational groups. 6 The concept of biographical continuity and thus the dominant form of institutionalized life-course, is historically associated with the bourgeois male individual. It is quite clear that a typical female biography is not so linear and one-dimensional as a typical male biography. 7 It is our plan to continue to deepen our analysis of young people. Therefore we are re-interviewing them in order to have data before and after the slump in Finnish society. So far it seems obvious that there are various groups (generational groups) among young people. There are losers, careerists, representatives of artistic, or value rationalist, ways of life, and above all people living in identity crisis. Interestingly, each of the older generations was divided in its time, but retrospectively, one shared story and meaning seems to dominate the generation. We hope that we are able to analyse this (historical) meaning forming process in our future studies.

5 Cultural Construction of Identity 8 It is our idea to deal with the whole social and cultural diversity in our cultural analysis, not to distinguish social class, gender and 'race' in advance, but to examine them as sites of social diversity and stratification. We are looking forward to focusing our analysis on each of these power relations. So far, Liisa Puumalainen has written her Master thesis on, three generations of female biographies and Paivi Tuupanen and Mari Kayhko are studying university students from working-class origin. 9 In the 1970s a primary and secondary school were established in Utsjoki and in 1989 a primary school in Karigasniemi - in the 105

Notes heart of the Sami region in Lapland - and the period of painful boarding-school experiences was over. According to the Sami people we interviewed, education is currently the best arranged public service in their community.

6 Significant Experiences and Empowerment 10

According to our interpretation, these are the narratives beyond the biographical coherence of Finnish people. Thus it is not just state ideology integrating educational optimism among people but corresponding cultural patterns as well. We will return to this issue in Chapter 8 as we create the concept of 'distant significant others of learning' (pp. 92-94; 97).

7 Conclusion: Education and Modernity 11 Goodson's historical analysis on mentalities in the English curriculum demonstrates the origin and development of these kind of mentalities very well. Ternyik (1987, p. 11) points out that the concept of mentality was originally created by the Russian social theoretician Plechanov (1857-1918) and elaborated as 'social character' by Theodor Geiger (1932) in Die Soziale Schichtung des Deutschen Volkes (Social stratification of German people) (1932) far before the Annales. Young (1993) argues for overcoming the division between general/academic and vocational education. In other Nordic countries - especially in Sweden - attempts to integrate secondary education are further ahead than in Finland, where experiments started in the beginning of 1990s. 12 We are not arguing against public schooling but for educational change in response to the individualization and narcissism of young people. We fully agree with Philip Wexler, who says: The main thing about schools is that they are one of the few public spaces in which people are engaged with each other in the interactional work of making meaning. These are places for making the CORE meaning, of self or identity among young people. (1992, p. 155) 8 Future Prospects: Towards the Global Learning Society? 13 In the field of organizational studies there is also serious interest in studying learning organizations (see, e.g., J. G. March (1988) Decisions and Organizations, Oxford, Blackwell). 14 'Learning society' is a big issue in England but is also known in 106

Notes

15

Canada (see, e.g., Canadian Institute of Advanced Research (CIAR) (1992) The Learning Society, Toronto; Fullan, 1993). Already accessible to computers are differences by social class and 'race', e.g., based on the 1993 us Census. Newsweek ('The haves and the have-nots', February 27 1995) concluded: 'The computer gap: The United States is dividing into two societies - one that's comfortable with PCs, the other that doesn't have access.' The key issues, however, are institutional: workplace policy and the role of public institutions in shaping the information highway. The tenth OISE Survey (Livingstone, Hart and Davie, 1995) shows that a plurality of Canadians (40 per cent) think that people generally have more education than jobs require, and 64 per cent think that libraries and public educational institutions should have a major role in shaping the information highway rather than leaving it to private telephone and cable TV firms. Only 10 per cent were very interested in shopping over the information highway. We could imagine that these opinions are not far from those of Nordic people.

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Appendix 1: The Interviews

The interviews were conducted by the authors of this study and students writing their theses in life history or related fields. The interviewees were chosen by the research group. Applying a grounded theory approach, the people chosen had to fit into our research plan, and its theoretical and empirical framework. The interviewer and the interviewee had to know each other but not be in a close relationship. About one week before the first interview a letter concerning the aims and course of the research work was sent to the interviewee. It was mentioned in the letter that the study was dealing with the course of life and the place of education there. Education was not emphasized at this stage and, in fact, it would have been ideal from the point of our empirical aims if education was not mentioned at all. Based on ethical considerations, however, we did not hide the fact that we were studying education as well. The first interview was a narrative interview of biography or lifestory. The interviewee told - as was mentioned in the letter - her/ his life-story freely, but the interviewer's activation was used if needed. In fact, all interviews consist of interaction between interviewee and interviewer. These narrative interviews ranged from one to six hours in duration; typically an interview was 3-4 hours. At the end, some thematic questions on identity, education and domains of knowledge important in his or her life were posed: •

• • • • •

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'Who you are? How would you describe yourself?' (interviewers were encouraged to tell about the 'twenty statements test' if needed) 'What is your education?' (Degree, school/college/university, year) 'What has education meant in your life?' 'What has education meallt in your job and vocational career?' 'Has education had other meanings than those associated with your occupation, income and social status?' 'Would you mention those fields of knowledge that have had significant meaning in your life? Please tell in detail.'

Appendix 1: The Interoiews Next, the research group made a tentative analysis of significant learning experiences (turning points of learning history) by coding the interviewee's significant learning experiences. The second interview was a thematic interview of the significant learning experiences. First, the interviewer presented a written list of the significant learning experiences, as coded by the research group, to be accepted or changed by the interviewee. In very few cases the interviewee changed the list. This could be interpreted to indicate that the research group's analysis was well done. The number of significant learning experiences ranged from 2-10. In the interview, the situation, content, form, and context of each significant learning experience were dealt with: • • • •

•

'Where did you learn this knowledge/skill?' (in education, work, media, self-study, etc.) 'How would you describe the essential content of this knowledge/skill?' 'At which stage of your life did you learn this knowledge/skill?' 'How would you describe the context or circumstances of your learning experience globally (world situation), nationally and locally?' (location in time and space established by the interviewer's own words) 'What has been the meaning/significance of this knowledge/ skill in your life?'

At the end of interview, a question about negative learning experiences was asked: •

'What has been the most negative educational or learning experience in you life? Please tell in detail.'

The interview data is then coded by the research group. The coded data consists of the following categories: social background, interview (as an interaction and as a narrative), shortened biography, identity (social, personal, ego and cultural), education and its association to identity, significant learning experiences (content, form and situation, context, stage of life, significant others of learning) and negative learning experiences. As the interview data consists of about 3,000 written pages, the coded data consists of about 300 pages.

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119

Index

academic pedagogical model 70 actor-network theory 90, 92, 93, 103 actualized generation 37 adult education 72, 88, 98 age-related norms and roles 35, 49 agrarian society 37, 38, 86 Ahola, S. 42 Allardt, E. 34, 38, 46 Anstead, C.]. 104 Antikainen, A. et ale 21, 70 Antikainen, Ari 7, 8, 9, 21, 53, 60, 62, 70, 71, 82, 188-9 Apple, M. 99 Atkinson, Paul 3 autobiographical consciousness 20-2 autobiographical memory 22-4 autonomous learning 96, 97 baby boom 42 Ball, C. 98 Barclay, C.R. 23 Beck, U. 94, 97 Bell, D. 94 Berger, P. 23 Bertaux, D. 17 biographical coherence 5, 21, 27 biographical interview 5, 8, 16 biographies (see also life history) Aatu (b.1909) 40-1 Anna (b.1924) 9, 71-3 Helvi (b.1927) 38-40 Ismo (b.1929) 38 ]ani (b.1971) 48-9 ]uuso (age 30) 68-9, 83-4 Katri (b.1960) 47-8 Manta (age 80) 7, 54-9, 60-1, 62-3, 64,65-6,81 Mervi (b.1952) 75-6, 84 Petri (b.1968) 76-8

Pirjo (age 27) 81 Taru (b.1970) 78-80, 84 Tuija (b.1944) 42-4 Unto (b.1924) 38, 82-3 Ville (b.1941) 44-6, 73-5, 82-3 Bohm, D. 31 Bourdieu, Pierre 5, 27, 87, 105 Brewer, W.P. 23 Bruner, Edward 27-8 Bruner, ]. 20 Buchmann, M. 50 California 58 CalIon, M. 90, 92 Canada 107 civilian service 77 Cole, M. 90-1 collective identity 9, 37, 41, 50 collective memory 23-4 communities of practice 91, 96, 97 conformity 87 constructivism 6, 18-20, 26-7, 29, 32-3 continuing education see adult education; lifelong learning conviviality 96-7 creativity 64, 82 critical pedagogy 4 cultural diversity 13, 65, 68-9, 87, 88, 94 cultural homogeneity 42, 65, 87, 88 cultural identity 53, 64-6, 89 cultural resources 66-7 curriculum 14 Dannefer, D. 9, 50 Davies, B. 21 democracy 100 of the emotions 97

121

Index Denzin, Norman 3, 5, 7, 8, 105 Dewey, J. 70 distributed cognition 90 documentary meaning 25 Dollard, J. 17, 27 Duncan, S.C. 50 Eakin, P.J. 6 economic recession 52 education (see also learning) as a resource 86-7 conformity 9, 50, 52, 65, 87 cultural pattern 86 emancipatory 9, 70, 78 identity and 7, 8, 9, 16, 53-4 cultural identity 64-6, 84 personal identity 61-3, 72-3, 89 self-identity 63-4, 89 social identity 59-61, 72-3, 89 individualization 9, 14, 52, 87 life-course and 8, 9, 36-7, 61 meaning 3, 8-9 significant learning experiences 7, 8, 9, 16, 79-80, 97, 103 general and vocational education 68-70 status 87, 102 vocational 10, 13, 59-61, 68-70, 88 educational cohort 35 educational equality 13 educational generations 7, 14-15, 36-7, 49-52, 80 social welfare 46-9, 93 structural change 41-6, 93 wartime 37-41, 93 educational inflation 50 educational motivation 36-7, 50, 52 educational policy 87-9 Edwards, D. 23 emancipatory education 9, 70, 78 empowerment 6, 7, 70-1, 73, 76, 79, 82 Engestrom, Y. 90-1 England 106 enlightenment 5, 93 epistemology 19, 20

122

ethnic minorities 13, 16, 65, 68, 83, 87 (see also Sami people) ethnomethodology 5 Europe 10, 98 fact and fiction 30-1 Feagin, J.R. 99 Feinberg, Walter 4 Finland 6, 7, 8, 9-15, 88 structural change 11, 36, 41-6, 86, 93, 102 Freeman, L.C. 22, 23 Freeman, S.C. 22, 23 Geiger, Theodor 106 gender 7, 13, 49, 61 generation gap 80 generational analysis 34-5, 86 generational location 36, 37, 102 generations, educational see educational generations Germany 76 Giddens, A. 20, 24, 29, 94, 97-8, 100, 103 globalization 88, 93, 94, 103 Goffman, Erving 7, 17, 54 Goodson, Ivor F. 3, 4-5, 6, 87, 104 Gregory, D. 90 grounded theory approach 7, 9, 16 Guba, E.C. 19 Gundara, J.S. 99 Gurvitch, Georges 15, 94-5, 102 Gypsies (Romanies) 13, 16, 65, 68 Habermas,J. 70,101 Hammersley, Martin 3 Handy, C. 96, 98 Harre, R. 21 Hayrynen, Y-P. 82 He~inki 39, 43, 47, 60, 78, 82 hermeneutics 17, 19 Heshusius, L. 19 Hobsbawm, Eric 11, 102 Hodkinson, P. 97 Hoikkala, T. 46, 85 Houtsonen, Jarmo 7, 53, 60, 62, 81 Huotelin, Hannu 7, 8, 28, 37

Index Hurrelmann, K. 21, 46 Husen, Torsten 9, 104 identity 7, 8, 9, 16, 18 autobiographical consciousness 20-2 collective 9, 37, 41, 50 cultural 53, 64-6, 89 definition 53 personal (individual) 9, 53, 61-3, 72-3,89 self- 20-1, 49, 53, 63-4, 89 social 49, 53, 59-61, 72-3, 89 Illich, I. 96, 97 individual identity 9, 53, 61-3, 72-3, 89 individualization 9, 14, 52, 87 institutionalization of life-course 9, 50, 52, 65, 87, 103 interactionist methodology 5, 26-7 interview biographical 5, 8, 16 thematic 6, 7, 8, 16 Isoahu, H. 13 Japan 11, 102 Jarvis, Peter 70, 80 Karelia 41, 71 Kauppila, Juha 7, 35 Kivinen, o. 13, 37, 38, 42 knowledge actor-network theory 90, 92, 93, 103 distributed/situated cognition 90, 93, 103 Kohli, M. 9, 17, 50 labour force 98 Labow, W. 24 Langenhove, L. van 21 language knowledge of foreign languages 54, 55-6, 64, 68-9, 84 reality and 26-7 Lapps (SarnO 7, 13, 16, 54-9, 60, 62, 65, 67, 68-9, 81, 83, 94, 105-6 Lash, S. 94, 97

Latour, B. 90 Lave, J. 90, 91 learning autonomous 96, 97 definition 8, 100 domains and interests 68, 70, 71, 74, 75, 77, 78 negative experiences 55-6, 62, 69, 77 reflectivity of 70-1, 75, 76, 79 significant experiences 7, 8, 9, 16, 70-80, 97, 103 general and vocational education 68-70 significant others 80, 88, 93, 97, 103 theories 90-4 learning organizations 94-8, 103 learning society 7, 9-15, 88, 98-101, 103 liberal adult education 72, 88, 98 life history collaborative approach 6 ethical code of 3 generational analysis 34-5, 86 methodology 4-7 constructionist approach 18-20 data 16-17 experienced reality 27-30 fact and fiction 30-1 identity and autobiographical consciousness 20-2 linguistic construction 26-7 meaningful esperiences 24-6 memory and retrospection 22-4 perspectives 17-18, 31-3 textuality of 5-6, 18, 29-30 lifelong learning 4, 7, 10, 11, 98 Lindroos, R. 82 Livingstone, David 4, 82 Lopata, H.Z. 81 Luckmann, T. 23 Lyotard, J-C. 5 Makela, K. 42 Maljojoki, P. 85 Malmberg, T. 18 manipulative tools 97

123

Index Mannheim, K. 7, 25, 34, 36 March, J.G. 106 Marxism 5 maturation 80 McAdams, D.P. 21 McCall, M.M. 32 McLure, Maggie 5 Mead, G.H. 7, 21 Mead, M. 37 Measor, Lynda 3 media 76, 80 memory 22-4 Meyer, J.W. 9, 50 Mezirow, J. 70, 71, 74, 75, 77, 79 Middleton, D. 23 migration 42, 44 military service 77 Mishler, E.G. 18, 25, 28 mobility 42, 84-5 modernization 7, 50, 86-7 Morgan, G. 19 motivation 36-7, 50, 52 multicultural society 13, 65, 68-9, 87, 88,94 Nasta, T. 96, 97, 98 nation-building 93 nation states 46 Nederveen Pieterse, ]. 82, 94 Nespor, Jan 90-3 network theory 90, 92, 93, 103 networking 96 Nikander, P. 26 Nordic countries 6, 10, 15, 106 North America 98 Norway 65 ontology 19, 20 opportunity, structure of 35, 41-2, 46 Ostrobotnia 40 participation 82, 100 Peat, D. 31 Perlmutter, M. 9 personal identity 9, 53, 61-3, 72-3, 89 phenomenology 7, 17, 19 Pontinen, S. 34, 35

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popular adult education 72, 88, 98 Popular Memory Group 4 post-industrial society 46, 86 post-traditional society 100 postmodernism 5, 6, 86, 103 poststructuralism 6 Potter, J. 19, 21, 26 Protestant work ethic 44 Puuronen, V. 34-5 race 7 Ranson, S. 99-100 Rauhala, L. 19 reflectivity 70-1, 75, 76, 79 research bargain 3, 4 retrospection 22-4, 80 Rinne, R. 13, 14 Romanies (Gypsies) 13, 16, 65, 68 Romney, K.A. 22, 23 Roos, J.P. 5, 6, 14, 34, 35, 76 Runyan, W.M. 22 Russia 13 Rustanius, S. 30 Saarenheimo, M. 19-20, 22, 24 Salomon, G. 90 Sami people (Lapps) 7, 13, 16, 54-9, 60, 62, 65, 67, 68-9, 81, 83, 94, 105-6 Scandinavia 6, 10, 15, 106 schools 87-8, 97, 106 Schuman, H. 23 Schutz, A. 23 Schiitze, F. 82 Scott, J. 23 self-identity 20-1, 49, 53, 63-4, 89 'Shamrock Organizations' 98 Shaw, B. 17, 27 Shotter, J. 23, 101 Sikes, Patricia 3 situated cognition 90, 93, 103 Siurala, L. 87 skills 59-61, 66, 68, 71-2, 73-5, 77-8, 79 Smith, J.K. 19 social class 7, 9, 13, 16, 49, 61, 99, 101, 103

Index social identity 49, 53, 59-61, 72-3, 89 social memory 23-4 social movement 42, 84-5 social status 47, 59, 87, 102 social welfare 36, 46-9, 93 societal learning 7 solidarity 95, 97-8, 103 Sparkes, A. 97 Starr, ].M. 53 Stockholm 47 Stronach, Ian 5 structural change (Finland) 11, 36, 41-6, 86, 93, 102 Stubenrauch, H. 88 Sulkunen, P. 53 Sweden 47, 78, 106 Switzerland 47-8 Ternyik, S. 7, 104, 106 thematic interview 6, 7, 8, 16 Thomas, W.I. 8, 17, 32 Thompson, K.E. 94, 95 trust 97 Tuominen, E. 81 unemployment 81-2 universities 96 urbanization 42, 44 utopia 84-5

Valkeapaa, Nils-Aslak 94 Varila, ]. 78 Vera, H. 99 Viinamaki, L. 82 Vilkko, A. 25, 27 vocational education 10, 13, 59-61, 68-70,88 vocational pedagogical model 70 Vyborg 39 Vygotsky, L. 90, 91, 93 Waletzkey,]. 24 wartime 37-41, 55, 58, 71, 72, 93 we (community) 94-5 Weber, M. 94 Weckroth, K. 31 Weinert, A.]. et at. 53 Wenger, E. 90, 91 Wetherell, M. 19, 21, 26 Wexler, Philip 9, 94, 106 White, H. 18, 30 widowhood 81 Wittner, ]. 32 Young, M. 87, 106 Ziehe, Thomas 88 Znaniecki, F. 8, 17

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