Dealing with Culture in Schools: A Small-Step Approach Towards Anti-racism in Finland

2017

This chapter discusses anti-racism education by focusing on how culture is used in educational discourses in Finland. More and more studies highlight the pervasive use of culture as a substitute for race, urging scholars to explore how and why cultural claims are made relevant (Breidenbach and Nyiri 2009; Piller 2011). Culture is present in numerous subjects (e.g. religion, literature, history, languages) and anti-racism education should therefore be understood from a holistic perspective. This chapter focuses on the Finnish context which is relevant to examine for two main reasons. First, Finnish school system is globally represented as high quality. Second, the new national curriculum, wh…