The stages of development of the civic and workers' institutes

from a workers' institute to the whole nations's alma mater

• Kosti Huuhka

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33336/aik.96625

Abstract

In the article, the author describes the founding stage of the Workers’ Institutes (the adult education centres of today) and how these institutes which were originally meant for the working class, have gradually become adult education centres for the country’s adult population as a whole. The author sees the pre-World War I period as the having been the founding stage of the institutes (the first Workers’ Institute was founded in 1899), the period between the two World Wars as the period of stabilisation, and then the post-war years as the period of expansion. The article provides an outline of the characteristics of the foremost changes which have taken place in the workers’ institute movement’s development and student structure.