The problem of values in Finnish adult education

• Arvo Oksanen

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33336/aik.96873

Abstract

The roots of educational work extending throughout human personality go back to the value changes proven to be necessary by the events of the Civil War in Finland that followed on from World War I. The foundation was provided by humaneness and the central goal was that of a human being free to develop him/herself. Since those times, the debate on the values of adult education has become crystallized in the adult education committee reports prepared in the 1970s. The first partial report has the individual as its basis and the developing overall personality as its fundamental value. The second partial report is based on societal values and what their equivalents for the individual. The central adult education policy goal is educational equality. As such, it does, however, conflict with democracy's other basic values (e.g. the principle of freedom). Indeed, occasional attempts have been made to use liberal adult education for promoting counter culture. For the present, no such basic values have arisen as might be or should be used to replace what may be call traditiona! adult education values.