Judendomen i det kursbundna gymnasiets läroböcker i Finland

Authors

• Teuvo Virtanen Kajana

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30752/nj.69402

Keywords:

Education, Schools, Textbooks, Education -- Curriculum, Christianity and Judaism, Finland, Religious education, Swedish language, Judaism -- History

Abstract

Those who belong to the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland and attend upper school (gymnasium) are taught five courses in religion in the course of three years. Those who belong to the Orthodox Church are taught the same amount of courses. In the course on non-Christian religions Judaism in treated in addition to Hinduism, Buddhism, religions in China and Japan, and Islam. This means that Judaism, on average, gets five lessons, which is a very modest amount. In general it can be said that the upper school textbooks deal with Judaism impartially and that they do not contain errors in substance. They contain very little information about modern Judaism and about the Judaism of the diaspora. The text is largely filled with Biblical history, and when it comes to modern Judaism it deals mainly with questions with a political dimension such as the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. Another regrettable matter is the paucity of information concerning the Jews in Finland.