European inventory of
societal values of culture

Kallunki & Purhonen – Cultural practices in the Finnish national core curriculum for basic education, 1985–2014.

Kallunki, J. & S. Purhonen (2023). Cultural practices in the Finnish national core curriculum for basic education, 1985–2014.

The educational system is a key institution through which cultural reproduction operates and, therefore, is of great importance for cultural policies. Bourdieu argued that the school, with its pedagogical activities, imposes on students upper-class cultural practices and ideals, thus making them legitimate. This gives an advantage to those students already familiar with upper-class practices because of their family background. We apply this model to the case of Finnish basic education, internationally renowned for its relative equality. Analysing the Finnish national core curriculum for basic education from 1985 to 2014 by means of content analysis, we interpret them as representing crucial legitimizing authority: if some cultural practice is mentioned in these documents, it is considered so important that it should be taught to everybody in Finland. Thus, we ask whether and to what extent does the Finnish basic education impose, through its core curriculum, upper-class cultural practices on all students.