Feeling the Nation through Exploring the City: Urban Pedagogy and Children’s Lived Experiences in Postwar Helsinki

Abstract

In the post-1945 world, Finnish schools were appointed the new task of fostering democratic values and educating peace-loving citizens. By exploring postwar art and environmental education in Helsinki, understood as means to expand children’s emotional competences, Malinen and Vahtikari provide a unique analysis of the ways educators, children and urban space co-produced the nation in everyday (school) practices. Malinen and Vahtikari show the importance of fully acknowledging the spatial, material and sensory aspects of emotions when discussing children’s emotional formation and historical manifestations of everyday nationalism. To illustrate the adult-children co-creation of different ideas, practices and emotions with respect to the national community, the chapter uses two sets of contemporary sources: educators’ writings and children’s drawings.

National indifferences during everyday nationalism: Experiencing the nation in Finland in the aftermath of the Second World War

“…The attachment to the nation was understood to develop through attachment to local everyday environments. This position was still very visible in the post‐war period, for example, in the school curricula (Malinen & Vahtikari, 2021). In this sense, post‐war localism, too, was ultimately a nationalist category.…”

“…These same activities, however, also provided possibilities to be indifferent towards the interwar educational ideals of obedience, national loyalty and patriotism-even of militarism-and to supersede these through the ambition to foster democratic values and inclusive, peace-loving world citizenship. This revision was strongly promoted in the Elementary School Committees and Curriculum work of the post-war era (Malinen & Vahtikari, 2021).…”

“…Firstly, based on earlier studies (e.g. Linkola, 2013; Linkola & Jokela, 2017; Malinen & Vahtikari, 2021; Paasi, 2016; Raento & Brunn, 2008), we already know that nationalism did not disappear but rather changed its form in the post‐war period. Is it possible to conceptualise this transformation in terms of national indifference?…”