The movement behind the proposed legislation wants to relegate Swedish in schools from a compulsory to an elective subject in the hope that the measure will increase appetites for learning other languages. The grass roots organisation has argued that compulsory teaching of Swedish has led to a deficiency in the proficiency of other global languages.
“The idea is that we would increase the optionality of language learning in Finland. We spend a lot of time learning Swedish, and we believe that time could be spent either learning English or introducing other options. In all likelihood there would be an increase in the teaching of other major global languages such as Spanish, French, German and Russian,” said school principal Arto Juntunen, who is also education director for Tohmajärvi in eastern Finland.
“We are giving the Swedish state quite a competitive advantage given that Swedes learn many more world languages. We on the other hand are using many teaching hours learning Swedish, which unfortunately is not a global language,” Juntunen added.
So far the petition to abolish compulsory Swedish in schools has gathered support from 62,000 people. Citizens’ initiatives that have the support of more 50,000 signatories must be considered by the Parliament.
