Rethinking Finland’s Official Bilingualism in Education

Finland is an officially bilingual country with two national languages, Finnish and Swedish. Comprehensive education is organised along two separate, monolingual strands. The separation of Swedish- and Finnish-medium schools has been presented as a precondition for protecting Swedish language. However, while the present educational policies promote multilingualism, some critical questions concerning the system based on language separation arise. In both Finnish-medium and Swedish-medium schools, the linguistic backgrounds of pupils are increasingly diverse. In the past decade, an increasing demand for bilingual educational solutions has emerged among the families where both national languages are spoken but also among non-Swedish-speaking families. Using a theoretical framework influenced by the notion of linguistic governance, this chapter illuminates how some educational practices are considered as thinkable and others as threatening the status quo of Finland’s societal bilingualism. Placing monolingual Finnish- and Swedish-medium schools in shared facilities has encountered resistance and revealed a monolingual spatial ideology. Instead, bilingual practices maintaining institutional separation, such as bilingual education for Finnish-speakers have been proposed as acceptable solutions. In the most recent of these debates, such as in the planning process of a bilingual public school in the capital, Helsinki, discourses of profit and commodification of language are starting to unfold. The chapter concludes that the question of state bilingualism in Finnish schooling might be heading towards increasing differentiation in relation to the national languages.