Primary Schools and Teacher Seminaries

In the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, there were many different kinds of schools in Finland, mostly available only for children and youth from the upper classes (see e.g. Halila 1949, 30–91). In both the Finnish and Ingrian countryside, parishioners received literacy instruction mainly at home or from a local churchwarden. Only confirmation school was mandatory for everyone;

it was ephemeral and limited in content but still had an effective impact on the de-velopment of literacy (Raski 1932, 72; Halila 1949, 86). On the initiative of pastors with a Pietistic background, Johan Fredrik Bergh (1795–1866) and F.G. Hedberg, Sunday schools reached many parishes in Finland from the 1830s onwards; in In-gria, the first Sunday schools started in the 1870s. These schools took many differ-ent shapes and structures in differdiffer-ent parishes; they could be rudimdiffer-entary primary schools or just small lessons within the prayer moments. The teachers were pastors, churchwardens and schooled laypeople, and gradually women also began to teach.

In the latter half of the century, there were also Sunday schools for workers in some factories in Finland. In Ingria, when the Russification policy restricted teach-ing Finnish and religion in primary schools, the importance of the Sunday school grew even more. In both Finland and Ingria, hymn-singing was an important part of Sunday schools (ibid., 169–173).

In Ingria, from the 1840s, there were annual Pastors’ Synods of the Saint Petersburg Consistorial District and in the same context meetings for the Finnish clergymen of Ingria. In those meetings, the pastors discussed questions of public education (Raski 1913, 19). The same kind of discussion was going on at the same time in Fin-land. One of the discussed topics was whether the office of schoolteacher should be combined with the one of churchwarden or not (K. Jalkanen 1976, 151–157).

For instance, a famous Fennoman philosopher and Finnish statesman, Johan Vil-helm Snellman suggested combining them (Saima 9 May 1846). In its proposal for the Senate, the Chapter of the Turku Diocese wanted to keep bishops and chapters as supervisors of the primary schools. Moreover, it thought that churchwardens should be teachers at primary schools or that, in fact, teachers should take care of churchwarden’s duties, which at the same time should diminish so that they should only take care of teaching children, conducting congregational singing and playing the organ (Ehdotuksia ja mietteitä 1856, 6–7, 13, 16, 27–30, 45). The Chapters of Porvoo and Kuopio Dioceses shared a similar view (ibid., 62–65, 71–72).

In the 1850s, besides from the chapters of the dioceses, the Finnish Senate collected proposals for a national school system from some individuals (Pajamo 1976, 52–53).

One of them was Pastor Uno Cygnaeus (1810–1888) whose proposal gained wide support in the Senate, and in 1858, he was invited to make a thorough proposal for the arrangement of the matter (ibid., 53–54). To collect information and influences from different school systems and teachers’ education, Cygnaeus travelled across Europe in 1858 and 1859 visiting Sweden, Denmark, many German States, Swit-zerland and Holland. In his opinion, the kindergartens in Hamburg and the Swiss school system were the best models for Finnish primary schools (Cygnaeus 1910, 35–65; Halila 1949, 270–278). Based on these experiences, Cygnaeus drew up a plan.

Even though many people, especially clergymen, opposed it (Halila 1949, 289–300;

Vuoristo 1959, 120–132), the Senate approved it in 1861. In Cygnaeus’ plan, pri-mary schools were separated from the supervision of the diocesan chapters and the office of the primary school teacher from the one of churchwarden (Cygnaeus 1910, 304–310; K. Jalkanen 1976, 157). According to this plan, the Jyväskylä Teacher Seminary was founded in 1863, and the primary school regulation was laid down by the Senate in 1866 (Imperial Announcement 11 May 1866; Pajamo 1976, 77). Even though the new national school system was independent of the Church, the new primary school was strongly a Christian school (Pajamo 1976, 110).

Finnish clergymen hoped that, although the offices of teacher and churchwarden were separate, churchwardens could be educated in the Jyväskylä Seminary, but the proposal was not supported. As a result, four separate churchwarden-organist schools were founded in Finland. Nevertheless, the curriculum of the Jyväskylä Seminary was influenced by combined churchwarden-teacher seminaries in Central Europe and Baltic countries. For instance, in the governorate of Livonia, a semi-nary was set up in 1839 with a mission to prepare teachers for primary schools and churchwardens for Lutheran parishes. At first, the seminary was located in Valmiera, but ten years later it was moved to Valga. During his travels, Uno Cygnaeus visited the Wettingen Seminary in Switzerland and copied the curriculum of singing teach-ing from there. It included three skills: steach-ingteach-ing, playteach-ing the violin and playteach-ing the organ, but the Inspection Committee, appointed by the Senate, later dismissed vio-lin-playing (cf. Cygnaeus 1910, 58, 246–247; Pajamo 1976, 73–75). One of the aims of singing teaching was to improve congregational singing, and the idea of teaching organ-playing was to train teachers to be able to accompany the Divine Services in the churches (Cygnaeus 1910, 245–247; see also the proposal of the Chapter of the Turku Diocese, Ehdotuksia ja mietteitä 1856, 48–49).

In Ingria, in contrast, in the same year of 1863 the Kolppana Churchwarden and Teacher Seminary was established for preparing both teachers and churchwardens, the same way as in the Valga Seminary in Livonia (Kolppanan seminaari 1913, 166–

169; Murtorinne 2015, 168–170). Nevertheless, the goal first and foremost was to educate teachers for primary schools; educating churchwardens was not considered as important. For that reason, music education was meagre, even though the cur-riculum included more music than the Jyväskylä Seminary in Finland (KA, Archives of the Kolppana Teacher Seminary, Ba:2, Da:6; Iho 1950, 164). However, a typical feature of the Russian primary school system in the late nineteenth century was that there were several overlapping school networks. In addition to the schools run by Lutheran parishes, there were schools established by local government, patrons, the Ministry of Public Education, organisations, various state institutions and sep-arate ethnic communities. As a result of the Russification policy, Finnish schools were transferred in 1891 from the control of Lutheran parishes to the Ministry of National Education. At the same time, the language of instruction changed to Rus-sian, and Finnish teaching was allowed only as an additional subject after the actual

school day ended (Kalinitchev 2016, 245, 253). In addition, since the 1832 Church Law, authorised by the Tsar, was still in force and according to which the religion teacher of Lutheran children had to be Lutheran, religion was still taught in Finnish (Jääskeläinen 1980, 18).

Another question discussed from as early as the 1840s was whether singing should be a mandatory subject in primary schools or not. Both Cygnaeus (1910, 274, 280) and the Inspection Committee wanted it mandatory (Pajamo 1976, 60–61). In other Nordic countries, singing in the school meant only church-singing, but in Finland, based on Cygnaeus’ proposal, hymns and liturgical melodies were included in the curricula, but patriotic and folk songs were also in use (ibid., 57, 62). Soon after es-tablishing the primary school system, secular songs were opposed by many teachers, but little by little the attitudes changed (ibid., 136–138). Nevertheless, church-singing has a strong position in primary schools, not only in singing lessons, but every school day started and ended with a prayer and a hymn. Moreover, pupils were instructed to go to church every Sunday, and teachers were supposed to rehearse hymns sung in those Divine Services in advance (Cygnaeus 1910, 335, 343; Pajamo 1976, 109).

The discussion continued in the 1870s at the official primary school meetings. Some of the participants wanted to focus only on church-singing, whereas the others con-sidered the nationalist agenda as the most important thing in teaching singing (Kan-sakoulukokous 1875, 9–16). There was also discussion on using school children as precentors at the Divine Services. Notably, none of the participants was against this proposal in general; they were only opposed to the idea that it should happen every Sunday because in that case, hymn-singing would have taken the whole time in sing-ing lessons, and there would have not been time for secular songs and note teachsing-ing at all (Kansakoulukokous 1873, 23–26).

In the Kolppana Seminary, both the solo and four-part singing repertoire included only religious and patriotic songs; for instance, there were no vocalises at all, as it was in the Jyväskylä Seminary and Finnish churchwarden-organist schools (KA, Archives of the Kolppana Teacher Seminary, Da:6). Nevertheless, there is no need to underestimate the importance of the teachers and churchwardens educated in Kolppana for the Ingrian-Finnish singing movement. They were the leading figures who established and conducted choirs and brass bands in their various localities (Inkeri 25/1924, 355–356; Murtorinne 2015, 174).