From influencing school food to handling hate speech: Methods,areas,and limitations of active citizenship in Finnish social studies textbooks

Abstract

Historically, education for active citizenship has not been a high priority in Finnish schools. In this discursive study of Finnish social studies textbooks for grades 4–6, we investigate how students are encouraged to practice active citizenship, where the focus of active citizenship lies, and how active citizenship is limited in antidemocratic ways. Referring to the theoretical discussion about democracy in education, we note a discursive focus on individual influencing and communication skills as methods for active citizenship education. We find that active citizenship focuses on students’ immediate surroundings, the school, and the local area as potential fields of influence. We note how antidemocratic threats to active citizenship are often portrayed with a focus on individual feelings and manners, not on understanding democratic structures and antidemocratic threats such as silencing voices through online hate speech. We welcome a discussion about how young students can become active citizens, by encouraging a more democratic classroom culture within social studies, thereby creating space for imagining alternative futures and utopian thinking.

Keywords

active citizenship democracy online hate speech social studies education textbooks

Introduction

Social studies education entails learning how society works, but also how to improve society. Teaching students that society is a product of active citizenship and democratic decision-making requires an understanding of theoretical as well as practical dimensions. Students need to learn about society and how social change has taken place, and to understand how they themselves can be an active part of society as an arena for active citizenship and democracy. In this study, we turn to the textbooks used in Finnish social studies for grades 4–6 to ask questions regarding the how and what of active citizenship. How are students encouraged to practice active citizenship? Which parts of society are presented as potential areas of active citizenship? What are the potential limitations to active citizenship? We argue for a need to reconsider the framing of active citizenship in a way that makes democratic structures more visible and that better recognizes children as political agents. Before moving on to analyzing and discussing textbook findings, we refer to some of the background and theoretical concerns around teaching active citizenship and democratic participation in school.

Historically, Finnish basic education has not paid as much attention to education for active citizenship as it has to developing other skills. The early 2000s in Finland witnessed a renewed interest in school democracy after several decades of diminishing interest (Rautiainen, 2022). This was the result of high-level political concern over low voter turnout (Hansen, 2016). The IEA Civics Study (Torney-Purta, 2002) had shown that Finnish students, while having political knowledge, did not appreciate democratic decision-making. The government program aimed at increasing democratic participation came to be largely centered on school education (Hansen, 2016), with the focus on increasing awareness about the election system and ways of influencing society, as well as enhancing youth participation in schools and organizations through different national participation projects. The IEA Civics Study had also pointed to the short amount of teaching time devoted to the subject of social studies in Finland compared to other countries (Suutarinen, 2000). Until 2014, social studies as a school subject was only studied in grade 9. The 2014 curriculum meant that the subject was taught in earlier years (4–6) for the first time (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2014). Social studies for grades 4–6 (10–12 year-olds) was developed to provide students with opportunities to discuss and practice democratic skills and decision-making, to learn to act as a member of society, and to handle one’s own economy (Löfström, 2015, 2019). The core idea of introducing the subject to younger students was for the teaching to focus less on facts, such as how institutions work, and more on developing participatory skills, thereby making social studies for years 4–6 more of a space for active citizenship and democratic discussions.

Tracing active citizenship in Finnish social studies education

Children’s societal participation as a task for education has been theorized from different perspectives, but there is still considerable ambiguity about what it entails (Thomas and Percy-Smith, 2009). It seems that educators generally appreciate the concept of democratic education, but know less about how to implement it (Collins et al., 2019). In Finland, there have been several projects devoted to increasing democratic education within schools (Rautiainen, 2022), however, there are few signs of change toward more democratic participation at the classroom level. Finnish teachers seem to downplay elements of active citizenship in the classroom (Fornaciari, 2022). Creating space for children’s participation requires a change toward the recognition of children’s voices – voices from the margins of society (Fitzgerald et al., 2009). Hiljanen (2022) expresses concern over the fact that in an average Finnish secondary school classroom, only one-fifth of students choose to express their opinion if it differs from what they consider to be the dominant opinion in the classroom. A third of the students in his study stated that their teachers rarely or never encouraged students to discuss with people who held differing opinions. The notion that students are left alone with their unchallenged thoughts is discouraging from the point of view of democratic education.

Educating for democratic participation can take many forms. Sant (2019) identifies eight distinctive versions, ranging from elitist, to neoliberal, participatory and agonistic understandings of democracy. As examples, deliberative democracy in education emphasizes communication skills, while participatory democratic education favors action and praxis over communication and consensus. Within critical democratic education, the ability to pursue equality and social transformation is highlighted, and questions of power are addressed. For critical democratic educators, the proposed area of action is of interest. As shown by Männistö (2020), democratic education in Finland is strongly tied to a traditional, representational understandings of democracy, even though Finnish policy documents have emphasized the needs for every individual’s active democratic agency, or what could be understood as deliberative, or even critical democratic education.

Preparing young people to become citizens who can interact within a free democratic society requires practice (Collins et al., 2019). Through democratic participation in education, students can learn to live together and listen to each other in the classroom, turning education into a place for curiosity and negotiations (Tammi, 2017). This requires teachers to regard their classrooms as places where the political begins to take place in the minds of students, through everyday discussions about choices and priorities, human conditions, power, and norms, creating space for democracy. This not only concerns the physical classroom, as social studies provides ample opportunity for teachers to experiment with methods – such as leaving the physical classroom to study society in the same way that biology teachers might take students to the forest (Mikander, 2016: 44), bearing in mind that most Finnish social studies teachers rarely or never used to take their class out during social studies courses (Ouakrim-Soivio, 2014).

Social studies is not the only school subject that entails the task of active citizenship, but its role is evident. Besand (2020) sees this task as helping students become self-determined, political individuals. Even the youngest students have the potential to learn to see themselves as political actors (Utler, 2021), although the political information and facts that they learn need to be attached to something meaningful for themselves. This is challenging concerning the ambiguous, if not minimal, political role that children tend to have in many societies (Osler and Kato, 2022). Children are not seriously included in political decision-making. Perhaps this is why much of student participation within schools often fails: students might be forced to participate in activities against their own interests, or the participation might be a mere simulation (Besand, 2020). Consequently, teaching young students that the world is open to their political participation poses a challenge. One way to approach this is by spelling out the contingent nature of society, portraying social structures as a result of political decisions. Elections, libraries, courts, national borders, and multinational organizations all exist because some people at some point in history have thought that they are needed and have been able to push through their case.

Besides considering the past, learning about society includes considering the future. Teaching for active citizenship could ask which of the above-mentioned institutions we want to keep, strengthen or discard in the future. Which new ones do we want to create? Eskelinen (2019, 2020) encourages thinking about utopias as highly relevant to the concept of democracy. Limiting societal participation to choosing between ready-made (consumerist) alternatives thereby becomes an antidemocratic goal, reducing the creativity that is needed for education to be authentic. Eskelinen’s version of utopia is not an individual act of daydreaming, but about highlighting imagination as a collective and reflexive skill. Introducing utopian thinking into democratic education could potentially make young people’s agency more visible when teaching about active citizenship.

The concepts used to describe the teaching of active citizenship and democratic education within documents such as curricula and textbooks carry a wealth of meaning. As opposed to earlier decades, in the 21st century, the Finnish discussion avoided the concept of democratic education in favor of concepts such as active citizenship, but also influencing (Finnish: vaikuttaminen, Swedish: att påverka) (Rautiainen, 2022). It is worth pointing out that the concept of influencing, which is increasingly common and has even lent its name to one of the book series in social studies (The influencer I and II, part of the data in this study), tends to direct the reader’s thoughts toward making an impact on society without the social component of organizing. To outline the distinction between individual and collective orientations of citizenship, we disentangle the central concepts as follows: influencing society is primarily an individual act, while concepts such as participation and involvement require social engagement, in a way that active citizenship can be seen to comprehend. The decline of traditional party memberships and the rise of digital media technology have undeniably coincided with this development, giving more importance to individuality within the political sphere. We regard the choice of words used to describe active citizenship as an expression of discourse. The change from active citizenship and democratic education toward influencing as an over-arching concept within social studies education reveals a shift from social organizing toward individual acts as a primary motivator for social studies education.

Active citizenship in social studies textbooks

Research into Finnish school textbooks on the subject of social science has shed light on several relevant considerations. Most studies have been conducted on books aimed at grade 9, since the textbooks for grades 4–6 have only existed since the 2014 national core curriculum (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2014). Grade 9 social science textbooks have previously been studied from the perspective of active citizenship. While Virta’s (2000) study saw social science textbooks as presenting society in a way that did not encourage much critical enquiry, her later research included textbooks with concrete examples of civic engagement that exceeded traditional representative democracy (Virta, 2000, 2006). Examples of changes in the early 21st century textbooks include mentions of civil society and organizations as part of democracy, as well as an emphasis on the right of individuals to get involved in action, including images of civil disobedience. Virta (2006) considers the choice to include references to social movements and modes of action as a way to combat future political alienation among young people.

In a study of the historical development of the image of the ideal citizen within social studies curricula and textbooks, Arola (2014) notes a change, with the ideal citizen increasingly becoming a part of the economic cycle. Löfström and van Den Berg (2013) also criticize Finnish upper secondary school social studies curricula and textbooks for presenting economic policy as neutral, duly masking political interests. They find that politics is presented as detached from economic processes. This is an example of limiting the sphere of democracy when presenting society (see Eskelinen, 2020: 152), making utopian imagination harder, if not impossible. In Finnish textbooks for basic education across the curriculum, democracy is presented as an already achieved goal in Finland and other democratic countries, the only conceivable alternative being dictatorship, which does not encourage rethinking the existing social structures (Satokangas, 2021).

A large international textbook study showed that social movements are downplayed in social studies textbooks, something that the authors consider a way to depoliticize them (Skinner and Bromley, 2019). One study that is particularly relevant to our focus concerns how four Finnish social science textbooks for years 4–6 present society, social structures, temporalities and identities (Hansen and Puustinen, 2021). The authors’ main concern is related to the lack of historical consciousness in the representation of society, something that stands in the way of imagining society as different. They also noted an imbalance between the curriculum and the textbooks, where the curriculum emphasizes participation while the studied textbooks focused more on societal and juridical rules and expectations. Additionally, the sections about participation and decision-making focused on introducing students to political institutions, not on encouraging participation.

Discourse analysis of social studies textbooks

Considering the idea that active citizenship needs to be directed toward something substantial, and bearing in mind the requirement for democracy to be authentic and creative, the focus in this article is on how Finnish school textbooks portray methods, areas, and limitations of active citizenship. The data for this research project consist of a total of six Finnish textbooks representing three book series in social studies for grades 4–6, covering all the textbooks published by the main publishers in Finnish in social studies for the target group, printed between the years 2016 and 2021. The textbooks studied are Forum I and II, ME NYT [We now] I and II and Vaikuttaja [The influencer] I and II. While Forum and Vaikuttaja follow a more traditional textbook pattern, with background stories in separate boxes and factual chapters as the main text type, ME NYT is based on dialogs that take place in a fictional classroom, with only a limited amount of factual text. Textbooks can be considered widely used in Finnish teaching. While textbooks are not the only teaching material available for social studies, their role appears unthreatened. In 2012, 85% of Finnish social studies teachers reported that they use textbooks ‘often’ or ‘always’ in their teaching, and 81% of the teachers considered the textbooks an important source of information (Ouakrim-Soivio and Kuusela, 2012: 35–38). Considering that many teachers find relying on textbooks less creative and professional, the numbers are likely to be underreported (Mikander, 2016: 17–18). Additionally, social studies in grades 4–6 is taught by classroom teachers, who might be more prone to use textbooks than subject teachers (Löfström, 2019), who have a stronger academic social science background.

Textbooks are core features of the curriculum, placed between educational policy and instructional patterns in classrooms (Meyer et al., 2010). We choose to focus on textbooks for grades 4–6 not only because the subject is new and sparsely researched on these grades, but also because the textbooks are the first to introduce the concept of active citizenship to the students. Since social studies was introduced to grades 4–6 with one aim being to practice active citizenship skills and democratic discussions (Löfström, 2015), it becomes relevant to consider how the textbooks have done this. To investigate the means of pedagogically representing possibilities of practicing active citizenship, we analyze the textbooks using discourse analysis (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985/2001). From a discursive perspective, textbooks are societal artifacts, and hence products of society, but they also influence society by creating an understanding of shared, objective knowledge. Discourse analysis traces the production of what is constructed as real and true through talk, text, and actions (Winther Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002). On a textual level, the construction of individual agency and the surrounding societal reality can be unraveled by examining how social actors are constructed in the text and how different roles are allocated to them (see van Leeuwen, 1996). More specifically, linguistic choices such as semantic roles, active and passive voice, and nominalization can be discerned as means of positioning social actors: who is represented as an active agent, who is able to act and make choices, who is the object of action, or a passive observer – or is agency left unexplicated altogether (Johnstone, 2001: 46–47)? Following Laclau and Mouffe’s terminology, these choices made in the text can be seen as articulations of hegemony, creating an ostensibly objective representation of the world. Discourses are not simply about language and opinions, they also carry a material dimension. This makes actions, for instance within school education, part of discourse. In Mikander’s (2016: 50) example, a school assignment urging students to draw borders between regions of the world is an expression of discourse, but how the students choose to draw the borders is also an expression within a discourse.

For this study, we considered excerpts from the school textbook texts, assignments, and pictures as articulations within a discourse, focusing on aspects of active citizenship in the textbooks. We analyzed the whole textbooks, concentrating on chapters covering active citizenship, but also paid attention to when references to active citizenship was brought up in relation to other topics, such as the economy. The focal sequences, analyzed below as examples, were selected in a circular process of operationalization and interpretation (Wodak and Meyer, 2016: 14). We operationalized the notion of active citizenship into a tool of text analysis by interpreting specific sequences – those discussing the possibilities for the reader to act as an active democratic citizen in society – as indicators of the construction of active citizenship and democratic agency (see Wodak and Meyer, 2016: 14–16). A context-based interpretive reading also enabled us to discuss how parts of society were presented as outside of the area of active citizenship. We were curious about how the textbooks discursively frame the possibilities and limitations with regard to active citizenship. We looked for discursive patterns, but also discursive leaks (see Ideland and Malmberg, 2014). The selected citations represent the identified discourses, as well as counterdiscursive articulations that we find, particularly in the ME NYT series.

Possibilities and methods of active citizenship

In the following, we discuss the results of our discourse analysis, starting with how the textbooks describe methods suggested for active citizenship, before moving on to the expected areas of active citizenship, and the described limitations of these. We consider these questions to provide a sense of how the textbooks present active citizenship: How can change take place? What, as seen discursively in the textbooks, can be changed? What cannot? And finally, what happens when active citizenship is hindered in antidemocratic ways?

Planning and communicating: The art of making an impact

Historically, change in society has taken place as a result of a number of different kinds of action: from petitions and proposals to strikes and social unrest. We wanted to know how the textbooks portray how students were encouraged to carry out active citizenship. We found the discursive construction of methods for active citizenship interesting from the point of view of individual or collective action. We also discuss the portrayal of needed skills for active citizenship.

Even though the word influencing, which is frequently used in the textbook material, carries more of an individualistic meaning than other related concepts such as participation, the books generally make it clear that active citizenship needs a collective effort. There are exceptions, however, like stories about individual youth whose individual actions make change happen. There are also articulations that turn the focus onto individual, rather than collective problems, such as the following assignment: ‘3. Think about what you would like to influence in your own life. What would be the best way to influence your chosen cause? Write about it’ (Vaikuttaja I: 37). This task turns the focus of the student from considering active citizenship as collective action toward an individualistic point of view, where ‘influencing’ becomes an act of promoting one’s own cause. It does not encourage the student to consider societal change as a collective effort.

By far the most common way of influencing society, covered in all of the textbooks, is different forms of communication. Being able to communicate one’s agenda is highlighted as the main form of practicing active citizenship. The discourse of active citizenship as communication includes recommendations to write opinion pieces, blogs, and social media posts. In order for attempts at influencing through communicating to be successful, there is an emphasis on learning rhetorical and negotiation skills:

[. . .] If your family is planning a day off at the zoo, but you want to go to the fun fair, negotiation skills are needed. By motivating your opinion well, you can have an influence on what is done. (Forum I: 26)

The reader, addressed as you, is here positioned in the role of a (potential) semantic agent (see Johnstone, 2001: 46) that can have an influence on collective action; notably, this agency is gained via rhetoric communication: negotiation and motivation. Writing clearly and avoiding spelling mistakes are also mentioned as important (Forum II: 39). The emphasis on having the right communication skills could be seen as signs of deliberative democracy, which has been criticized for favoring those who know how to speak up for themselves, such as children from a higher class background (Sant, 2019). While the advice can certainly be beneficial to some students, those struggling with language might find it discouraging, especially if understood as if you need to be able to master language perfectly to make your voice heard. Practicing active citizenship is, however, not just portrayed as a matter of a person voicing their opinion, as is highlighted in ME NYT II. In one chapter, fictive students discuss collectively in class how they can work to increase support for their cause, which is to stop the cancellation of a weekly vegetarian food day. The students and their teacher Väinö discuss different ways, including the use of scientific research as a basis for their campaign:

- ‘One study showed that it took about two years for schoolchildren to get used to vegetarian food’, Minni summed up.

- ‘I think that’s very useful information’, Väinö said thoughtfully (ME NYT II: 41).

The way the chapter approaches the art of practicing active citizenship can be seen in contrast to the more common way of one person having an opinion and voicing it. Through a dialog between students and their teacher, it becomes clear that making an impact requires cooperation and learning. Limiting active citizenship to the art of communication (Satokangas and Mikander, 2023) might be understandable in the media landscape, which is reality not just for students, but society as a whole today. What the textbook dialog shows is that active citizenship needs a collective effort, since opinions and visions rarely emerge from individual thoughts but as a result of conversation, listening to differing voices, and engaging others to find an opinion and, perhaps, join the cause. The dialog also connects active citizenship and social change to learning, and to the value of using research as a basis for action.

School food and the local area: Expected areas of active citizenship

To understand how the textbooks portrayed possible areas of active citizenship, we observed which examples the books represented. A general approach in the social studies textbooks is that active citizenship starts close to the students’ own sphere. This can mean focusing on rules at school or in the classroom. As an example, the textbook ME NYT asks students in an initial chapter to form an opinion about a fictive list of school rules, and to consider whether they seem fair, as well as to come up with a set of more equitable rules. It is worth pointing out that questions about education itself, such as form, content or evaluation, are not used as examples where students are expected to actively exert influence within the school. Rather, the areas of influence tend to focus on how students should treat each other, and on extracurricular activities, such as the program for the Christmas celebrations. These areas can be considered as significant for the students, since the school rules and the Christmas program are relevant for their everyday lives, however, they are not necessarily connected to learning to seeing themselves as political actors (Utler, 2021), in a way that having an influence on more substantial elements of education would have.

One commonly portrayed area of influence is school food. Food can be highly political, considering the rights of minorities to observe certain diets, and the environmental impact of increasing vegetarian or vegan options. For this reason, it is noteworthy how depoliticized the discourse around influencing school food is portrayed. The only exception to this is the above-mentioned segment in ME NYT which features a group of students who want to campaign for more vegetarian food in their school. One example of the depoliticized nature of school food is a story in Vaikuttaja I, in which four classmates are sitting in the cafeteria and discussing why school food is ‘always so bad’:

[. . .] Veera, in turn, was excited about soup day. Miro was not interested in it at all. He thought that the only important thing was that there was enough food. Luca was deep in his own thoughts, moving a piece of carrot around on his plate.

- ‘We should have an opportunity to choose what we put in our mouths’, Maiju said in a grumpy tone.

- ‘What if we suggested that the school could have a favorite food day? It could be once a month, and students could have an influence on it. Wouldn’t that be fair?’, Veera suggested. (36)

The four children show frustration over not being heard, and they come up with a concrete idea to change this. Having a favorite food day is, according to Veera, something that would ‘be fair’. Another textbook uses school food as an entry into the idea that students can have an impact. A chapter on influencing starts with a story about Martha, a Scottish girl who did not find school food ‘very appealing’ (Forum I: 26). The textbook tells the story of how she started taking pictures of her school food portions, reviewing their taste and healthiness:

[. . .] A picture of dried noodles next to a solitary fish stick got a lot of attention around the world. Thanks to Martha’s blog, things started changing and schools in Great Britain began to offer healthier food to children. (p. 26)

It is understandable that school food would be chosen as a theme since most students probably have an opinion about how it could be improved. However, framing the problem as mainly about food that is ‘bad’ or nobody’s ‘favorite’ is unnecessarily apolitical. It does not connect the discussion about school food to, for instance, questions of sustainability or economic priorities. Highlighting Martha’s story also illustrates how easily active citizenship turns into a matter of having an opinion and voicing it in the correct way, through the correct medium. It portrays Martha’s case as a highly individualized success story, where the use of social media made things change.

A second area used as an example of active citizenship is the local community. Vaikuttaja II includes a story about children who draw up a petition to preserve their local library and build a youth center. This fictive story is later referred to in the following chapters about how local decision-making works. Forum I includes assignments where students are asked to engage in improving the local area, based on images that show problematic (sub)urban areas. In one of the assignments, a car passes young people who are trying to play floorball on the street near an overfull garbage can (p. 28). Students are asked which things the people in the picture should try to influence. The answer seems to be that students should try to influence local decision-makers to arrange safer places for young people to play floorball, and maybe to empty garbage cans more often – maybe even to restrict access for cars within the area. Anyway, the portrayed area of influence is limited. From a democratic point of view, the potential for change and influence should be as wide as possible, at least in a theoretical way, to avoid mere simulation of active citizenship (Besand, 2020). It is understandable that examples in the textbooks start from areas that can be considered close to students’ own lives. However, the perspective makes a difference. In many of the above-listed examples, the political nature of the area of active citizenship, or influence, is disregarded.

Keeping up with what future company managers want – Limiting active citizenship

It is worth emphasizing that the concept of active citizenship is visible mainly in chapters that focus on the very topic. Other areas of society are presented as more or less given. Texts that describe institutions such as the municipal government do not include assignments that encourage questioning their area of influence, or tenure period, even though a student could potentially be inspired by such questions, since these would encourage students to see themselves as actors and society as a product of political choices.

An area that is presented as particularly given is the economy and working life. Even the book series ME NYT, which uses a fictive class as the basis for all of its subject areas, and which otherwise includes most references that might inspire criticism and thinking, generally has a fixed approach to questions regarding the economy. Following Hansen and Puustinen’s (2021) study, which noted that the future is presented as determined, we found little room for active citizenship in the form of constructing a better future. Vaikuttaja II includes an assignment that asks students to draw a picture of a profession that will exist in the future, but does not exist now (p. 46). This is an example of describing the future as open, giving the students space for action and even (with a little goodwill) utopian thinking. However, it does not promote collaboration, such as listening to each other and collectively thinking about what the future could be like. There are plenty of articulations in the textbooks that construct another form of discourse, in which the student has very limited agency. Generally in the textbooks, there is a dominant discourse in which students are not encouraged to consider future societal developments as an area open to active citizenship. Instead, an individualistic, conformative and even pressurizing perspective can be detected in the descriptions of the future:

Even if you don’t know what your dream is yet, you should study so well that you have a chance for anything! . . . We should be ready to acquire new skills because the world is changing all the time. (Forum II: 98)

Here, the reader, addressed as you, is allocated an active role in the action of studying; however, this action is only a way to react to future world (of employment) that in itself is presented as a force of nature and beyond the influence of the reader. The idea that citizens are expected to anticipate unforeseeable changes that occur automatically in society is not just a nearly impossible task, but also the very opposite of what active citizenship education could aspire to become, in order to promote active citizenship. Combining the topics of the economy and the future, the textbook in question underlines the impossibility of democracy as imagining the world otherwise, propagating a kind of cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011) that gives future citizens few options and a silenced voice:

What does all this mean for today’s student? The fact that you know how to use computers skillfully now will not guarantee you a job in five years, because there will be new things to learn all the time. That’s why it’s worth keeping up with developments. Company managers hope for future employees who know how to work with others and who constantly want to learn new things. (bold in original) (Forum II: 103)

The excerpt is a case in point how a text can, by role allocation, ‘represent people being out of control of their destinies in the most fundamental ways’ (Johnstone, 2001: 47). The reader in this discourse is given a reactive role in keeping up with developments, instead of a proactive one in being part of them. In the quote above, the will of company managers is the only voice that matters. The statement thereby gives authority to this faceless power, not only leaving the student in a nearly impossible situation (to keep up with the described demands), but even naturalizing the idea that the future is determined by fictive future company managers, not by what tomorrow’s active citizens decide to want to fight for, together. As Männistö (2020) shows, this discursive construction is in contrast with democratic participation, since it veils the dynamic character of collective development.

That is called trolling! Antidemocratic behavior as threats to active citizenship

The textbooks include chapters about online behavior. We found these relevant to include in the analysis of active citizenship, since online hate speech is a problem for democracy, because of its silencing effect, that often targets women and minorities (Knuutila et al., 2019; Pöyhtäri et al., 2013). Research shows that young people are exposed to hateful online content to a large extent (Keipi et al., 2016). There are plenty of definitions of hate speech, but something they have in common is that the term refers to a phenomenon that hinders dialog, creates self-censorship, and incites a feeling of insecurity and violence (Carlberg et al., 2021). If one important goal of social studies education is to equip the reader with readiness to societal action, hate speech and other mechanisms of silencing voices are relevant dimensions of the existing social structures that this action takes place within. How do textbooks prepare the reader for this environment in which antidemocratic forces are also at play?

We found that the textbook chapters about online hate speech often connected to attempts at active citizenship. In practice, this means different stories in which students who try to make an impact but are ridiculed online. Considering these descriptions as portrayals of antidemocratic forces coming into play, we found it worthwhile to analyze how the textbooks frame hate speech and how they encouraged students to deal with the expressions. We were curious to see to which degree online hate speech was politicized as antidemocratic acts. The analysis shows that the textbook approach the phenomenon of online hate speech in relation to acts of active citizenship, but they frame it differently. Within some textbook there is a discourse that trivializes, or depoliticizes it, such as in Forum I, where the reader is thought of mainly as somebody who sends, not receives online hate speech:

Everyone acts thoughtlessly sometimes. However, stupid tricks on social media leave a mark, and nasty messages may come back to you even years later, even if you delete the messages yourself. (p. 96)

Using words like ‘goofing’ and ‘stupid tricks’ to describe unwanted online behavior runs the risk of trivializing its societal impact. It is possible to see the good intentions behind this, considering how normal the phenomenon is. Perhaps the idea is not to let anyone become discouraged. Interestingly, however, the object in the description above is not the person targeted by hateful content, but the producer, who might have to face his or her deeds later. The text continues to warn the reader, ‘You should also remember not to accidentally hurt someone online’ (Forum I: 97). This could be read as if hate speech was an accidental act. Even though describing the act as hurtful is probably the most easily understood as far as young students are concerned, it would be beneficial to apply a more structural explanation to the phenomenon, such as describing it as an act of silencing. This would turn the attention away from individual feelings toward more structural democratic challenges.

Vaikuttaja I includes a chapter that focuses on online hate speech. It starts with a background story about students who have been asked to post journal updates on a school blog. Irina is one of the students:

Irina was updating the journal when she noticed her picture. Underneath the picture was a comment that read: ‘Irina is a stupid and ugly cow!’ Irina frantically tried to delete the comment, but couldn’t, because only the administrator had the right to delete comments. Irina turned off the computer in horror. The next day, there was talk all around school. Some giggled when Irina walked by. Others pointed and laughed openly. Irina thought that she would die of shame. How did everyone already know? After all, the blog was supposed to be private and only intended for their own class. (Vaikuttaja I: 68)

The text talks about how students can steer clear of online bullying, support bullying victims, and report online bullying to adults. It does not, however, refer to Irina’s democratic right to make her voice heard online, or link the comments she received to any kind of political or structural perspectives. Calling a female student stupid and a fat cow is clearly misogynistic. This connection is not made. The students learn that Irina was about to die of shame, but not that she was silenced with reference to well-known antifeminist rhetoric. It is almost as if the problem lay in her updating the school blog, not the online hate that she was a victim of.

On the topic of freedom of speech, the same book includes another story about comments on a school blog. Another girl, Veera, finds a comment on her post about soup:

“Dear Soup friend. Nobody cares about you and your opinions. You’re obviously pretty stupid for thinking other people like soup as much as you do. Soup is for losers, so keep your soup and do us all a big favor: stop posting here”. Nickname: The true inventor of Favourite food day (Vaikuttaja I: 42)

The above-mentioned comment could easily point to how the very meaning of harmful comments often is silencing. The textbook text, however, does not focus on this, instead it shifts the discussion toward an interpersonal conflict. It turns out that Veera knows that Maiju, another girl in class, is behind the comment, and she decides that she will tell Maiju the next day that the comment hurt her feelings. Naming feelings and resolving interpersonal conflicts are certainly good things to learn at school. However, this example turns the focus to individual feelings, undermining the structural effects of harmful online comments.

As opposed to these examples, the chapter ‘Not everybody follows internet rules’ in ME NYT II discusses the derailed comment section of a fan page administered by one of the students. The discussion goes on to debate the concept of online trolling and other forms of harmful online conduct:

- ‘That kind of behavior is harassment! The internet offers us great opportunities to talk with people, share our opinions and learn new things. But you also have to know how to behave there’, says the teacher firmly.

- ‘That kind of harassment on the internet is called trolling, Minni knows’.

- ‘It’s similar to annoying and bullying’.

- ‘In the same way, let’s avoid disturbing other people’s play or games in the school yard’, Minni clarifies.

The teacher looks serious when he asks:

- ‘What other means of internet bullying are there?’ (ME NYT II: 21)

Despite the dialog format, which could make it more difficult to teach facts, the discussion in ME NYT II manages to frame the online comments in a structural way. The behavior is identified as trolling, and related to phenomena that are relevant to the students. The dialog connects online harassment to a discussion about rights and in an extended way to democracy, through the reference to everybody’s right to play the games they choose without being disturbed.

Concluding discussion

Largely, the motivation for proposing social studies as a school subject for grades 4–6 in basic education in Finland was to introduce active citizenship and democratic skills with a focus on practical skills. In our analysis, we find that the textbooks have carried out this task in varied ways. We have outlined how Finnish school textbooks in social studies education discursively construct an understanding of society as an area for active citizenship. Communication skills are highlighted as the main way of practicing active citizenship. The textbook readers are expected to consider their immediate surroundings, the school and the local area as potential fields of influence. However, the focus is on extracurricular activities, not on education itself, and on school food as a particular, and depoliticized, object of attention. In a larger social context and with reference to the future, there is a focus not on active citizenship as creating change, but on self-development as a way to respond to the needs of future company managers. We also note how antidemocratic threats to active citizenship, in the form of online hate speech, are often portrayed with a focus on individual feelings and manners, not on understanding structures such as how silencing voices works to obstruct democratic discussion. In sum, society as an area of active citizenship where students as individual actors are part of democratic decision-making is portrayed in a limited way. Our study points to a need for several of the books to reconsider the framing of active citizenship in a way that recognizes children as political actors and that makes democratic structures more visible, offline as well as online.

The results of our textbook analysis partly echoes what Hansen and Puustinen (2021) found in their study of some of the same material. The textbook ME NYT largely portrays a different perspective of active citizenship, where the students’ own opinions and, most importantly, conversations about participation and society are in focus. This approach could potentially encourage a classroom culture within social studies that would have common deliberation at its core, providing room for imagining alternative futures and utopian thinking. Deliberative practices would endorse viewing democracy more dynamically as an ideal to pursue, as democracy still tends to be depicted in Finnish textbooks as something fixed and ready and defined predominantly through the procedure of voting (Satokangas, 2021; see also Helkala and Tomperi, 2021). Engaging in conversation and allowing for a multitude of voices could be a way to enhance students’ sense of belonging in class, thereby developing their trust in society at large (Brezicha and Leroux, 2022). In line with Fornaciari (2022: 155), we agree that citizenship education would need to advance students’ potential not just for learning about the world of democracy and active citizenship, but also for being active observers and developers of democracy.

The results of the analysis provoke the question why active citizenship ends up having such a limited role in the studied textbooks. Perhaps the Finnish democratic tradition plays a role. As Männistö (2020) shows, democratic education in Finland is strongly tied to traditional, representational understandings of democracy. The idea that decision-making is best left to those with the right competencies, while in stark contrast to policy documents, has held a stronghold over Finnish social studies education. Changing the understanding of democracy might need more effort, in society at large but also within teacher education.

The topic of active citizenship and its limitations entails a number of ethical concerns. Virta (2006) points to the ethical question of how political involvement should be presented in school textbooks. It is possible to imagine a textbook that considers the whole world to be open and ready to change in a manner of one’s choosing, as well as a textbook that conveys the idea that one young person has no political power at all. Both extremes would seem unethical, however, so where on the line between those extremes does the ‘correct’ answer lie, and based on what political stance? The question is not restricted to school education, but necessarily related to the democratic structures in society, which can either create spaces for students to exercise their democratic freedoms or restrict these (Collins et al., 2019). Deciding which areas of society students should be encouraged to focus their active citizenship on is not an easy task. Still, we regard the suggestions made in the textbooks as narrow. With young students able to follow larger political developments, we ponder whether an active 12-year-old might be somewhat disappointed with his or her textbooks. Seriously including young children in decision-making is a matter of struggling for recognition, however, on not just a political, but on philosophical, theoretical, and practical levels (Fitzgerald et al., 2009). Some argue that this rethinking is what is needed, such as the thought-provoking arguments for lowering the voting age to 6, to concern all schoolchildren (Runciman, 2022). Even if children’s suffrage might not be the goal of promoting active citizenship to children, we welcome a discussion about how young students can be encouraged to see themselves as political actors with the potential to act democratically. We would like to extend this notion to the online environment, where active citizenship involves the risk of facing antidemocratic threats, and include learning how to deal with these as part of active citizenship education.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Pia Mikander

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