Abstract

This article looks first briefly on the history of education and the influence of A.S. Neill’s ideas in Finland, and then turns into a roundtable where three people – two mothers and one son – discuss their own experiences of the Summerhillian kindergarten in Finland, and the future of alternative education in the era of neo-liberalism.
Original languageEnglish
JournalRevista Hipótese
Volume3
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)131-149
Number of pages19
ISSN2446-7154
Publication statusPublished - 31 Oct 2016
MoE publication typeB1 Journal article

Bibliographical note

Antu Sorainen, born 1963, is a Docent and Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. She is the moderator and translator of the discussion. She was never in kindergarten as her mother was a stay-home mother of four. Antu thinks that this early childhood history influenced her (anti)social skills and her quest for personal autonomy in her later life. Therefore, she is interested in concrete utopias and the conceptual changes in pedagogy and education.
Dr. Antu Sorainen, PhD, is an Academy Fellow and Docent in Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki. She has MA in Cultural Anthropology and Law. She studied queer legal history and co-authored a book on conceptual history of Sittlichkeit in Finland. She holds a Academy Fellowship for “Wills and Inheritance Practices in Sexually Marginalised Groups” (2014-2019) and won a major Academy grant to direct a research team “CoreKin – Contrasting and Re-Imagining Margins of Kinship” (2016-2020).
Email: [email protected]
Website: antusorainen.com
Project Website: CoreKin.fi
orcid.org/0000-0002-3956-8352

Fields of Science

  • 6160 Other humanities
  • Alternative Pedagogy
  • Summerhill
  • Finnish history of education
  • Kindergartens
  • Queer
  • Roundtable
  • Lastenpaikka
  • Education history

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