Separate Education as an Ethnic Survival Strategy: The Finlandssvenska Case

Although the ethnicity-educational change nexus would seem to be of increasing interest to educational anthropologists, there has been surprisingly little effort made to systematically delineate variables or examine relationships in specific field settings. We have, for example, little knowledge of how and to what effect various ethnic groups have influenced ethnic education programs in public schools or have created and used their own nonformal educational programs outside of superordinate control. We need to determine under what conditions groups mobilizing around cultural symbols—i.e., the "old" ethnicity—as well as groups seeking to use ethnicity in resource competition—i.e., the "new" ethnicity—have sought to use education in formal schools, in nonformal programs, and by means of the media and resocialization, and so on, to help achieve ethnic movement goals for individual and social change (Bennett, 1974; Despres, 1975; Collins, 1976).