Uno Cygnaeus

Who was Uno Cygnaeus?

Uno Cygnaeus was a Finnish clergyman, educator, and chief inspector of the country's school system. He is considered the father of the Finnish public school system. His accomplishments also include the initiation of high class teacher training, emphasizing the importance of women's education and most importantly introducing the use of crafts, as a mandatory subject in the school curriculum. He was born in Hämeenlinna, October 12, 1810. His father died early in his childhood when he was 8 years old. Uno studied natural sciences and theology at the University of Turku and continued in Helsinki when the university moved over to Helsinki. In 1837 he was ordained as a priest and started serving in Viipuri till 1839. In Viipuri he served as assistant pastor and prison chaplain in addition to teaching at a private school. This experience and his study of the work of the educational philosophers Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Fröbel led to the formulation of Cygnaeus’s own educational philosophy and ideas.

Then he was sent off to serve for five years in the far off Lutheran parish of New Archangel, Russian America now Sitka in Alaska as a punishment for an extramarital affair. This place was a trading post, where Cygnaeus got a chance to observe the barter exchanges between the educated people and the native people. Upon his return, he spent twelve years as a superintendent of a Finnish parish school in St. Petersburg.