Kuusamo’s school museum visiting Karhuntassu!
Take a seat, please – Schools of Kuusamo
For a long time Kuusamo parish village’s folk school, which started operating in 1876, was the only school of the municipality, until other schools were founded in Tavajärvi in 1894, Posio in 1893 and Vasaraperä in 1896.
In Kuusamo, 15 schools were lost in the wars and education had to be restarted in the six remaining schools. During the reconstruction period, village schools were built in every nook and cranny at such a rate that at the beginning of the 1950s there were 54 schools in Kuusamo and at the end of 1962 67 schools.
For decades, Kuusamo has been at the forefront of the development of the school system, for example moving to a middle school and elementary school, creating combined classroom teaching and being one of the first rural municipalities to establish the position of a school secretary to support schools and opening a school office in the municipality.
Like everywhere else, the schools in Kuusamo first operated in the dim lighted cottages, then in rented rooms and finally in new school buildings under the leadership of dedicated teachers.
The exhibition tells about education in Kuusamo, from church schooling to travelling teachers and all the way to the primary schools. The museum classroom has objects from the school museum, photographs and texts.
Take a seat at the desk in a folk school, browse through the alphabet and other textbooks from the museum classroom’s bookshelf and read stories from different decades, for example from Nilo, Piiloperä and Lämsä schools.