Uno Cygnaeus

Uno Cygnaeus (12 October 1810 in Hämeenlinna – 2 January 1888 in Helsinki) was a Finnish clergyman, educator, and chief inspector of the country's 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 (sloyd – veisto in Finnish, sløyd in Norwegian, slöjd in Swedish, and sløjd in Danish) as a mandatory subject in the school curriculum.

This place was a trading post, where Cygnaeus got a chance to observe the barter exchanges between the Europeans and the Native Alaskans.

In 1855 the Russian senate was commissioned to advance the educational system in Finland after Tsar Alexander II ascended to the throne.

Students learned about metals, about fabrication techniques, about selecting appropriate wood samples from the forests, about the care necessary for working with materials and finally the need for collaborative efforts to accomplish tasks.

The influence of Cygnaeus also reached the United States (Bennet 1937) when Larsson, trained by Otto Salomon, moved to the U.S. and founded the Boston Sloyd School in 1888.

The views of the American educator John Dewey were based on then-current global trends, one of the most important one being the sloyd movement begun by Cygnaeus.

From 1863 until 1869, Cygnaeus served, besides being a chief inspector of the country's school system, as the director of a Finnish seminary at Jyväskylä.