University of Helsinki

'I'd like to meet your Excellency'

Children see President Tarja Halonen simultaneously as a best friend, the highest authority and an omnipotent fairytale figure.

Many a Finn has bumped into the President of the Republic, Tarja Halonen on the street, in the cinema, at a department store or in the vegetable market. Finland is a country with a low level of hierarchy, where a President wearing a baseball cap and clipping out discount coupons can still be a credible head of state.

According to polls, Halonen has succeeded in fulfilling her campaign slogan to be “a president for all the people”. In 2003, a staggering 94 per cent of Finns said that she had succeeded in her job “well” or “very well”, which made enter-tainers gleefully remark that her popularity was approaching North Korean dimensions.

Halonen is also a President for children and young people, and she has received an unprecedented number of letters from them. Whereas previous Presidents only received the occasional letter from a child or a young person, Halonen’s archives already contain approximately six thousand such letters from over the past six years.

Halonen herself has encouraged children to write to her on many occasions. “She has perhaps wished to convey the message to other adults that it is worthwhile to listen to children,” says Ulla-Maija Salo, Professor of Education at the University of Helsinki, who has studied the letters.

Salo is sure that one of the reasons for the avalanche of letters is the fact that Halonen is a woman. “Girls, in particular, write to Halonen, who has broadened their view on their opportunities in society. As the first woman President of Finland, Halonen has shown that girls, too, can even become heads of state,” says Salo.

Salo is not sure if a similar phenomenon could take place elsewhere in the world: that children pick up their pencils and write about their worries and wishes to the leader of their country, whom they feel close to. “The low level of hierarchy in Scandinavia combined with children’s opportunities for education and different hobbies as well as a child-rearing culture emphasising freedom make such a phenomenon possible,” says Salo.

“What is politics?”

“The letters of course tell about President Halonen, but also about childhood, things that are important to children and more generally about Finnish society,” says Salo. In the children’s world, the President can be familiar and close like a mother or the lady next door, a stranger acting as the highest authority and an omnipotent fairytale figure, all happily jumbled up. It is easy for children to move from one reality to another,” says Salo.

“When children approach the President as a best friend, they may even reveal who they have a crush on. Girls might ask her opinion on what to wear for the class photo, for example. Girls even accept her as a member of their secret clubs, open only to a few select best friends. These are signs of great respect. In the next moment, the President can turn into an adventurous princess or Moomin Mamma, and finally into the highest authority, who can be asked to come and tell the parents to quit smoking because the child’s own entreaties have not worked.”

The president is also thought to be omniscient, whom children might ask what politics is, because “my dad or the history teacher couldn’t answer properly”. Even in the letters from the youngest writers, the President is someone who listens to children and understands them perfectly.

Could parents aspire to the position of a President instead of President Halonen in the eyes of their children? Salo suggests that listening to children from the least adult-like position possible might bring you closer to the children’s world. “We adults often lose our ability to listen to children. We ask them questions from our own adult perspective and categories and also interpret the interaction through our own world view. When we talk about things through ready-made adult classifications, there is no room left for children to talk about things consistent with their own view of the world. We miss the chance to hear how the surrounding world really appears to children and how they reconcile this with their world,” says Salo.

Unemployment and the environment are concerns

Children are also aware of Halonen’s political themes. They support tolerance, which Halonen campaigns for. “Tolerance is one of the big themes children call for from all adults in their letters. For instance, if a pupil with a Russian or Somali background has been bullied in school, concerned girls have written to the President about it. A child’s sense of justice is hurt by the fact that people are treated unequally.”

On a global scale, children are worried about wars, environmental issues and helping the poor. I ask you for one thing, but it’s a big thing, which you can probably solve because you are the President. When you see George Bush, give him my regards.

Children of the Internet era are very good at searching for information. They know a lot and what they do not know they will find out. “Letters to the President have, for instance, dealt with the acidity of Finnish waters, and urged politicians to ban the washing of rugs by lakesides.”

In their everyday lives, children are worried about the same things as adults: unemployment, care for grandparents when there is a shortage of nurses and the fate of the Finnish countryside in a global world create uncertainty in children’s lives today. Dairy farming has become difficult because [former Prime Minister] Lipponen wants to import milk from Estonia, one girl wrote with concern.

Our family is not small
And protected by a wall
Dad got a job and mum looks after
Us kids so our family
Has it all.

“Aggravated by economic inequality, new poverty among families with children is a fact also in Finland. Children seriously and genuinely share the family’s worries but, in the end, they are optimists and they show a sense of proportion in their demands. They understand that not getting that new bicycle is not the end of the world.”

Tapio Ollikainen

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