Education in a Sandbox: The Making of an Educational Environment through Supervised Play in Post-War Helsinki

This article examines the history of supervised playgrounds in post-war Helsinki as semi-institutional educational environments that contributed to urban childcare and upbringing. Rather than focusing on infrastructure, the study explores the subtle pedagogical aims embedded in playground activities and how these were experienced and remembered by former staff and children. Using both archives and recollections, we analyse how educational intentions were implemented, negotiated and reinterpreted in everyday interactions. The findings show that, while administrative efforts aimed to pedagogise these spaces, they remained flexible and child-centred in practice, shaped by staff initiative and the children’s agency. By situating playgrounds within the “institutional triangle” of modern childhood, the article highlights their marginal yet meaningful role in the history of education and offers a novel perspective on the experiential history of childhood by emphasising the dynamic interplay between institutional structures and lived experience.