En skola i samhällets tjänst eller för individen?

Om relationen mellan politik och pedagogik i skolans styrdokument sedan 1940-talet

Abstract

A school in society’s service or for the individual? On the relationship between politics and pedagogy in educational regulatory documents since the 1940s

Schooling can be given a political meaning which means it can aim to educate citizens according to a given vision of society. Schools can also be formed in accordance with the educational ideal of individual liberation and aim to shape autonomous individuals independently of any particular political vision. In this article, the theoretical distinction between political and educational school policies developed by Benner and Sladek in their comparative studies of the educational systems of Western Germany and the GDR, is used to analyze Swedish educational policy since 1940. The analysis shows that the emancipatory approach pursued in the beginning of the period under study was successively replaced by the political ideal of mobilizing education to bring about a more democratic society. The article reminds of the alternatives to this political concept of schooling that has become hegemonic in Swedish educational policy and it describes how this normalization has taken place.