• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publicationsclose
• Research softwareclose
• 2014-2023close
• Open Access close
• Danish close
• Publikationer från Umeå universitet close
• Lund University Publications close
• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage close

”A new form of musical upbringing”: Pretenses of reform pedagogy content in the Siljan schoolIn this article, I describe the Siljan school in Tällberg as a Swedish example of alternative pedagogy. The overall questions relate to the reform pedagogy content of the school and its ability to give Swedish music teaching a new form of musical upbringing. An important issue is how the Siljan school as a model for Swedish reform has been inspired by the reform pedagogy movements in USA and Germany. The analysis is thus based on the Alm couple’s ability to give the school an international character which shines light on Swedish reforms in the greater context of reform pedagogy. With its basis in discursive education of the 1930s, two main questions are discussed: what perspective on musical education can be identified in the personal development ethos of the Siljan school? How can the school’s relation to the reform pedagogy music movement during the start of the 1900s be understood? From a hermeneutic perspective, the article contributes by investigating how the Siljan school can have affected decisions in education politics, Swedish schooling, and Swedish musical life. In summary, the article contributes with new knowledge on a chapter in the history of Swedish music pedagogy.

Principal C.J.L. Almqvist and the principle of personalityThe Swedish author and visionary Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793–1866) was the principal for twelve years (1829–1841) of the government-initiated pilot school ”Nya Elementarskolan” (New Elementary School) in Stockholm. In this position, he argued that both the school and the state should be built on the same basic idea: the right of individual freedom. This argument is often referred to as ”personlighetsprincipen” (the principle of personality), a concept launched by another prominent figure of the liberal culture of the time, Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847). This article explores how the principle of personality is expressed in the texts of Almqvist and is mainly built upon the concept’s allegorical resources. It examines the thesis that Almqvist’s use of the term is best understood if one distinguishes between the political, pedagogical, and existential dimension of the concept. The article ends with some thoughts about the context of the concept and a discussion on whether Almqvist had a greater interest in personalities than in principles.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Swedish gymnastics won a large following across the world. Employing the concepts of educationalisation and gender, I will explore how the physical education of girls was conceptualised and justified in the Swedish system during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Focusing on the publications of Anton Santesson (1825–1892), who was one of the main authors on girls’ gymnastics in Sweden, I will show how girls’ gymnastics was conceptualised as a response to a social, cultural and physical crisis, which was perceived as partly stemming from the detrimental effects of education on girls’ bodies and minds. Girls’ gymnastics was thus construed as vital to the future of the Swedish nation. While men and manliness remained fundamental to the strength of the nation, girls’ gymnastics was vital to women’s rearing of boys and thus instrumental to the development of masculinity in men.

In general, schooling and nation-building are associated with the unifying role of language and history education, since language and culture are perceived as fundamental pillars of the nation. Less discussed—at least regarding the curriculum—is the role of physical education, even if physical education was a highly political issue in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Based on a case study of Switzerland and textbooks for physical education by Adolf Spiess and the activities of Phokion Heinrich Clias for the Bernese school, this article discusses how physical education, distinct from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ care for the body, became a school subject of the nineteenth century compulsory schools and how it was related to the notion of nation and nation-building. It argues that physical education became first part of the “modern” philanthropic education and schooling, was soon taken for granted as an essential curricular component of nation-building and lost thereby the political threat.

General Subjects in Vocational Education and Training in Post-War SwedenThe present article focuses on the role of general subjects in the curriculum for vocational education and training (VET) in Swedish upper secondary schools after the Second World War. It shows that a steady increase in general VET subjects as a result of Social Democratic legislation in 1968 and 1991 was interrupted by a Liberal-Conservative government bill introduced in 2009, which led to a reduction. The rhetoric of these reforms is analyzed with the intent of increasing insight into the perceived educational benefits of general subjects in VET. The study employs the analytical lens of Gert Biesta and his proposed major functions of education: qualification, socialization, and sub-jectification. The results serve to illuminate the present-day educational po-licy debate, showing that the place of general subjects in the curriculum has been motivated by the important role they play in educating youth in demo-cracy, teaching them to function effectively in an increasingly international-ized and multicultural society and economy, for their lifelong learning and for the continued economic growth of the Swedish society. With the enactment of the government bill of 2009, however, the qualifying function of general subjects in VET was devaluated. The new curriculum that followed prioritized strictly vocational skills and the transition of graduates directly into the labour market.

This article deals with the foundational juncture in a 60-year long (and counting) relationship between Swedish and Tanzanian adult educators. It analyses how Swedish correspondence education methods and objectives were adapted as they entered the emerging field of foreign aid. Two educational institutions in Tanzania, in which Swedish funds and personnel played a central role are studied: the Nordic-funded Co-operative Educational Centre in Moshi founded in 1964, and the Swedish-funded National Correspondence Institute in Dar es Salaam (1971–). The analysis shows how international NGOs and individual policy entrepreneurs created the initial arenas for policy transfer. It emphasises how the ideal of creating an equal partnership affected the policies that were being lent and borrowed. The article argues that the concept of aidification can be used to capture the ways in which transnational policy areas such as education were transformed in the wake of decolonisation.