Cultivating Swedishness? Examples of imagined kinship during the first half of the 20th century

Introduction

Different expressions of Swedishness on different levels in the Swedish educational system during the first half of the 20th century are investigated; in compulsory education (‘folkskola’) for children from the first to the sixth grade; and teacher education programmes, including compulsory education (‘folkskola’ and ‘elementarläroverk’ – the latter from either the third, fourth or the sixth grade and usually for the more privileged). In particular two different kinds of representations of Swedishness during this period are examined, because they appear to be cultivated through the use of education. The first – through ‘folkskolan’ – is an expression of a kind of belonging, a certain kind of imagined kinship; that is, a harmonious and solid unit in a specific geographic area in which students are cultivated to become loyal to the members of the nation-state, a state in which there are no real conflicts:, neither social nor societal problems. The second – through ‘folkskolan’ and ‘elementarläroverk’ – is an expression of a more scientific, rational model of imagined kinship; that is, a model in which students are expected to develop their critical thinking in accordance with scientific theories and methods.

To accomplish the above, I will start by examining some basic concepts about nationalism, and nation building, aimed at shaping a society through the use of education. First, I will show that education has been (and perhaps still is) regarded as an instrumental value in shaping a nation’s citizens. I then argue that keeping a society together is also conditioned by certain explicit articulated narratives on what the citizens in that nation might have in common; that is, shared conceptions (not, however, always explicit) of culture and value, or what I suggest here as being depicted as what I would call an imagined kinship, to which I will return below. Thereafter I discuss Selma Lagerlöf’s work, The Adventures of Nils Holgersson, as an expression of the kind of imagined kinship introduced above; that is, in terms of belonging to a specific geographical area in which an individual is to become a loyal and hardworking member. Finally, I will discuss the government report, 1946 års Skolkommission, ¹ hereafter abbreviated as 1946 Commission, a thorough investigation into the making and shaping of a new curriculum, and outlines for a new teacher training programme. This latter can be seen as a move from a previously dominant conservative, state-driven, theological ideology towards a more common social, scientific one.

A nation under (re)construction

Nation building is, I argue, to some extent, irrevocably normative. The normativity in this respect concerns the founding of and framing of a society – and to (re) tell the stories of how that nation was brought into existence. Restricting the meaning of ‘nation-building’, I draw here on its characterization by Alesina and Reich, as ‘a process which leads to the formation of countries in which the citizens feel a sufficient amount of commonality of interests, goals, and preferences’ (Alesina and Reich, 2013:3). However, this is far from sufficient. The birth of a nation without any aftermath of a national narrative is not a nation. Hence, nation building also demands narratives, and these national narratives are all different; every nation has its own narrative about an assumed origin and uniqueness. For example, Ingmarie Danielsson Malmros (Danielsson Malmros, 2012) identifies and analyses some meta-narratives developed from a legacy of Swedish history education. From a substantial quantity of material she has identified five meta-narratives on Swedishness: ‘neutrality’, ‘welfarism’, ‘the stranger’, ‘the role model country of democracy’, and ‘the most gender equalised country’. I will refer below in particular to the narratives about neutrality and the stranger.

We need to keep in mind that there is wide variety in the way the tales about nations could be told. Quite frequently, it could sound like this: ‘Once upon a time there were people who struggled and finally succeeded in becoming and being a part of a “free” nation with “free” citizens’. Such a narrative might include the birth of a formal constitutional autonomy, perhaps as the result of a war against a brutal (and frequently alien) oppressor who had invaded the country and enslaved its people. In several cases, the populace also has (or has had) so-called valiant and daring leaders. In Swedish textbooks, the heroes have been characterised as highly daring and fearless frontrunners, with extraordinary qualities: Engelbrekt and Gustav Vasa, for example. The latter was believed to have liberated the Swedes from a tyrant and despot, the Danish King Kristian, and his oppressive rule. ²

When we turn to other nation-building fundamentals, it would be reasonable also to take other phenomena into account, given that the means of keeping a nation together vary. However, without conceptions of a common cultural ground, an imagined kinship, in, for example, terms of narratives such as those mentioned above, such pursuits would probably be doomed to failure. Let us assume that in general this imagined kinship is a mosaic (written large) of a nation’s history at the present day, and conceptions of the future, oral and reproduced in print. These stories, legends, and images are often told when educating children. Individuals might have images of a nation in terms for instance of certain colours of the national flag, or the national anthem, or the victory of the national football team. These could be tokens interpreted by the citizens of a nation or community, which might keep them together. The glue that can hold a society together can be conceived of in myriad individual and collective actions, examples of what I term imagined kinship. I assume that an imagined kinship is not a status quo phenomenon. Imagined kinship – in Sweden – of the inter-war period (1918 to 1939) is something different from the general conception of public opinion during the second decade of the 21st century.

There is also another piece to fit into this framework. The stories told, read and reproduced need a public space, such as teacher education, primary school, high school and university, as well as the daily interactions among citizens. A community, or nation N, might be founded on assumptions such as sharing the idea of a common culture, religion(s), history and different legacies of citizens’ efforts. Instances of the latter could be victories (or defeats) on battlefields, no matter how long ago, transformed eventually into formal treatises such as celebrating a certain year and the date of the birth of a nation. In certain cases, these phenomena have been stretched to extremes regarding imagined kinship. Such imagined kinship was once thought to be constituted by one people, one language and one race. For example, the Third Reich had a special unit, called Ahnenerbe, and the aim of the staff in that unit was to find historical and current ‘evidence’ to confirm the legitimacy of the glory of the uprising millennium empire. Scholars joined the ranks; among them, archeologists were hired, to find their roots in antiquity. ³ Of course, as we all know, the aims of narratives do vary in this genre, depending on what is supposed to be at stake.

As an example of the above, van Hooft has developed a concept of what is supposed to be at stake when analysing different perspectives on nationalism. He has investigated different conceptions concerning nationalism and patriotism at length. Nationalism and patriotism are sometimes intertwined within a common nationalistic discourse (van Hooft, 2009). For some people, ‘patriotism’, however, would imply ideas of fanatic assumptions – such as collective behaviour when displaying loyalty to a nation N. One instance of such group behaviour would be a distancing, distinguishing from ‘the other’; that is, some kind of social ‘tribalism’. One expression of a distancing could be as simple as drawing a line of demarcation between this society (or community) and that, such as a shared use of a language; for instance, ‘we Brits would never behave like that!’ or ‘we, the French, are the most industrious and rational people in Europe!’ – although, some might perhaps disagree with this latter and claim that the Germans (sometimes also measured by historical standards) are the most industrious and rational people in Europe. Nevertheless, with this kind of reasoning we are clearly well aware that we are talking on a collective and highly delusive level. In contrast, a certain degree of individual loyalty to the nation/community is also required from a state when we talk in terms of patriotism. Harry Brighouse once posed the question about whether we really should teach patriotic history. His response was ‘no’, albeit not unconditional. Patriotic history might be justified in a few cases, but Brighouse’s motives for rejection are stronger: he claims that ‘the patriotic purposes have no legitimate role in the teaching of [a nations] history’ (Brighouse, 2005: 172). Teaching history is a much larger and more complex issue than putting the narrative forward with respect to one nation’s alleged dominance.

Let us change our focus, from the pros and cons of teaching patriotic history at school, to another meta-narrative: the ideas about how a citizen would be expected to act in certain situations. As a citizen, the individual would be required to display a kind of patriotism; that is, loyalty – in action – according to the individual’s alleged true membership of the nation N. Some people emphasise that belonging to a community also involves close bonds between the individual and the nation. Hence, identification with a unit larger than one’s self is often taken for granted. Nationalism, and/or patriotism, whichever is more appropriate, was investigated in detail by Nathanson (1993). His discourse is based on a presupposition of different connotations of nationalism and patriotism. I have chosen two of them, because they are the most relevant for this paper:

a belief in the superiority of one’s country; and

Referring to Nathanson (1993), van Hooft (2009) claims that to some extent these two attitudes defines nationalism. As van Hooft suggests, nationalism is to be distinguished from patriotism, ‘not only by having a distinctive object – namely the nation-state – but also by being a different kind of stance towards that object – namely, an irrational commitment bordering on fanaticism’. Let me conclude with a remark on the approach of van Hooft to nationalism/patriotism. His use of Nathanson’s first stance, ‘A belief in the superiority of one’s country’ is of particular relevance when we examine the idea of an imagined kinship and conceptions of curricula. I have a special reason for spelling out Nathanson’s assumptions, because in the following I want to interweave some of the assumptions on nationalism with the analysis in the final section.

Before changing the subject, in the next section, I would like to add some further comments. Education, and above all teacher education, have both been, and remain, cornerstones in the formation and shaping of a nation. The fostering of future generations and the drawing-up of a curriculum are other permanent tenets. In examining different stages of Swedish educational history, we can also follow different ideals put forward in diverse government reports, curricula and readers. I will turn to an example of an expression of Swedishness found in The Adventures of Nils Holgersson, and then turn to a more scientific model of a kind of imagined kinship. Both of these narratives are expressions of different kinds of ways of cultivating Swedishness; that is, in terms of the superiority of one’s country and an exclusive concern for one’s own country.

Geography as a nationalistic narrative

Selma Lagerlöf’s book, The Adventures of Nils Holgersson (Lagerlöf, 1906/07) was initially aimed at pupils from the peasantry and working classes, aged nine or ten: it was first published at the very beginning of the 20th century and was distributed and read for decades thereafter. ⁴ Given that Lagerlöf’s book was a widely shared reader, the relevant principal task here is to scrutinize how Swedish society and the Swedes are characterised in it.

The main character in the novel is a 14-year-old lad, Nils, who was anything but industrious and clever; rather the opposite, in fact. Initially, Nils is pictured as ‘dull’ and ‘lazy’, not really caring much for learning anything at school. He was more devoted to getting up to mischief. Because he did not go to church one Sunday morning, Nils is told by his parents to read Luther’s Commentary and the New Testament, as ‘homework’ in penance for his absence from church; and that is where the story really begins. After being magically transformed into a tiny figure, he takes off on a journey. Riding on the back of a domestic goose (from the farm where he lives) he manages to join a group of wild geese, on their way to the far north of Sweden and back.

This round trip is accompanied by reports on encounters with various characters, customs and landscapes, together in particular with descriptions of how Nils’ character changes, gradually and profoundly. Each new encounter in different parts of Sweden has something to contribute to his corpus of learning and to his character. Nils is transformed from a cunning and lazy lad to a morally conscious boy; he also cultivates some kind of virtues. We can examine some aspects of Nils’s adventurous journey to the Swedish North in the chapter entitled ‘With the Laplanders’. The narratives from the deep north are constructed with a dichotomy: ‘Lapps’ and ‘Swedes’. The ‘Lapps’, as we learn, live out in the wild, and generally speaking, according to Lagerlöf, they seem to be leading a good life. The author does not draw on any severe prejudices about the ‘Lapps’ as a group. They are described as decent people, and their way of living is, through the eyes of Lagerlöf, quite exotic, though still a part of Swedishness. It is worth noting that Lagerlöf, at the very beginning of the 20th century, regards the ‘Laplanders’ as ‘Swedes’. ⁵

One meta-story is about a girl, a ‘Swede’ whose socio-economic origin is upper class, we are told. This bourgeois girl is, for various reasons, unable to return immediately to her home. Alas, she has to cope with a Sami family, above all with a boy of her own age. Eventually she spends all the seasons of the year with the boy, continuously longing for her home and complaining about her current membership in a new form of life. When the task is over the boy asks the girl to leave, so she can return safely to the place whence she first came. Surprisingly, the girl is upset: ‘Don’t you want me here?’, she asks: ‘Don’t you want to go back to your folks?’, the boy replies. ⁶ After spending the four seasons up in the mountains, in the Sami land, she refuses to return to her home. The bourgeois girl has found her true calling and remains with the boy for life, we learn. Assimilation, in this narrative, is an example of moving from the majority culture to the minority – and not the other way around. This is an interesting narrative because ‘the other’, to state it anachronistically, is not that far away: it is actually within the geographical and cultural borders of a nation, despite its ethnic and socioeconomic differences. Apparently, according to Lagerlöf’s narrative, there is room for different forms of life – and for mutual respect – within the borders of the Swedish nation.

The body of research on Selma Lagerlöf’s literary legacy is substantial. Here, I restrict my reading to Herbert Tingsten’s, Gud och fosterlandet: Studier i hundra års skolpropaganda, (1969). Tingsten makes several statements on Nils’s journey: he reminds the reader about the state of the nation at the beginning of the 20th century. Sweden was indeed a very poor country, the huge transformation from rural to urban life had not yet taken place, the majority of peasants were still peasants; and industrialisation meant the birth of labour movements with rising demands for decent standards of living and constitutional rights. The right to vote was still limited during the first two decades of the 20th century. Inevitably, higher education was also a class indicator at that time.

Another of Tingsten’s impressions is that we never encounter any First of May demonstrations. Hence, in Lagerlöf’s wondrous journey through Sweden, there are no signs of labour movements, no threatening or liberating red flags; nor are there any dull, gloomy, polluting factories, no worn-out mine workers, no proletarians, and not a single strike to be reported. Furthermore, as Tingsten continues, if there is one single collective depicted unit in Lagerlöf’s reader (apart from the animals) it is the Salvation Army (and the so-called ‘Godtemplarna’ –Teetotallers – a free religious organisation). As Tingsten stresses, ‘social problems do not exist, there are only individual problems, which can be solved by virtue of customary, traditional ways of thinking. But these problems are relatively few; the people are light-hearted, good, and helpful’ (Tingsten, 1969: 231).

Throughout Lagerlöf’s Adventures, the reader encounters no societal clashes; there are apparently no such problems to report wherever Nils travels. The northern outpost of Kiruna, when Lagerlöf wrote her text, was little more than a village, slowly expanding due to the mining industry; and the railroad further north was under construction. Lagerlöf claims that the houses in Kiruna look neat and inviting, and the scenery is said to be extraordinary. She does not say anything about the dirty work of mining or the working conditions for the workers involved with the railroad construction; and we have to remind ourselves that this book was written as a reader for children aged eight to nine. As Tingsten (1969: 240) expresses it, the society (the nation) in Lagerlöf’s reader is one harmonious and solid unit. As we know, such a description is a highly conservative way of depicting the state of a union/nation. Lagerlöf’s narrative is rather more a description of a society as it ought to be, not how it actually was.

However, this ideal description does not mean that Lagerlöf was not aware of the profound changes that were already taking place. Rather, it is the opposite. I suggest that Lagerlöf’s text is a contribution, but in another direction – writ large – to shaping and reproducing the hopes and conceptions of her current, and maybe forthcoming, society. This is something I attempted to put forward above, in my remarks on imagined kinship. Thus it makes sense, from Lagerlöf’s point of view, to conceive of a society as a strongly inclusive unit, by upholding explicitly articulated, alleged ideas and values about what the citizens in that nation have in common: shared conceptions of culture and values. During the first decades of the 20th century, the population Sweden was largely homogenous. If there were any linguistic (or ethnic) minorities, they consisted of two small groups, the Tornedalen Finns and the Sami people, who spoke two distinct languages. The central government in Stockholm acted firmly on the language issue by prohibiting the two minorities from speaking their mother tongues at school. The language regime was Swedish.

Let us regard Nils’s adventurous trip as a careful look at Sweden from the inside, or rather from the back of a goose, as a perspective from above on Sweden – a tale constructed on what current Swedish society at its alleged very best could be like, or a canvas of an idealized state of a nation.

Luis Ajagán-Lester (2000), by virtue of an extensive study of textbooks (1768–1965), has analysed how Sub-Saharan (or ‘black African’) people have been characterised in Swedish readers. His analysis could be described as the perspective from inside outwards. Ajagán-Lester’s study also covers the time period in which Nils Holgersson was read in the elementary schools. The investigation of the construction of ‘the other’ makes a comparison with the Lagerlöfian conceptions of her Swedishness even more acute. The Swedish pupils are expected to learn from Nils Holgersson how to fit into an industrious and virtuous lifestyle. Ajagán-Lester’s analysis exposes all the virtuous and industrious shortcomings as par essence necessary qualities when characterising ‘the other’. The enormous number of prejudices about the Sub-Saharan ‘other’, as spread through Swedish elementary school readers over so many years, thoroughly, fundamentally and consistently contradict the 1946 Commission statement on education on the subject of ‘Geography’. The 1946 Commission document clearly argues for a curriculum that explicitly counteracts sweeping, pejorative judgments on other people’s culture and customs, emphasizing instead the teaching of understanding based on respect for other people.

To conclude, the above meta-narratives were ‘geography’ and ‘the other’, affirming a kind of Swedishness by picturing a society and landscape slowly growing in a calm and controlled manner, in the absence of societal threats. The narratives of ‘the other’ comprise stories about the alien as a brute, the alien as non-cultivated and non-educated, and above all the alien as a collective. These are instance of how Swedishness was conveyed in Swedish elementary schools, stories that pupils were brought up with and passed on as they grew up in a society which, at that time, was homogenous. The sight of a Sub-Saharan African in Swedish cities or in the countryside was quite rare.

Let us now turn to a second kind of imagined kinship that evolved after or around the narratives introduced above; that is, a rational, scientific kinship.

In science we trust – the 1946 School Commission ⁷

Few governmental texts have had such an impact on the Swedish curriculum as the 1946 School Commission; a personal expression of belief confirmed by researchers from different fields (see Lindensjö and Lundgren, 2007). There are several reasons for making such a categorical statement. Let us first consider some societal circumstances. It is necessary to take into account that Swedish society had suffered little from the atrocities of WWII. Quite the opposite was the case, in fact: Sweden actually benefitted profoundly from the conflict. As a result the basic conditions of life and societal sustainability were relatively well preserved in Sweden between 1939 and 1945, and were dramatically enhanced – in economic terms – after WWII. The Swedish infrastructure was functioning smoothly, when a large part of European societies had been reduced to ashes. Applying a historical, superficial, macro-economic perspective, the Swedish post-WWII era was materially relatively prosperous. We can note here just one aspect of the relative comfort and affluence in Sweden: the export of iron ore to the Nazis, which continued until late 1944, was an important source of income.

The post-WWII era has also been frequently recorded from an educational perspective. It is supposed that not only Sweden but also the Scandinavian countries in general have developed through a somewhat common educational structure. Telehaug et al. (2004) claim that the Swedish nine-year comprehensive school was to some extent regarded as a (role) model for an overall idea among the Scandinavian countries. We can direct our attention to the reasons why Telehaug et al. also claim that the Social Democrats were ‘inclined to see nation building from an economic or instrumental perspective’ (Telehaug et al., 2004: 144). However, this statement could be questioned with regard to Sweden. For Swedish Social Democracy and the early post WWII period, economic and instrumental reasoning was not regarded as being of most importance. Rather, and concerning the 1946 Commission, there are other motives for reconstruction of a comprehensive school. I cannot resist the temptation to quote from the 1946 Commission. It is quite obvious that the following quotations reveal something significant; and that something important was at stake, because the 1946 Commission emphasises that a democratic education ‘should promote a respect for and a quest for the truth’. There is also some forthright, nationalistic rhetoric. The Swedish school was expected to rest on a foundational legacy from Athens and Rome and, by virtue of its pursuit for truth and knowledge, it was expected to be in line with ‘reverence’ and ‘curiosity’; this is rhetoric directed at the nation’s youth. There is more: the Swedish school, according to the 1946 Commission, would also be responsible for making Swedish pupils conscious of growing up in a society conditioned by democratic principles, thereby being responsible for the future of the nation.

The authors of the 1946 Commission leave us in no doubt about the desired ideal citizen. Democracy has no use for non-independent individuals. The shadows from the atrocities of WWII were, without doubt, one reason for this rhetoric. However, an autonomous way of thinking and a critical mind are not enough. In contrast, independence with too few constraints might also lead, according to the 1946 Commission, to unsound careerism – that is, single-mindedness; hence the strong emphasis on the civic ideal of the citizen as a collaborative human being. To summarise, the main task for the school, again, is to educate for a socially secured future, within the borders of a nation.

One condition for achieving this goal was the involvement of socio-scientific researchers. The new primary school was, to a certain extent, expected to rest on solid socio-scientific foundations, an attitude that also agrees well with a consciousness of nationalism. Science was not regarded primarily as an individual project but rather as a part of the wealth of a nation. Pupils are socialized, raised and fostered to retain loyalty to the nation, as members of a society, conceived as a slowly growing organism. Every single individual and societal element has its own fulfilment in a self-conception larger than itself. In addition, with regard to the natural sciences, there is a clearly-evident, similar pattern. Thanks to technical developments in the new post-WWII Swedish society, the relevance of science in the syllabus can hardly be overstated. The use of theoretical skills and praxis in pedagogical applications was urgent when constructing the new school and the new society. Again, with the focus on – literally – constructing the nation post-WWII, there was a profession in particular demand: engineering.

Thus when defining a common property concerning what and how to teach the pupils, a thick nationalistic gloss was apparent. The authors of the 1946 Commission also put the position of Christianity under investigation. Teaching about Christianity, the authors stated, must not exclude a critical approach. As such, Christianity should also be targeted for serious dissection, with a self-evident right for every single pupil to question the foundations of the religion, just like any other subject taught in school. This plea is also expressed in terms of a quest for ‘objectivity’. It could not be the overarching task of the Swedish school system to deliver an already constructed Christian worldview. In summary, the individual – the pupil – is expected, according to the 1946 Commission, to be equipped with critical conceptual tools, allowing individuals to make judgments of their own in order to develop the ideas (and ideals) worth struggling for. One part of the battle cry since time immemorial, ‘God, King and Motherland’, had – at least on this level – been removed.

To attach a label to the meta-narrative, I would suggest that the core of the 1946 Commission could be summed up under one heading: ‘science’, in all its variety of expressions. In a government guideline aimed at changing the curriculum, religion was subjected to severe examination. However, after reshaping the curriculum, with the aim of producing a better-educated population, one thing remains untouched: Sweden as a nation. The 1946 Commission also contains a special investigation of ways to reform the programmes for teacher training, which takes us to the next section.

Educating educators

Is it reasonable to expect that various attempts to reform the teacher training programmes have genuinely had a crucial impact on the implementation of the curricular core ideas? An oversimplified response would be, ‘It all depends’. We know that new ideas about pedagogy and psychology were conceived and spread in Sweden at the turn of the 19th century. However, we are also aware that – despite relevant international research outcomes – much remained the same, something also partially confirmed by Agneta Linné’s thesis, Morality, the Child or Science. Linné (1996) investigated conceptions of ideologies and strategies behind different teacher training programme reforms, from 1842 and a century onwards.

Here, I have restricted my discussion to the reforms taking place during the decades around the mid-20th century. Linné examines how decision makers (from different fields) at that time argued for diverse directions, to cope with multiple demands, due to profound societal and scientific changes. Compromises and postponed decisions were a part of that political culture. Regarding the period from the turn of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, Linné’s analysis concerning the transformation of the curriculum reveals a crucial change from a patriarchal, religious, conservative, overarching curricular ideology to an explicitly rational, scientific one. This critically important change occurs initially at a policy-making level. At that level it is obvious, after WWII, that the curriculum, according to the 1946 Commission, was also intended to infuse a new mindset in Swedish pupils. This mindset was also intended to serve as a defence against destructive ideologies such as Nazism and Fascism, also called ‘farsoter’, plagues, in the 1946 Commission.

The previous dominance of Christianity and the catechism were to be replaced by the ideal of a new citizen, described as having a critical, rational mind. This new ideal had to be put forward in combination with a strong belief in the sciences. In particular, post-WWII science was thought to be a value-neutral tool in the pursuit of truth and certainty. Such an attitude can be revealed by the following.

In the decades prior to the outbreak of the WWII and in the years after the war, there were animated debates about how to reform the structure of the Swedish parallel school system. For some, there was no question of reforming the system at all; the preference was to leave it in the same state as before. The parallel education system was based on socio-economic background. The children of the bourgeoisie and the upper class had, and were to keep, a relatively unproblematic and smooth path from high school to university education. In contrast, working-class children were destined to have a much shorter period of education, covering seven years of elementary school leading to occupations needing less demanding formal education. For them, embarking on a pre-university education was difficult, due to structural obstacles.

Alva Myrdal and Oscar Olsson, among others, argued for a fusion of the parallel school system into one united school system. Myrdal turned this political, and above all ideological, issue, whether the schools were to be fused – all pupils in one type of school, into a purely scientific matter. She claimed that dissolution of the parallel school system was primarily a matter of pedagogy and psychology, and not a political or ideological issue at all. By reasoning along an alleged scientific line, the subject would also be less infected (For further reading see Lindensjö and Lundgren, 2006.).

However, let us return to the nation as the foundation for the development of a new teaching training programme. The profound and lasting changes in the curriculum of the teacher training programmes emerged in the 1950s, when psychology, economics and natural sciences gradually took over, at the expense of Christianity and the catechism. But, and this is not a small but, during the 1930s up to the 1950s the reformed teacher education programme which was under construction was intended to prepare the pupils for growing up in a new society. In another respect, the qualities that the pupils were expected to develop were also manifold. These pupils also became, in various respects, the subjects of new teaching devices; the old methods of learning by replication were expected to disappear.

Returning to the purpose of this paper, a unified school and a reform of teacher training programmes in an academic context were both still to be realised in the name of the nation. Linné concludes: ‘Concurrent changes took place in the arenas of formulation and realization; important actors from teacher training institutes played important roles in the national educational policy and in the field of teacher education‘(Linné, 1996: 352).

Concluding remarks

The first purpose of this paper was to investigate different expressions of Swedishness on different levels in the Swedish educational system during the first half of the 20th century. One way of approaching Swedishness was by studying closely an widely-distributed elementary school reader, The Adventures of Nils Holgersson (Lagerlöf, 1906/07). Another part of Swedishness was to point out ‘the other’, the alien, the foreigner, a catalogue of the non-Swedish human being, the Sub-Saharan African.

The other main aim of the paper was to examine a transformation of ideals about the curriculum and, specifically, to analyse a previous set of ideas that dominated teacher education regimes concerning conceptions of what to teach and how. Fulfilling that mission also included taking a close look at parts of the Swedish teacher education programmes concerning the depiction of a new kind of citizen. It was intended that ‘Kingdom, God and the Motherland’, which dominated the earlier curricula, would disappear and be replaced by topics based on social science and the natural sciences. Furthermore, there is a quite important reminder: these plans were put forward, at policy level, at different times.

We also have to keep in mind that these changes in the curriculum took place not only within the geographic borders of a nation, but also within the boundaries of imagination. In the second section, I put forward a Nathansonian assumption on nationalism, namely a belief in the superiority of one’s country, and an exclusive concern for one’s own country. When reconsidering our approaches and returning to the first half of the 20th century, it seems that educating new generations was still to be carried out to serve best the nation; albeit, as I have argued, done differently.