This article aims to analyse how the emerging Swedish school system in the early nineteenth century can be understood within the context of a gradual break-up of the estate society and its replacement with a class society in which citizenship was an important foundation. This is done through the discussion of the conceptions of citizenship on two levels. The first is the national level, focusing the national debate on education, and the second is the local level, investigating the local schools and the school setting. The main result is that the conceptions of citizenship in the school context were formed along two major lines: an inclusive social and civil citizenship and an exclusive, active and political citizenship. Consequently, the emerging Swedish school system simultaneously fostered these two citizenship conceptions, which coexisted in an educational system that was able to cast pupils as either subjects (comprehensive citizenship) or agents (designated citizenship).
ARTICLE HISTORYCitizenship has been put forward as a crucial concept for the understanding of schooling in Sweden during the first half of the nineteenth century. 1 The often vastly different opinions on the purpose of education that were displayed in eighteenth-century debates and discourses on education highlight citizenship as a complex concept that needs further exploration.In this article, we explore how conceptions of citizenship were formed in Swedish schools during the first part of the nineteenth century. 2 We pose questions, first about what notions of citizenship were promoted in national debate and by local practices, and second about how these notions of citizenship related to aspects like social class and gender.
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