Between culture and cultural heritage: curriculum historical preconditions as constitutive for cultural relations – the Swedish case

Abstract

The aim here is to describe and discuss how different cultural meanings, offered in education, can contribute to unjust cultural relations such as othering and xenophobia. By analysing the cultural and discursive content in curricula using a (neo)pragmatic curriculum theory research method, dominating ideas, values and discourses between 1948 and 2011 in Sweden are clarified. The analysis of the content is undertaken in two steps: first, as a cultural content offered in education, and second, as an educative content, in order to discuss the fostering potential. This two-step analysis relies on an idea of values companioning the choice of content. Based on the dominating ideas in education, four phases and four discourses are further outlined and discussed, together with the role of and tension between the two dominating values governing cultural relations, namely ‘the culture of others’ and ‘the cultural heritage’. Despite the different rationalities over time, the cultural thinking never goes beyond an unarticulated ‘we’ and a well-defined ‘them’. The conclusion is that the Swedish curriculum is a curriculum of othering, although this has nothing to do with racism and xenophobia. The Swedish curriculum is and always has been an anti-racist project that is strongly anchored in democratic foundations.